I think many rogues are currently guessing the balance between
"last known best secondary stat - Haste" and
"post patch 4.03 possible secondary stat - Mastery for Assassination".

Personally I do not have foolproof math to say mastery exceeds Haste EP but
anecdotal evidence has shown Mastery being at least equal to haste on single
target and possibly superior on short term AoE bursts.

Anyway, while its quite irrelevant - barely few weeks left for Cataclysm - it would be
educational to have someone with better math degree than mine doing calculations
for new Mastery EP. Well educated guess which is backed by napkin math should be
good enough to have a inner peace for last few WoTLK weeks.

I have to admit that my own math has put Assassination Mastery EP close to Haste EP
and even exceeding sometimes (short term burst, 5-man HC bosses, add phases, etc).
I do not dare to publish my silly calculations so I am asking someone with better math
knowledge to do it, or at least share the anecdotal evidences

Thanks for all the information and comments. I think Machinae has got me most convinced about the leveling spec, which I can of course switch if it doesn't work out for me. But why wouldn't it.

Could you help me out with the choosing of specific talents since my experience with rogues has always been how to kite them as a hunter. I have to admit it's quite exciting to jump to a melee world after few years of shooting from range.

Personally I alway liked the arcanestyle of "jack of all, master of none" style of arcane. While this wasn't so to the extend of vanilla in Wotlk, still there were talents which would increase the damage across ALL schools of the mage.
It is also beyond my understanding why they put Focus Magic in the arcan tree (i can see it potentionally be too strong with shatter in pve, but that's a different matter), instead of giving arcan a new unique damage or utility spell.
For me a great addition in flavor to arcane would be if the ABdebuff procced something on ABr and AM, and you could choose between haste an regen or something...

As of patch 4.03a the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond has had it's requirements altered. You now need to have more blue gems then red gems. Since I have way more red gems (+20 intellect) then blue gems on my spriest I was wondering about an alternative metagem.
I've now picked up the Ember Skyflare Diamond but was wondering if that's the best pick out there, or if there's better alternatives for it.

Anyone who has a good suggestion?

The Insightful Earthsiege Diamond is better for shadow priests, I think. If you had 40k mana (which is rather high), ESD gives 800 more base mana and increases the mana restoring effect of most abilities by 2% (since many scale with mana pool). Earthsiege gives 600 mana on a 5% proc chance, the most likely number for the ICD being 15 seconds (taken from Holy Paladin Compendium for 3.3 ). They give the proc effect as being worth about 70 mp5 overall, let's just take that down to 50 mp5 just because.

So we're now comparing 800 base mana +2% more mana restored per second versus 50 mp5, or 10 mana per second. In this case you'd need to be getting 500 mana per second for 2% more mana restored to be equal to 10 extra mana per second. Last I checked we weren't getting anywhere near that, so unless it is an incredibly short fight where the meta cannot proc more than once or twice, Inightful Earthsiege seems better.

Your macro causes you to loose the target, for a short but existent time period. This causes your auto attack to be interrupted, hence the other macro is better.

So, what is the optimal build at this time? Or does one simply have to wait for Cata? We were axed 17%, so how does one re-prioritize rotation, build, and talents going into Cata?

I am noticing rage generation is a problem as well as the big drop in DPS.

I have boosted my haste rating to 14.1%
Hit: 23.7%
Mastery 8%
Crits: 38.2%
Expertise: 26

all ICC 264

I have a druid who is 310% swift flight form, they are a miner and herbalist, on beta I leveled her to 84 mining and herbing (beta closed before I finished it).

That is my money making plan for Cata, all my spare time on my Druid

Sorry if it´s already been told along the forum, but, due to professions changes, and new skills, i´d like to know if our best pve and pvp professions still enchanting/engineering...
I´ve heard that LW is better then engi for Cata, and, as i´m new to shaman world (always played as priest), Ã*´d like to know if sim can answer me this question...or u guys...

thx

Are there still enchants of the legs? I have looked everywhere but can't find any.

Firstly, Censure dot with the 25% less damage was a huge loss from 4.0.1 to 4.0.3a. Censure no longer ticks at the applied haste. i.e. if you take a speed potion, then apply your first Censure, you can hover over your target and watch the tick time change; after the pot wears off, the damage will go back to it's normal tick time. for me, it's every 2.17 seconds. It seems since this huge censure "nerf", censure which was my 3rd overall damage-dealer in 4.0.1 is now 6th or 7th with T.V. Melee, and CS as new top 3. This means that Potion of Wild Magic macro'd in with zealotry might be the better route than a haste potion if you have your crusader strike CD time down close to 3 seconds already. Templar's Verdict took a substantial nerf from 4.0.1 to 4.0.3 as did crusader strike. Futhermore, Rebuke macros can be removed. The Eye for an Eye talent may for the time being be more beneficial than a rebuke until Cataclysm's release when Crowd Control is needed.