Darien

I really wish the poison requirement wasn't there. I pretty consistently outperform the other rogues in my guild (and other classes, generally), but I can see the looming respec on the horizon once we get into SSC and TK. I still strongly believe that, given a good crit rating, mutilate has the strongest single-target dps despite what the spreadsheets say. Keeping find weakness up for all specials and most damaging finishers while throwing out 2-3 4 point envenoms between slice and dice refreshes puts out a metric crapton of damage when you've got around 40% raid buffed crit.

I only wish I could see what the spec could do with 4/5 Deathmantle.

 

Necdeus

To throw in a little bit of my experience switching from Combat Daggers to DW-Mutilate:

Combat Daggers is in my opinion a Spec, which is the "DPS-Leader" in a very - let me call it experimental environment.
If everything is optimal and pure Tank'n'Nuke then Combat Daggers would be the "winner".

But in latest Instances, beginning from AQ40, Naxxramas etc. there hasn't been that optimal environment.
Bosses tend to be more "dynamic", which needs a lot of movement, turning and so on.
At this point, Combat Swords/Fists had the advantage to be less position-dependent than any Dagger-Build.
Ok, parries, blocks and other nasty things should be prevented by standing behind the boss. But let's take this as a minor matter for the discussion.

So now you have to do a lot ov movement, maybe target-switching and other things, that prevent you from keeping up your perfect 3s/5s/5r or 5s cycle. A lot of attacks may end up in nothing because of the movement thingy.

So what does Mutilate offer against this:
a neat burst dmg
advantages of the dual-wield spec for dps
a lot of combo-points to spend in dps or burst


So after all, poison-immune Bosses hurt DW-Mutilate, but after all the Main-dps comes from white dmg, so you still will be competitive.
Maybe I can tell you the "loss" after testing DW-Mutilate on Hydross, because I specced after killing Hydross this timer.

But remembering Morogrin this week, you can still keep up your dps after getting in a few watery graves and running back. I remember it being hard with my old combat dagger build


So long, these were just my subjective experiences. Feel free to discuss

 

Skar

I would love to get some feedback about poison immune mobs in hyal & black temple .

Would love to do some more arena pvp - and in pvp combat sword is defintely not first choice.

 

• tsigo

The weapons on Kael'thas. Yeah, it just seems like they don't even want end-game (or I guess at this point almost end-game) Rogues to be Mutilate.

 

Necdeus

@Skar:

I will post my experience with Hydross as soon as today's raid will be over. Maybe tomorrow. But I try to give my best
edit: SSC is tomorrow (mix up the days every time I am at work )

@tsigo:
Why not?
Why is the Infinity Blade an anti-Mutilate Dagger?

 

Grimmlokk

The actual weapon NPC's are immune is what he was saying.

So what all fights are poison immune right now in the raid game?

Not if you have equal gear and skill you won't. Unless your idea of competitive is being 20%+ back.

 

Necdeus

After doing Hydross today, I can shortly summarize the viability of the 41/20 Build against poison-immune mobs.

At the end of the fight I stood there, with about 2% less damage than our fistcombat-rogue. (exactly 2,2%)

Hard numbers: Fist-combat: 411436 (9,1%), DW-Mutilate: 309153(6,9%)
After all, I can say, these numbers are "ok" if there aren't too few poison-immune bosses in an instance.
But after all, I would also say, for learning new Bosses, which are immune, maybe it's better to do a respecc, until the boss is down for the first time. Especially, if there's an enrage timer.

We'll see soon, when we do Void Reaver

 

Boevis

That's 2.2% less of the total DPS.

He actually did 411436/309153 = 33% more DPS than you, that's significant and hardly qualifies as "ok" most of the time.

 

◊ Shaker

2.2% less "damage done" in the raid as a whole, but 25% less damage. Now granted, over the whole instance, that's not a whole lot, but on a DPS check fight like Hydross, before you have the fight on farm, it'll probably make some of a difference.

 

Rosvall

We've had karazhan on farm for what seems ages now, but we simply don't have the manpower to even start 25 man instances. So I respecced Mutilate/combat for the bit of pvp viability it gives, and I thought it might make it more interesting to have to adapt a bit faster. Though I have not yet raided with it since I respecced just recently.

