With a combat dagger spec, doesn't it make sense to at least spec improved sinister strike? For the fights that are hard position wise, like Aran. Now that we have the sinister strike bonus from Agression anyway, might as well use the "spare" points in in imp ss.

I fail to see why you would *ever* use Sinister Strike with daggers in a group environment.

The only reason you might choose to spec Imp SS is to throw a few swords/maces/fists on for farming, but in that event I don't understand why you wouldn't be swords/maces/fists anyways?

Well, that is what I'm asking. There are quite a lot of fights that can be difficult positionwise. Aran is probably the best example, but in general, some fights where the tanks move around a bit, like Gruul, sinister strike can help you not waste energy if you can't get around in time. In those cases it is better to use sinister strike than let the energy be wasted, or just use non-improve sinsiter strike. Those talent points are "spare" anyway, it doesn't matter that much where I put them. But if you still disagree, I would like to hear the arguments, which is why I asked in the first place.

The World of Warcraft Armory

This is my current spec.

Well if you're actively doing Karazhan, Imp. SS is a lot more handier than extra 2% dodge on, for example, Aran, Curator and chains of Illhoof. I did that myself and it was certainly worth it.

Alternately, if you're doing 10 mans, there's a good chance you aren't getting windfury, in which case, instant poison on offhand, and use Shiv - if you have a 1.3 offhand as Daggers, thats a decidedly cheap combo point for probably similar damage to what you'd get out of a Sinister Strike with a dagger.

The reason why one might SS as daggers is the aforementioned rule #1 of rogue DPS: Never let your energy cap out. It's better to spend your energy inefficiently (i.e., by SSing) than to let it cap out and waste the energy. Hence, when there arises a time where you can't get a BS off for whatever reason (and such situations do arise), SSing does make sense.

RED refers to [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] as indicated at the top of the post.

The answer to your question is almost certainly no. If your procs happen to coincide with your Eviscerates every single time, you may obtain greater long-run performance, but since that's not likely to happen, it's in your best interest to stick with Rupture.

Rupture+Mangle blows Eviscerate out of the water, the AP scaling of a Rupture with Mangle is above even that of an Eviscerate crit.

I suppose I could have phrased it this way (if this is any clearer):

When the debuff from the Warpspring coil (or Executioner) is up, and you have t5 2set bonus, would Eviscerate be worthwhile to use/add into your normal combat rotation?

The basic premise is, at what level of armor ignore (either proc based or ambient) and other bonuses from gear, would Eviscerate win out over Rupture?

So, the issue with answering that question is that it depends on your crit and AP as well as your armor penetration; however, for purposes of estimation; hence it's hard to come up with a hard and fast rule. For instance, if your opponent has no armor whatsoever, fully talented + set bonused Eviscerate will tend to be more energy efficient than totally unbuffed Mangle. However, in practice, you rarely reduce an opponent all the way down to zero, which complicates the question.

Basically, to get an intelligent answer, one must hold 2 of the 3 variables constant and find the breakpoint for the third. So, for instance, the question "if I have 3000 AP and 40% crit, at what armor level does Eviscerate pass Rupture" can be answered - and the answer is, assuming fully talented + set bonused Evis and no Mangle or Serrated Blades, Rupture will do more damage per energy against a target that has 2289 or more armor, and Eviscerate will do more against a target that has less than that. Which tells us that *if* you have fully optomized Eviscerate and no Mangle or Serrated Blades, it will probably make sense at times to use Eviscerate.

If, on the other hand, you *do* have Mangle, than Rupture basically always wins. Even against a target with no armor whatsoever and a 40% crit rate, it only takes 1700 AP for Rupture to match the damage output of Eviscerate - trivial for any raid-buffed rogue. And even at 50% crit rate, Rupture catches up at 2850 AP, which is fairly common. So if Mangle is up, Rupture is pretty much always better.

Of course, this all assumes that damage per energy is the correct way of analyzing the situation. Which, upon contemplation, it probably isn't. But it's still probably a reasonably approximation of what's going on.

I was using Merciless Shanker/Tracker's before yesterday (upgraded to Shanker/Mutilator).
Seeing how we almost always have a shaman in the melee group (and a warrior) we get WF by default.
Of course if I could I'd prefer a druid+GoA in the group. It's just that generally you get Windfury.

WF was changed to not proc anymore from instant specials attacks, but only from normal hits AND from special "on next swing" (like Heroic strike/Cleave). A good extimation on wether is better to have WF vs GoA for a rogue is evaluating your white Vs yellow damage ratio: as long as your white damage is >> yellow (generally true for every combat build) WF wins; with a mutilate spec, you are most likely to see higher amounts of your damage coming from specials, thus benefitting less from WF procs (procs that will also be smaller, due to the fast nature of your daggers). Add to this that Seal Fate will gain more from GoA and you see which totems fits you better

Problem is that all the other melee players in your group (unless its full of kittyes) will gain extremely more from WF than GoA, so it isnt usually worth the change.

And, again, I want to point out that instead of trying to argue windfury vs. grace of air totems, you should talk to your friendly neighborhood enhancement shaman about using both. Twisting works just fine. I quote a post from a shaman from earlier in this thread when we were discussing this:

This will be removed at some point in the future, and honestly, there's no insight to be gained here - WF and GoA is better than WF or GoA, no surprise there.

When is "at some point?" No change is mentioned in the tentative 2.3 patch notes yet the common response to totem twisting is always "it's not worth talking about because it will be fixed soon." The last time I suggested Vulajin include this topic in his front page post was mid-October and I was given the same response. Hemorrhage, on the other hand, has seen a flurry of changes recently and is kept rather up-to-date. The "insight" of my post is that using both totems is possible and will likely remain possible for quite some time. I don't understand why it is ignored and dismissed.

