They are also all in the spreadsheets linked in the first post.

Add the T4 shoulders to that to complicate it further. What do you do when the T5 shoulders drop, and you can afford the badge gloves, and you can afford the S3 head? Do you only replace one of the three? Is it worth disregarding the whole set bonus? When you switch out the last two T4, you will probably get rid of both.

Your guiild is regularly clearing ZA with more than one rogue or feral druid in the raid? Congrats on that. If yes, then do what you want. If no, then loot it over the void crystallization that will ensue.

I have no idea what meta you are running but it's inferior to RED. This has been proved over and again. It must not be very good given your apparent willingness to replace it with a no-meta-gem helm. So replace it with the RED and then do whatever you want with the hypothetical Grimgrin since it'll be slightly less good than the Tier 4 helm regardless.

If you want more stats at the expense of maximized dps then I'd argue this thread is not really what you're looking for. You can already evaluate stats quite well on your own, I'm sure.

I'm just using the 20ap minor run speed meta.. never bothered to replace it. Not to mention I always used 4ag/4hit gems to boost my hit instead of ap.

Wow it just occurred to me that I can't re-socket a meta slot.. crap

So it looks like I should be going for the Grimgrin..

dang..

Also, it's usually just 1 rogue, 1 druid (feral) as far as leather dps.

Yes you can, same as any other socket.

The PTR patch notes for 2.3.2 have been amended to indicate that Hemo's weapon damage component is being reduced from 125% to 110%, but that the debuff damage has been increased yet again.

As soon as we can get confirmation of these changes on the PTR (hopefully with a screenshot), I'll see about getting some new and improved DPS estimates for Hemo builds relative to combat.

And again... If the druid is a dpser and has an inferior helm give him the Grimgrin. You want your T4 anyway with a diamond upgrade. It's better. Two piece T4 is nice. And the RED has a scaling bonus.

If you kill Zul'jin enough you'll have another chance at the Grimgrin and you can take one too. But if you actually want to maximize your personal DPS, you already have the tool at your disposal.

As for 4 hit / 4 agi gems, those are quite often the gem of choice for maximizing DPS as well at your gear level.

Regarding the Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality, I've noticed that (atleast) the DPS spreadsheet seems to undervalue this trinket substantially, the Gear spreadsheet seems to have it modeled more accurately. Most people assume this trinket is subpar to Madness of the Betrayer/Warp-Spring Coil. I was messing with the math of its uptime based on energy regen/cycles, and came to the conclusion that, given a 3s/5r cycle, using this trinket over Warp-Spring Coil or Madness of the Betrayer, and modifying your cycle to 5s/5r actually comes out a bit higher on dps than the "standard" 3s/5r cycle, due to having an average uptime of about 17 seconds per cycle as compared to an average uptime of about 13 seconds per cycle, averaging approx a 116 average crit rating from the trinket, as opposed to approx 90-95 average crit rating on a 3s/5r cycle.

What is the general consensus on this trinket?

Well, my take on it is as follows:

With a typical sword cycle, you should be able to maintain ~70% uptime on this trinket. Additionally, a little clever energy management will allow you to make virtually all of your Sinister Strikes during periods of trinket uptime. In this case, the damage boost for a combat sword build is comparable to Madness of the Betrayer, a bit below Dragonspine Trophy, and ahead of everything else (with one minor exception, to be discussed shortly).

As a Hemo rogue, your uptime will be a bit lower, putting it a bit behind Madness of the Betrayer.

As a dagger rogue, it tends not to be very good, as it's hard to maintain uptime with such slow Combo Point generation.

As a Mutilate rogue, I'm told it's good, but I don't have any numbers to back that up.

Hence, if you are a sword or hemo rogue, you probably end up using it. Why? Because you need two trinkets, and you more than likely have Dragonspine Trophy and Ashtongue long before you get a Madness of the Betrayer; since the difference between it and Madness is relatively small, it is probably not worth spending the DKP to get Madness (or, if you guild doesn't use DKP: it would be somewhat poor form of you to take it when it's a trivial upgrade over a hunter or fury warrior who would get more use of it). Hence, most non-dagger rogues will probably use this for a significant period of time.

As a dagger rogue, on the other hand, you probably do want to seek out other options, as it's pretty mediocre.

So, in brief: it may not be the best trinket in town, but it's good enough that most rogues specced other than combat daggers will find it worth using for a while, particularly since there's only one trinket better than it that's easier to obtain... with the aforementioned slight exception.

That slight exception is that WSC is actually the 2nd best trinket for rogues with certain combinations of gear; in this case, you may not end up using it. To see if your gear/spec has dropped you in this bucket, consult your local spreadsheet.

As mutilate the trinket is insane, doing a 4CP+ finisher every 10 seconds. As any optimal mutilate cycles uses due to Find Weakness anyway, means the synergy between Mutilate spamming finishers and find weakness, this trinket would have at least 80% uptime, usually more, and every proc has find weakness at the same time. might even say it's better than DST for mutilate.