From what I've gathered you should go 4cp+ finishers only, since 3cp would cause a waste of relentless procs, and 5cp's would be a waste of finishers. I specced into +10% application of poisons aswell as imp evis, purely because it's quite tricky with envenom in arenas.

Should be goal be to only use finishers at 1-0 seconds left on find weakness? Or is it okey to let it run out in favor for double mutilates and an evis in between?

Well, any help on how to play would be lovely =)

 

Grimmlokk

I'd actually like to hear what kind of attack cycles Mutilate rogues are using as well. I only spec'd it when I was levelling up to 70 so it mostly only got use on farming and 5man instance stuff. Not things where I'd have to worry about a viable cycle to maximize dps.

I know you have to be flexible because of the SF procs etc, just looking for a baseline. Seems like it would be almost better to just wing it and make sure you keep SnD up without wasting CP's than to really look for a steady cycle. Was thinking 2s/4(5)r/4(5)s to start. And to probably spec imp Evisc since the math has shown it better than Envenom due to the way it eats DP. That still hold true or has it been re-mathed to show something different since I read that?

 

Cyn

Basically, always do your finisher when find weakness is at 1 second, you should basically allways have 4/5CPs at this point. When you have less time on SnD than it will take your energy to cap, use SnD to get some slack on find weakness again as it's the only finisher that doesn't benefit from find weakness.

Then it's basically just SnD > Rupture > Evis

 

Rosvall

Even with evis talented? Well must vary per boss armor. Also, letting SnD run out is okayish, if you're waiting for energy?

 

Necdeus

As I told, Poison-Immune Bosses, before your raid killed them once, might be a Problem.
But on other Bosses you can easily compete with Combat-Rogues.

I also didn't watch "optimum"-cycles at the kill.
Normally you should keep SnD AND Find Weakness on you, that's where the difficulty lies.
The Combo-Points would'nt be the Problem, but sooner or later you will run out of energy, if you don't keep an eye at you energy-ticks.
Sometimes you have to wait until your energy is full, before throwing in the next mutilate. That's a slightly difference to the "old" Backstab - SnD spamming.

My cycles mostly are like Cyn told: SnD > Rupture > Evis
You can throw in an Evis, to keep Find Weakness up, whenever it's necessary.

But I didn't really find an "optimum-cycle" at the moment. There are also a lot of Threads on this, with different opinions. I also believe, that it's very encounter-dependent. Mutilate-Builds in my opinion have a far bigger complexity in managing Energy and Combo-Points, than the "Standard-Combat-Builds", so you'll have to find different Cycles for different Bosses.

 

Safid

I always explain 41/20 as 10% less damage than Combat Daggers for 100% less boring.

 

◊ Shaker

That's a really good point, though there ARE people who that 10% is very important to. (I'm swords and love it, but I'd love to try Mut someday :P)

 

Safid

I get SnD up as soon as I have 3+ combo points. Many times my opening move is Shiv. Then I get to 4-5 CP (if I'm lucky both mutilates will be under FW). Then I wait until I'm at nearly full energy and SnD is about to wear off. SnD, mutx2. Wait until the last second of FW and do a finisher -- rupture on bosses, eviscerate on trash, kidney shot if it will save someone's life.

But because you can't predict when you will get the extra combo point, and you quickly run into having to juggle SnD, FW, and Rupture uptimes (my MT is a feral druid so often I get to throw up Expose Armor as well), the build requires you to pay a decent amount of attention to play well. Combine this with having to actually position yourself -- though I know all good rogues do this anyway -- and it keeps me interested in playing. When I'm CD I feel like a backstab bot and it's not as much fun, 10% more DPS or no.

 

Zaniel

While the forum policy here on thread resurrection is unknown to me, I felt it would be more beneficial to bring this topic to the top than begin a new one, especially since many people would oblige me with, "This has been covered a million time," and the like.

So, since nearly two months have passed since this last saw light, a lot more rogues have progressed a lot farther in the endgame instances, and perhaps some of them have experimented with Mutilate. The thread on Hemo's viability gave me hope, so it's time to reach out and see if anyone else has ideas on Mutilate's viability.