Well, the question being asked is "which is better, WF or GoA". Saying "both" is not a useful answer - it's obviously better, but if the shaman in question considered "both" to be a valid option, he wouldn't even be asking. The fact that he's asking implies he feels he can only do one or the other, meaning that answering "both" is not helpful.

For instance, in my guild, totems are usually coming from resto shamans that have better things to do with their time/mana - like, for instance, heal. So the question of "which, by itself, is better, WF or GoA" is highly relevant.

Thus: it's not so much that it's ignored or dismissed as that it is not always applicable and, in those cases where it is applicable, it is so obvious that people don't ask.

I understand your point and I do not mean to trivialize Windfury versus Grace of Air theorycrafting. The relative importance of these totems to each other should be understood. However, the answer of "both" is not as obvious as you think; I'm not convinced that a majority of players understand this to be the default answer to the totem question. There are far more obvious instructions and advice given by the senior, well-respected posters here that I feel including the possibility of twisting is justified.

I've started to fall in love with Mutilate again but have few questions.

- What should I do when I end up with 3CP? Should I Mutilate once to archive 5CP (while risking wasting 1CP and losing Find Weakness), or should I finish with 3CP (while having Find Weakness still up). Should I make thumb rule that if I'm going to refresh SnD and ended up 3CP, its safe to Mutilate once for 5CP because Find Weakness doesn't affect SnD. And if I'm left with 3CP and going to refresh my Rupture, it's better to finish with 3CP and have that Rupture done within Find Weakness effect?

- Talent spec. Is 43/0/18 spec viable for PvE at all, or is 41/20/0 only viable spec? It is fairly easy to keep SnD and Rupture up even without Improved SnD, so only thing Imp. SnD mostly adds is few Eviscerates/Envenoms now and then to cycle? Does Precision + DWSpec really outweight Opportunity + Serrated Blades by far? Yes, I've tried to measure this with spreadsheet but I really don't think it is accurate at all with mutilate, for example taking Imp. SnD lowers damage output.

- Even that spreadsheet shows [Tracker's Blade] better than [Vengeful Gladiator's Mutilator], in reality it goes other way around, right? Other thing is how does [Shard of Azzinoth] and [Vengeful Gladiator's Shanker] compare to each other? I presume Illidan dagger is slightly better?

If anyone have more experience from Mutilate, feel free to give tips overall.

1. Most people who use Mutilate tend to run 4+ cycles. The deal with FW, as you could have found out in the first post, is you want to have almost every finishing move/Mutilate within FW uptime. To do so you'll want to wait to launch your "next" finisher until you either a. Have full Energy (Assuming no 4pc T5 here), or b. FW is about to run out (0 Seconds left), thereby allowing you to Mutilate back up to 4+ combo points, wait, then launch your next finisher, repeating the process while keeping FW up 100% of the time. Sometimes you might get incredibly unlucky strings of non-crits, but this is pretty rare and Cold Blood helps nicely in those situations to allow you to continue this 'cycle'.

2. 41/20/0 outdamages 4x/0/x or pretty much any other conceivable Mutilate spec.

3. I could see [Tracker's Blade] being better than [Vengeful Gladiator's Mutilator] just because the stats are better. Also I believe if you had read the first post like you should have you would have found OH speed makes little difference:

Please forgive my n00b question, I have looked around in this forum and couldnt find a clear answer to what I want to know.
It is a basic question really:

For a sword spec combat rogue, the main hand needs to be a slow SWORD that hits hard. That is clear.

Now, the off hand, does it NEED to be a sword also (to take advantage of the sword specialization), or can it be anything else (dagger, or mace, or fist weapon) as long as it is fast? The fastest OH weapons i found until now (I am level 49 atm) are daggers (Julie's Dagger is 1.30 speed).

Thank you

I asked about the 3CP dilemma earlier in the thread and now, based on some personal experiments, I'd be willing to say going for the 5CP is more beneficial. Simplified, you're sacrificing a potential SF proc (~40-60% chance, depending on gear level) in order to get a guaranteed Relentless proc (+40% chance compared to 3CP). Yes, the extra Mutilate won't probably fit into your current FW timer, but after the finisher your next two will. It might be arguable if it's worthwhile to do so when you're trying to refresh rupture (obviously SnD gains nothing from FW), but I prefer the steadier "cycles" the increased Relentless procs give either way, especially when your crit chance isn't exactly sky-high.

And about gemming your Mutilate gear, while I'm pretty sure [Delicate Living Ruby] is the best choice for a red slot, the relation of crit and hit for yellow slots remains hazy. I was using [Glinting Noble Topaz] with what I considered fairly good results (beat [Wicked Noble Topaz] by a longshot at least), but in very mobile fights I would've wished for a better crit chance since, e.g. after Lurker re-emerges, getting back to the point where you have both SnD and Rupture running smoothly could take rather long (taken, my gear was mostly from G'eras and Karazhan). Could this be solved by using a certain cycle while re-engaging and/or is there simply a better way of gemming for Mutilate in general?

I used a dagger off-hand as swords for a week while I was waiting for points for my S2 off-hand, and the results were still pretty decent. But considering that an off-hand sword spec proc is probably the strongest thing about sword spec, your daggers would have to be much better than any other available swords.

The slow/fast offhand priority only really comes into play when you have combat potency where, as far as i can tell from throwing different weapons into the spreadsheet, a fast, non-sword offhand will outdps a slow sword offhand. For levelling i wouldnt really worry too much about gearing perfectly for combat potency/ weapon specs as in short fights the difference can be quite minimal i imagine. Just go with the best weapons you find while levelling and then look at gearing properly once your 70