I agree that it looks to be a valuable Mutilate trinket (tailor-made, in fact -- duration of 10s is perfect), but I don't think Mutilate is really using a drastically greater amount of finishers per minute, is it? 3s/5r has an S&D lasting what, 20 seconds? That means 3 full cycles a minute, or 6 finishers a minute. I'd ballpark my Muti finishers per minute at 8, and I don't follow the "4+" rule except on Ruptures.

Well, shoot, this isn't hard to figure out:

If you're doing 4+ cycles, it's 1 Mutilate then finisher only if you both a) Ruthlessness procs and b) Seal Fate procs. Hence, the expected number of Mutilates per finisher is 2-p(ruthless)*p(SF). p(ruthlessness) = 60%, and p(SF) = 1-(1-p(crit))^2. Assuming you have, say, a 40% crit rate, that means p(SF) = 1-(1-.4)^2 = 64%; hence, the average number of Mutilates per finisher is about 2-.6*.64 = 1.616.

Now, operating under the assumption that Relentless Strikes always procs (reasonable for 4+ point finishers) and that finishers thus cost no net energy (not precisely true, but will do for an upper bound), one basically gets 10 Mutilates per minute (as you have no energy regen outside of natural regen and Relentless Strikes). Hence, one gets approximately 10/1.616 = 6 finishers per minute, on average. This is a little higher than 3s5r which weighs in about 5.5 finishers per minute, but it's definitely pretty close.

Now, throwing in 4/5 T5 would generate a few extra finishers here and there, so I can definitely see getting up to 7 or 8 finishers per minute, but if you'll pardon me for saying so, there's no way to get anywhere close to 12 per minute; to do so you'd need to have more finishers than Mutilates, which seems.... unlikely.

Care to give an example or two of what sort of combination you're talking about?

Click on my profile and hope to catch me in full pve gear. I use to toggle between MotB, WSC and my currently equipped Ashtongue Talisman by about 5-10 EAP in Aldriana's spreadsheet.

Basically its a situation of passive ArP on gear and AP past the 2000 mark unbuffed i'd guess.

I haven't actually figured out for sure whether it's a matter of high armor penetration or just high gear level, but, suffice it to say: it tends to show up as you move into late-BT type gear. The fundamental reason is that Armor Penetration tends to scale faster than other stats as gear improves (basically because it scales with all other stats, whereas, for instance, crit does not scale with crit, hit, or Expertise at all). For instance, compare WSC to Madness; you're basically trading AP for Armor Penetration. Hence, as AP increases (which doesn't increase the value of AP at all, but does increase the value of Armor Penetration), or as Armor Penetration increases (which increases the value of itself faster than it increases any other stat), it's easy to see that WSC will become relatively stronger in comparison to Madness.

With regards WSC vs Ashtongue, it's a bit more subtle, but, suffice it to say, it still does eventually happen, owing to the fact that WSC scales faster with Armor Penetration, Crit, Hit, and Expertise.

In terms of a specific example: I'll be happy to piece one together once I get the spreadsheet updated for 2.3; but as my working copy of the spreadsheet is sort of in an intermediate state right now, I can't really get good numbers out of it to demonstrate the effect in question.

Well you will see the toggling quite well in this sheet: Free file hosting by Savefile.com

on a sidenote: Spineserver got nerfed... WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Spinesever nerfed on PTR

What spec are you? If you are combat sword spec, according to the equivalency values in the first post you just spent 75 badges on a direct sidegrade. 52x2.28 ~= (13x2)+28 +(30x2.15).

I am combat fist/sword.. omg.....!! 75 badges down the drain!!

Using the numbers from the first post to get a quick value (regardless of other gear), these these are your numbers (assuming the fist/sword numbers from the first post)
Skulker's Greaves 238.8 (246.8)
Shallow-Grave Trousers 244.9 (255.1)

To me it seems like an upgrade. Not a huge one, but definetly better. Give the spreadsheet a try too, but I think that it will still come out ahead.

These are my numbers (combat daggers):
Skulker's Greaves 237.0 (245.2)
Shallow-Grave Trousers 245.6 (256.3)

A bigger upgrade for me, but it is still an upgrade for you.

Something i noticed we are missing while reading another thread, ratings. Shouldn't we have the ratings and other basic information that is useful, like how much AGI equals 1 crit?

Sucks that Spinesever got nerfed, but who didn't see it coming. I was just hoping it wasn't so soon, and I might have picked one up...ah well.

Shallow grave are better, don't worry, you'll probably not notice too much dps increase though, that little aep, but they are still better. I just got the [Shady Dealer's Pantaloons] and looking at the spreadsheet, its not an upgrade till I equip them, then its only like 10-15 aep, but, still an upgrade...while losing 2.54% hit.. :\ Gotta love it.

I believe the chart you're looking for is in the very first post in this thread.