I don't see how it's conceptually illogical to be honest:

"Ouch, my eyes, I can't see"
*deadly poison ticks*
"Oh never mind, now that I've taken damage I can see again"

--edit--

To add some substance, I feel that there are 2 main problems with dagger PvP

1) The dagger playstyle is very much centred on the element of surprise. They get in, they do large damage in a few strikes, they get out. The problem with this is that the rogue class as a whole is very much centred around white damage. We need to stay on our target to be effective. Any buff to dagger damage is either going to be insufficient to fit the playstyle or far too much due to white damage counting as well

I would suggest some sort of passive armor negation when using dagger attacks (not for white dps when using daggers, just for Backstab and Mutilate). Also some way of increasing dagger attack dps at the expense of white dps would make sense to me. It would make dagger rogues our class' equivalent of Mortal Strike warriors, with high damage, small contact time attacks. Get in, do damage, apply Crippling Poison, get out. Perhaps something in the Mutilate talent itself and also in the high end Subtlety talents for Backstab. I feel that this would very much fit with the burst-centred dagger philosophy.

2) The rogue reliance in general on longish cooldowns to be at all effective. This could well be just me but I've found that if I don't have either vanish, evasion or cloak of shadows up I die. This is fine in BGs or world PvP where you're either not forced to fight at all or death is relatively trivial. In arenas surviving is pivotal, and after we've blown our cooldowns we're sitting ducks. It's probably why there are so few rogues rated 2,000+ in 5v5. I counted 2 active in my Battlegroup, neither were in a top 10 team.

I suggest making our cooldowns less powerful but have shorter cooldows. It's been said time and time again but a 5 second Sprint on a 1min cooldown (30-45s after talents?) would be infinitely preferable to its current 15s/5min incarnation. Also the 'Improved' aspect should come as standard. Vanish could easily be reworked into a 1min cooldown ability. Keep the reagent cost, lose the 'Improved' nature of the stealth and you have yourself simply an in-combat, regular stealth ability. Since Blind has been set as the peer of Cyclone I don't see why it couldn't share similar mechanics (spamable, shorter duration). Even if the reagent is brought back it would make the idea of using an ability less costly.

Trainable Prep would do nicely also.

5.5 sec CC with 10 second cooldown that doesn't break on damage?

There's no way that would ever be balanced.

Think you misread me...

Nono - I think I was unclear.

I was pointing out that the current implementation is no less lacking in sense since it assumes that damage caused suddenly cures your blindness

With regard to a 5.5s CC with a 10s cooldown that doesn't break on damage, I would point out that Fear lasts 10s, has no cooldown and I can't remember the last one that broke early.

Perhaps increase the cooldown on Gouge but I don't see why DoT damage should break it. I don't know which stuns it shares diminishing returns with, but if it's a problem then just couple it with Kidney Shot or Blind

I think Combat Daggers is pretty effective in raid environments now. It was *pretty* close to other combat builds before 2.3, but when they added Backstab to Aggression it closed the gap more. Having to spread points over 3 trees is annoying, but not game breaking. You're still getting the best talents in every tree for that build, it's not like you're giving up Relentless or Combat Potency or anything. A typical Combat Dagger build will only give up 1 point in Lethality out of the major DPS increasing talents in lower Assassination. In addition, the positional requirement in raids is something you're likely to do anyway since Parries are going to reset the mob's swing timer, leading to increased incoming damage to your tank.

PVP is a whole different story. Any dagger build that isn't Mutilate is going to suffer from low combo point generation and Resilience absolutely destroys the damage potential. It could be pointless to speculate about WotLK builds since we have no clue what 51 point trees will look like, but I could see them not touching Mutilate right now since it has a lot to gain with 10 more talent points. Dual Wield spec plus Opportunity will increase Mutilate damage by 20% over 41/20 right off the top not to mention gaining access to Blade Flurry and more crit.

I think the bottom line for positional builds in PVP is that, against good opponents, you will never be able to reach your full damage potential because not only are you going to be struggling to get into range a lot of the time, they are going to be doing everything they can to make sure you don't get a look at their back. Attacks with no positional requirement like Hemo or SS are far superior because once you're in range you can be sure you're not wasting energy trying to maneuver, you can dump damage and energy into them immediately.