Lately my guild has been compiling WWS reports on all our raids (though only the past week), and as a Mutilate rogue I've been on top the entire time. I'm just uncertain as to whether this is because I outgear/outskill/outperform the others or that Mutilate truly is viable.

If you'd like WWS reports they can be provided, but really I'd like to see others' opinions on this issue, as well as their rationale on the NEW endgame, where there appear to be fewer (if any) poison-immune bosses.

Thanks.

 

Cyn

I'm currently still combat mutilate, (now on archimonde/bloodboil), and it seems since season 2 came out, and our gear progressed, the combat rogues have started to really edge ahead on DPS, enough to the fact I'm buying s2 swords next week :<

However, unlike SSC/TK, there doesn't really seem to be any anti mutilate bosses in hyjal/BT, which is one plus. but alas, the pull of combat winning consistently now is just to much too concede.

 

Giske

I dont think Mutilate or Hemo can compete when it comes down to pure DPS. Combat swords is probably the best spec with current gear. Mutilate is however a lot more fun to play if you dont mind dropping a little in DPS, I guess its just up to how much you want to min/max. I couldnt tolerate not putting out the maximum amount of DPS I theoretically could do when I was mutilate/dw spec so I went for combat daggers. Now it looks like I might go combat swords since the sword rogues are really giving me a run for my money :<

 

Pstar

My two cents:
41/20/0 is far and away my favorite spec for PvE. I think it sucks for pvp, actually; I prefer combat maces. My guild is running Kara (not on farm) and I've done it as combat daggers and mutilate and I'm always #1 on the meters, overall and single target, either way. So, take that anecdotal evidence for whatever it's worth.

I have to disagree with the CW that envenom is a poor chocie of finisher in PvE. Raidbuffed with heroic/kara level gear I get envenom finishers that push 4k. I suppose the concern is that you lose the DP7 DPS by wiping off the poison. But with 1.8 speed daggers, S&D, 6 second mutilates, and 30% to apply, you get a new poison app every 2.5 seconds. If your cycle is, say S&D->Rupture->Envenom-> S&D you're losing 12.5 seconds (call it 4 ticks) of 100% DP7 coverage, which, taking a sloppy integral, essentially means you lose 2 ticks of DP7 over a ~30-35 second cycle, and you gain the chance to crit your poisons. I always use my cold blood on 5 point envenoms with my trinkets up.

Also, I'm not always lucky enough to have a bear with mangle in the raid. In order to talent evis you have to give up murder or ruthlessness. Maybe I just misunderstand the reasoning for CW disapproval of envenom, but I love it.

That said, poison immune mobs hurt you pretty bad. Also, nonelite trash pulls favor combat builds with blade flurry. I'll be respeccing combat daggers for the curator fight tomorrow, but I'm not particularly happy about it.

 

Greymist1

What I'd like to see is feedback from rogues who have tried 41/20/0 with 2- and 4-piece tier 5, which is clearly designed for Mutilate.

Tier 5 offers more crit and less hit than Tier 4, and crit is a very important stat for Mutilate. (*) While hit is nice for 41/20/0, it's nowhere near as essential as it is to deep combat builds (you're not losing any Combat Potency procs, and Mutilate gets less of its damage output from autoattack DPS). But what really makes me see T5 as Mutilate gear is the set bonuses. The 2 piece bonus buffs Eviscerate and Envenom, and the 4 piece bonus reduces the average energy cost of finishers. There is no build which uses finishers as often as Mutilate, and 41/20/0 is the only raiding build where it makes sense to use Eviscerate at all (aside from bleed immune mobs).


(*) Mutilate with Seal Fate works better the higher the chance of getting at least one crit during the course of 2 mutilates (so you're guaranteed a 5 point finisher) or even during a single mutilate (if you got a Ruthlessness proc from your previous finisher and you get a crit mutilate, you can immediately do another 4 point finisher). The chance of getting at least one crit in a sequence of attacks can be calculated as follows:

P(at least one crit) = 1 - P(no crits)
P(no crits) = (1 - P(your crit)) ^ N (where N is the number of hits, i.e. 2 for one mutilate and 4 for 2 mutilates)

Running some numbers through:

35% or more raidbuffed crit helps Mutilate a lot - the chances of getting 5 point finishers and short cycles both go up quite nicely.

