I am having an argument about this with the other combat dagger rogue in my guild. She has 2/3 Ruthlessness and thinks the T4 4 piece bonus is great for daggers because we lack combo points. I have Murder instead and am thinking of not striving for the 4 piece bonus but instead go for some gear I can probably get with less dkp and that has more crit. My logic is that with the very small amount of finishers we get, the combo point gain from Ruthlessness and the 4 piece bonus is not going to be very significant. But she is more experienced than me, so I hesitate. Any insights about this would be appreciated!

I was using murder for a long time. Those 2 points in assass to get to the 3rd tier for relentless and lethality are kind of a tough call. Murder is superior against the targets it affects, but ruthlessness is obviously better when your target isn't covered by murder.

Without 2 pc T4, ruthlessness gives you the slack you need to work in ruptures reliably using 3s/5s/5r as your cycle. It may not have quite as much impact on your cycles if you already have the 2 pc T4 bonus, since the extra seconds on SnD allow you to generate an additional CP without ruthlessness. The main difference is that a ruthless proc gives you the CP sooner, so you actually complete your cycle faster, meaning (slightly) more rupture uptime. 2 pc T4 (and no ruthless) allows you to complete your cycle more reliably, but slower.

I finally remembered to go respec out of 10 yard sap yesterday, and this time I picked up ruthlessness instead of murder. I haven't had a chance to try it out in conjunction with 2 pc T4 in a raid, so I'll try to remember to come back and tell you how it goes.

I try to settle into a cycle, but sometimes find myself in a position where I have sufficient SnD time to rupture sooner, going from 3s/5s/5r to 5s/5r briefly (e.g. I might go 3s, 5s, 5r (wow look at all this time left on SnD!) 5s, 5r (oh not way ahead anymore), 3s, etc.). Since combat potency is a proc, energy regen isn't always uniform. I think it's important to adapt on the fly and take advantage of such opportunities. That said, the 4 pc T4 bonus will likely provide you with more of these opportunities to rupture early, but it's not something to plan for or depend on, just take advantage when you see it.

So, is the bonus good? Yes, it will allow you to rupture more often as combat daggers, albeit not a *lot* more often. Is it better than going for other gear in some of those slots? That depends on the other items and whether they are superior to T4 stat-wise. If you have access to some really good items (e.g. Skulker's Greaves, Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless, Bloodsea Brigand's Vest, Malefic Mask of the Shadows, T5 gloves), you will probably come out ahead without the bonus.

My advice: Spec ruthless and see how you like it. Try to get the T4 pieces that are strong in their slot and won't get replaced quickly, which, depending on your level of progression is probably anything that *isn't shoulders*, but most notably gloves (replaced at leotheras) and helm (replaced at Vashj if you just gotta have a Thundering Skyfire Diamond, there are other good helms if you don't want the meta).

EDIT: It would probably also be a good idea to try plugging the T4 pieces and the nonset gear you'd be going for into the Rogue DPS Spreadsheet and or the Rogue Gear Spreadsheet (although the gear sheet does not model daggers without ruthlessness)

This is exactly how I feel about the 2pc/ruthlessness. I was using the T4 gloves and T4 helm (mainly for the haste meta), which allowed me to have the 2pc bonus. I was finding that my cycles has a lot of slack in them, which definitely isn't a bad thing. However, I wanted to test out murder over ruthlessness and see if I the 2pc would allow enough slack to keep my cycles up and get the extra dmg from murder. It worked fine, but the day after I spec'd this way for testing I picked up the t5 gloves lol. Right now I'm finding my cycles extremely tight, yet manageable. This week when I spec for pvp and spec back I will be picking ruthlessness back up. So in short, with 2pc and Ruthlessness I had a lot of slack and could afford to lose one or the other, but not both.

This is exactly how I itemized/planned my itemization. You can get to my armor on the left and you can see the remnants of this. Obviously I've moved on to the t5 gloves as I mentioned previously. I loved the 2pc when I had it (considering gemming out a t4 bp to gold me over for BSB) and also enjoyed being able to utilize meta gems.

Sorry if I didn't really add much to what was already said. I mainly wanted to reiterate what Trazhenko said, because I felt what he said was right on with my experiences.