Like many others out there, I've become increasingly disappointed by the viability of dagger builds for Rogues. On top of having the positioning burden in solo play or PvP, the sustained damage of these builds is inferior to Combat Sword or Hemorrhage builds when comparing equal levels of gear. On top of that, Mutilate adds two more requirements: that the target be poisoned, and that you use a dagger offhand. I think that it is reasonable to assert that dagger based builds should have equal or slightly greater damage output to non-positional builds, to offset its additional requirements. This post is intended as a discussion on what exactly would need to change in order to make at least 1 raid viable Mutilate and Backstab build.

Mutilate
Two major issues Mutilate faces are poison-immune mobs, and Deadly Poison (our best damage poison) breaking Gouge, which is one of two ways we have to get behind a mob while in solo combat. Additional problems are the highly expensive Improved Poisons and Vile Poisons talents, and the Deadened Nerves talent, which simply does not make sense given the rest of the Assassination tree. I propose the following changes:
1) Change Improved Poisons to "Increases your chance to apply poisons by 3/6/9%."
2) Change Vile Poisons to "Increases the damage dealt by your poisons and Envenom by 6/12/18% and gives your poisons an additional 12/24/36% chance to resist dispel effects."
3) Add a new talent "Improved Deadly Poison" to tier 4 - "Your Deadly Poison has a 50/100% chance not to break Gouge or Blind."
4) Change Master Poisoner to "Gives your poisons a 50/100% chance to be effective against targets normally immune to poison and reduces the chance your poisons will be resisted by 5/10%." This talent is meant to let the Rogue poison targets such as Elementals, Mechanicals, and Stone-form Dwarves, but not something immune to all effects (Pally bubbles, etc.).
5) Replace Deadened Nerves with "Deftness" - "Your critical strikes of special abilities restore 1/2/3/4/5 energy."
Comments: The changes to the two existing tier 4 talents slightly decrease their individual power, but the cheaper cost allows for a slight net gain.

Backstab
The biggest issue "raid Backstab" builds face is having to spread talents across to tops of 3 trees, just to attain a minimal level of effectiveness. This removes the availability of other low-mid tier Assassination talents that Hemorrhage or Combat Swords builds get. Some people have proposed simply moving Opportunity to Assassination. I feel that doesn't make sense for three reasons. First, it would leave Subtlety with only 1 talent in tier 1. Second, Ambush and Garrote are effected by Opportunity, which typically fall under the "jurisdiction" of Subtlety. Third, it would excessively buff Combat Mutilate's damage. Instead, I propose:
1) Change Improved Backstab to "Increases the critical strike chance of your Backstab by 10/20/30% and its damage by 8/16/24%."
2) Remove Backstab from the abilities effected by Opportunity.
Comments: This frees up 5 talent points for Combat Backstab builds, most likely to be spent in talents normally available to Swords or Hemo builds. It also slightly buffs Backstab's damage, to offset its positioning requirement and very, very low combo point generation.

I'd like to hear opinions on these changes. Keep in mind the goal is to simply bring dagger builds up to par with sword builds, and reduce some of the excessively "un-fun" elements that currently exist for dagger builds in particular. Also, regrettably, I haven't actually run the numbers on how much damage would change with some of these, but I tried to make very small changes with respect to damage. If a math or modeling wiz like Aldriana wants to figure out whether any of these are excessive, that would be great. Please try to keep this reasonable and whining free.

There's a very simple solution to the poison immune problem: Just add "Disrupting Poison" or something somesuch that only works on elemental/mechanical targets and applies a minor stacking debuff. The main effect is, of course, to allow Mutilate.

Opportunity has to go, period. I'm really not sure what it's supposed to prevent with it's ungainly placement in Subt. Limiting Combat Daggers makes absolutely no sense since other Combat specs don't share a similar restriction, and Muti . . . well, I'd definitely shed no tears if Muti became more viable than combat with Oppo/DW spec, it's only about three times as fun to play with.

I'm Mutilate because it's the best spec for my 3s team. You're completely right - without the gear advantage it would be pointless. I think that one of the major initiatives of patch 2.1 and 2.3 has been to fix the "bad" talents in everyone's tree and promote more intra-tree diversity. So there do need to be changes.