 

Greymist1

You're not accounting for something very important: If you choose to not use envenom, you are free to use something other than deadly poison on your mainhand weapon because you don't have to rebuild the deadly stack quickly. What you really need to compare is these three options:

WF / DP with evis
IP / DP with evis
DP / DP with envenom

I've arranged these in order of what conventional wisdom says is best. For me, practice has confirmed this. I don't have any parses to show you since it's been a long time since I've used mutilate in raids, but I definitely remember seeing a substantial DPS increase on benchmark fights when I stopped using envenom.

Ah, come on. Combat dagger can be a ton of fun on Curator. If your group's DPS is high enough to handle the sparks without you, and you've got the health pool to tank hateful bolts, you can stay on Curator the whole time. When you don't have to change targets, you can do amazing things. Pop a 5 point SnD with a relatively full energy bar shortly before the first Evocate, hit BF and AR as Evocate begins, and go all out.

Oh, and remember to vanish right as Evocate ends.

 

Zaniel

This is the kind of testimony that has me worried. :/ As such, I've got some questions. Have you noticed a steady decline in relative performance, or has Mutilate always put you behind the Combat rogues in the raids? Are there some bosses where you shine, or is it pretty much always Combat on top? Do you have any WWS parses that we might look at, just to see how things are stacking up?

For my own side, as mentioned before, my guild has gotten into WWS only recently, but here are some of our pulls from this week (including our first Leo kill, so we're really not that progressed relatively).

Leotheras pulls
First half of SSC
Void Reaver (w/Karathress pulls)

So I'm not sure if it's my competition or my guild or what, but I'm remaining optimistic that Mutilate can remain competitive for me. So far it's been quite nice... but I can't help but worry about the future.

Any other results?

 

Utgardsloki

I'm my guild's dagger whore, and have used both combat daggers and mutilate in high end raiding. First of all, 25 man bosses that are immune to poison are:

Hydross + adds
Lady Vashj elementals in phase 2
Void Reaver
Kael weapons
Illidan phase 2 (don't want to spoil it)

Mutilate rogues will almost certainly want to respec combat daggers for learning these fights, (aside from void reaver) especially Illidan phase 2. Mutilate is explicitly worse for these fights, and at the same time combat is better for others.

Bosses on which blade flurry lets you dps two targets at once:

Maulgar
Hydross (spawns)
Leotheras (inner demons)
Karathess (totems)
Solarian (priests)
Kael (weapons)
Trash in Hyjal (sorta tied to bosses)
Akama (lol)

Overall this doesn't include much T6 content, although BF is quite nice for Hyjal clearing. Then, there are fights where having BF and AR as powerful cooldowns is a huge asset, either because the fight is short, benefits from front loaded dps, or involves a "dps race" component. These are:

Maulgar
Karathess (getting the first add down)
Kael (weapons)
Kaz'rogal
Akama
Gurtogg (if you get fel rage)
Essence of souls
Illidan phase 2

That leaves the single target "tank and spank" encounters; how do mutilate and combat match up? From my experience, mutilate and combat are generally on par when using no special buffs, i.e., farm content. However, blade flurry and combat potency scale extremely well with haste, so on cutting edge content where you combine heroism, drums of battle, haste potions, haste gear, and a haste trinket with blade flurry, combat pulls ahead by a good margin. Running these buffs (with abacus instead of DST haste, no haste gear) gives my offhand a 0.36 delay, that's ~8 energy per second from CP for ~15 seconds, which is nearly as good as another AR on top of already ludicrous white damage.

To sum up, mutilate is fine for day to day raiding, but if you're serious about raid progression combat is superior (especially you have haste gear/trinkets and a shaman for hero). What if you're serious about raiding, don't like respeccing, but don't want to be useless outside of raids? Then it's time to pick up some swords or maces.

Edit: small typo

Yar.