Yes, Deadly Poison can cap out, although I often have windfury on one weapon, and when I don't I use 1 deadly 1 instant, and deadly on one weapon tends not to cap out too often so my inclination is to say that Improved Poisons is probably better. Though, to be honest, I've never done a detailed study of how Deadly Poison stacks up and rolls off, so I can't totally guarantee that. I suppose I should test and model that one of these days.

Aldriana,

With the spec that you posted, would you be doing a cycle of 5 sinister strikes, 5pt SnD, 5 sinister strikes, 5pt rupture/eviscerate? Is that what the dps spreadsheet calls 5s/5r? I'm not up with the abbreviations for cycles.

What about the old 3 sinister strikes, 3pt SnD, 5 sinister strikes, 5pt SnD, 5 sinister strikes, 5pt rupture/eviscerate? Not sure how you would abbreviate.

Any combat non-dagger specc with combat potency and a decently fast offhand (<=1.5) will have enough CP procs to supply enough energy to sustain a 5 slice and dice, 5 eviscerate/rupture cycle. A combat dagger spec will move up to 3 snd, 5 snd, 5 rupture/eviscerate

General word on syntax: the number denotes the number of combo points, the letter stands for which finisher - s = SLice and Dice, e = Eviscerate, and r = Rupture

3s/5s/5r (the last cycle you describe) is massively inferior - it's what you use if you don't have the energy regenration to do 5s/5r. With combat potency and a fast offhand, you *do* have the energy to do 5s/5r, so there's no reason to use 3s/5s/5r.

I'm pretty sure 5s/5r (or some variant thereof) proves to be optimal. With enough +hit, haste, and a fast OH, you can start cutting combo points out of the slice and dice and do 4s/5r and the like. In fact, I think with the Netherblade 2-piece bonus, you can get down to 1s/5r as a sustainable cycle. Now, at some point, I suspect some other cycle becomes optimal instead, but I'm not sure what that might be. To be honest, though, I haven't studied it lately - Netherspite refuses to cooperate, so I'm stuck using daggers until either he shows me some love or we get around to Tidewalker (which, at current rate of progress, may be a while).

offtopic: Aldriana, check Kazzak loot table

on the topic of 1s/5e or 1s/5r , id rather try to sustain a 5s/5r/5e cycle

I've seen it. 2 problems:

1) It's significantly inferior to Spiteblade, to the extent that I'm not sure it's worth switching away from Malchazeen for, and
2) I'm in the #2 guild on the server, and the #1 guild has been monopolizing Kazzak so I haven't actually had a chance to kill him yet.

I don't think there's quite enough energy for that - I suspect it because a 5s/5r/3e (or so) cycle, and I'm not sure if that's actually better. But again, I haven't thought about it in great detail.