It puts it on par with non-sword specs, but it's still not as good as sword or 11/2x/2-3x hemo in 2.3. Viability will probably be a reduced backstab cost or increased CP generation somehow, and I'm really not sure how you fit those characteristics into the current talent tree.

Agreed, which is why I'm confused why Mutilate and Combat daggers did not receive 'more'. I considered them in a worse overall position to combat/hemo. However the idea mutilate might receive similar treatment as hemo is exciting; I would ~love~ to raid dps with mutilate, and only don't due to its short comings with extended dps/scaling.

A friend of mine suggested that maybe Mutilate just say "Damage increased by 50% when daggers are poisoned." That would sure seem to fix the problem, and if you're going up against poison-immune mobs, you can save cash and just put a Rank 1 Crippling poison on. It's a win/win.

I love the sugggestion to remove Backstab from the list of Opportunity skills. Seeing as you can do it out of Stealth, there isn't much "Opportune" about it.

If they did that, they might as well just increase mutilate's damage by 50% base and call it a day. I like the idea of master poisoner making poisons work on poison immune mobs, that fits the theme of the talent, as well.

I would think the only way to make backstab better is to decrease the energy cost. Mabey make imp.BS also decrease it's energy by 10-15? This would certainly fix the raiding aspect of it I think. For PvP some sort of resilience bebuff talent when using daggers would be nice. I know for me, it's not so much the 60 energy or position, it's the fact that resilience messed up daggers altogether as they are a 100% crit reliance weapon/spec ( save Mut ).

As a dagger-loving combat rogue (I know, it's not reasonable) I would really like to be on par with swords. But at least the aggression change grants a small improvement and reduces the difference. But I'm slightly worried as this change stays undocumented in the official patchnotes.

Trying out different builds in the spreadsheet, I found that at my equipment level (just past Kara/Gruul) combat daggers is still better than other dagger builds. And according to the DPS-spreadsheet, it seems to me, the changes to dirty deeds could lead to a revival of the 13/41/7 build, which might grant a slight improvement in overall DPS depending on equipment.

Thinking about possible future changes, imp. sinister strikes could be a good place for improving daggers, as it is one of those non-efficient talents which can be found in quite a lot of combat dagger builds. Rename it "efficient strikes (or else)" and just give the same energy reduction (3/5) to backstab as sinister strike gets right now. Daggers probably would not become overpowered, because we would gain less additional backstabs than other combat builds get "free" sinister strikes.

Fix sword spec offhand procs give offhand attacks.

Let all mobs be afflicted by deadly poison, but resist the damage ticks if they are immune.

Add 1/2/3 extra seconds to Imp SnD, and/or 1%/2%/3% if need be(t4 2 piece bonus makes a bigger difference for Combat Daggers and Mutilate).

Adding specific boosts to either backstab, mutilate or dagger spec will most likely create a similair situation as today with sword spec. Seeing as sword spec is pretty much the defacto standard for raid dps, fixing it would of course be a small nerf. Necessary in my opinion to bring to bring all specs up to par.

Boosting low tier combat would help all specs without creating weird pvp synergies.

Not sure if combat mutilate would need anything more. Last time i raided with it was with Malch+Emerald ripper. Excellent single target dps well on par with other specs at the time as I recall as long as you focused on managing all those combopoints. I'm sure there are a few decent rogues who have tried it out with alot better daggers/gear and can give more input.

Give us a new poison, acid, that does less dmg than deadly poison but works against poison immune mobs. Works for mutilate and envenom the same as DP.

I thought backstab (and mutilate) always did and still do more damage per energy? And that the reason sword wins is sword spec, aggression and the 5 more talent points? All these suggestions seem to ask for daggers to have the same white DPS and combo point generation of combat swords, however would that really be balanced? Or am I completely off here and backstab actually doesn't deal the dmg/energy I think it does?

What is *really* the reason for combat swords to be better than combat daggers, and how many of those factors that make combat swords would actually need to be negated in order to make daggers equal? For now what I see combat swords has over daggers:
-More finishers.
-Stronger finishers.
-slightly higher white damage due to OH procs proccing MH attacks.

Note I'm not counting mutilate because that would be a lot more complicated comparison. I was wondering what really made swords better than daggers as I remember daggers used to always win at least pre-bc.