Last 2 resets I was at Moroes I didn't get hit by rupture at all so I'm unable to tell you more. Nightmare Pollen ( http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=28721 ) was the first thing where I noticed this odd behaviour.

This shouldn't be hard to test in duel with another rogue doing Garrote or Rupture on you. I don't have WoW on this computer at this moment but I'll try it later when I get back online.

Was Moroes dead after you checked the log? When a mob dies and you still suffer damage from one of the mob's spells or dots my combat log (SCL) doesn't show the caster anymore.

For example:

"[200] Garrote [You] 1000" instead of "[Moroes] Garrote [You] 1000".

And no, I don't know why it says [200] there instead of [Unknown]. >_>

Can you always count on a feral druid in your raid for Mangle to boost your Rupture? If you can, I think your intuition is spot on-- anything will be better than improved eviscerate in that situation (rupture immune bosses excepted, of course, but that's not most of them).

Without a feral druid, improved eviscerate looks better because while it's not always the best move, it at least provides a consistent benefit. An eviscerate is never wasted damage the way a rupture at 5% or slice and dice on the last trash monster would be.

It's true that ruptures in the last 5% are wasted... but that's sort of an edge case. What's far more important is the sustained rotation. Regardless of what you're using for the majority of the fight, you obviously want to drop an eviscerate (or, depending on talent spec, envenom) as your last finisher of the fight. Earlier in the fight, though, you can use all your finishers with impunity, and, in general, rupture tends to be superior to eviscerate with or without a feral druid on hand.

The other side of this is that imp evis just doesn't add that much sustained dps in the first place. Assume for the moment that you're using Evis as your main non-SnD finisher. As a combat swords rogue you'll be dropping an evis once every 30 sec or so (assuming a rotation of 5s/5e). Even if you have 3000 AP (which is about where I top out with full raid boffs) and a 30% crit rate, your average evis is going to land for about 1700 damage, so imp Evis is going to add at *most* 255 damage.

Compare to, say, the same 3 points in improved poisons. Lets assume that you're going to have WF MH and thus poison only on your OH. Well, a typical combat rogue with SnD + some other assorted haste effects and a fast OH is going to be attacking about once a second with the OH weapon, and thus in the same 30 seconds are going to be launching about 30 attacks. With precision and a reasonable amount of hit rating, at least 25 of those will be hitting, meaning that the extra 6% chance to apply poisons is going to add 1.5 poison procs or so, and 1.5 poison procs with either instant or deadly poison is at least 255 damage.

The conclusion here? On any mob not poison immune, Imp Poisons adds at least as much damage as Imp Evis, even if you're using Evis as your main finisher. Hence, from a sustained raid dps perspective, Imp Evis is only the superior talent for bosses that are immune to *both* poisons and bleeds, which are pretty rare on the whole. Now, this is not to say that Imp Evis doesn't have it's uses in pvp and grinding and whatever... but from a raid dps perspective, imp poisons is just plain better. In my opinion, the optimal raid dps swords build is 20/41: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=f0eboxLZMIVobVzxMGot

Because I misclicked when making that profile. 4/5 Imp Poisons is correct. I'll edit the post.

There are a fair number of snares that come up in heroics and raids. Aran's slow before arcane explosion, for instance. It also breaks stuff like mind flays, which I find pretty useful. In pre-BC raiding, I found it quite useful on Anub'rekhan, Heigan, and C'thun, among other places. I just like it as a general utility talent - helps you get back in fights faster, and while you're snared you're not dpsing.

As for why 2/2 imp sprint and 1/2 endurance: Because 1/2 imp sprint is far less useful. A 100% snare break strikes me as vastly more useful than a 50% snare break.

Admittedly, both the points in imp sprint and endurance are somewhat subject to your personal preferences. There aren't any dps talents to be taking, so it's sort of "pick your favorite utility talent" time. For me, it's imp sprint and endurance. If you have your own preference, by all means, go for it. Filler is filler.

It is one roll as best I understand it, so from a mitigation perspective they're equal. Since Parry resets your swing timer, it has some chance of giving a dps boost so is slightly better. However, my philosophy is that in raids, if anything is targeting you, you should be blowing a cool to fix this - whether it be evasion or CoS to mitigate it, or vanish to dump aggro. So I focus on improving my cooldowns rather than my passive defenses, as that's what's gonna keep you alive in raids. Hence, Imp Sprint and Endurance.

Aldriana,

So I assume you calculate the dps gain of +8% to poison application (Improved Poisons) > +16% poison damage (Vile Poisons)?

Have you played around with Nerves of Steel? I wonder, compared to Improved Sprint and Endurance, how effect it is in end game raid boss encounters. That is to say, does it have much utility, ie. it will in fact aid in resisting that boss fear or stun and thus help you maintain dps better.

Well, Deadly Poison has a proc rate of 30%, so increasing that to 38% is a 26.7% increase in poison damage dealt. IP is base 20%, so 4/5 Imp Poisons is a 40% damage boost - both of which are significantly larger than the 16% from vile. If Envenom were worth using, it'd be closer, but as it's not....

As for Nerves of Steel - I've debated it, but there really aren't enough mobs that stun/fear to make it seem worthwhile to me. I think I get more use out of Imp Sprint/Endurance, but, again, whatever works for you. I mean, yeah, if it kicks in it's a huge dps boost (assuming the tank also avoids getting feared), but with the limited number of mobs that fear and the fact that you're still gonna get feared 90% of the time... ::shrug::

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

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