I've seen a lot of people argue in favor of positional builds with advice like "just circle strafe opposite of them" or "run through and do an immediate 180". These suggestions fail for two main reasons: Latency making such tactics unreliable and the fact that you're wasting time even if you're shivving to keep yourself below 100% energy. Unfortunately I don't see a solution to this problem, outside of seriously increasing the damage output of these builds so that when you do successfully land your main attack it hurts a lot more. Maybe a baseline modifier of +10% AP with daggers equipped?

It's pretty close most of the time, yes. However, once you get to T6 levels of gear the disparity gets larger. Mainly because of things mentioned like how Sword Specialization scales better.

You don't only lose one point in Lethality. You also lose out on Murder and Vile or Improved Poisons, because you don't need Improved Backstab and Opportunity. That's a fair amount of lost raid DPS talents just because you are trying to make Backstab a not crappy ability.

You're right about the parry thing, except daggers fail sometimes in unavoidable situations when a boss uses a RSTS ability and turns towards the melee for a few seconds. That causes our energy to stay at 100 occasionally. I realize this is isn't a common occurrence but it adds up to a couple thousand damage lost on some bosses like Aneth, Teron, Arch, Shahraz, etc.

Hehe yeah, balance > logic I guess

This I totally agree with, what about unlinking the weapon specs from the weapons themselves? Or switching the extra swing mechanic to Daggers and the extra crit to Swords? This would provide Daggers with a white damage advantage over Swords instead of a few more points of crit which Backstab has in abundance anyway. The first suggestion could also open opportunity for more builds and playstyles since you could get a 6% stun proc on your weapon of choice instead of maces, in addition to removing the requirement for (many) rogues to have two different weapon sets for PVE and PVP.

That sounds amazing, but hugely overpowered. Everyone and their dog would be running a 16/45/0 spec with 5% extra swing procs and 5% more crit on all attacks.

I've often thought that adding a haste componant to Dagger Spec would be a way to improve raid dps in pve that scales well with gear...for combat daggers that is...

Switching Sword Spec and dagger spec is a bit more complicated than that. Take for instance warriors - would their sword spec change to keep things consistent?

Not to mention, the most powerful thing about sword spec is having your 1.4 or 1.5 speed OH weapon proc 2.6+ speed MH attacks. With daggers, having a 1.4 speed proc a 1.8 speed is significantly less impressive.

The idea of Armor Pen is what makes the most sense to me, since daggers are REQUIRED to be attacking from behind (well, the specials).. behind behind the target means their armor would naturally be less effective.

On the subject of slow combo point generation.. have Imp SS work for BS as well. 55 energy BS would be a decent bit better than 60 - as small as it may sound.

Agreed. I think I said in an earlier post in this thread that it would be nice to have Combat Daggers to have an armor penetration component. It makes aesthetic sense with the whole 'attacking from behind' feel. Also, armor penetration has the best synergy with daggers. I'm assuming this based off the AEP values from the Roguecraft 101 thread:

The reason armor pen is "better" for dagger rogues is due to the breakdown of their damage. All damage is boosted by armor pen except for Rupture and Deadly poison. Deadly poison is higher for non-dagger combat (Vile or Imp Poison talents). Rupture is higher for non-dagger combat builds (their cycles include higher rupture uptime due to higher CP generation).

Basically, armor pen affects a higher % of a CB-Dagger rogues dmg.



To add to the "Sword Spec for daggers" thing - also remember that its not just base damage that matters when you look at the 2.6 vs 1.8 speed "instant" extra attacks. Its the AP bonus. Those sword spec procs on 2.6+ speed weapons get a much larger boost from your AP than a 1.8 dagger does. Still, it would be better than 5% crit (which is LESS than a 5% dps boost at any reasonable lvl of gear) due to a slower weapon proc'ing a faster weapon.. and an OH weapon proc'ing a MH swing (no Offhand dmg penalty). Granted, the 5% crit for yellow attacks is a bigger boost for daggers than swords. You'd have to do some actual math on it - but you will not see a huge dps increase in changing dagger spec to an extra swing just due to the mechanics of the weapons and attacks. Considering that idea is probably one of the least likely to be implemented when looking at the game as a whole.. I just wouldn't bother working out the math on it.

To be honest I think the last thing we need is an even greater fraction of our dps coming from autoattack.

Anything else is just buffing Backstab damage, which has already been done by buffing Agression. I don't think it would be a bad thing to buff CDag white damage more, because that would put it more in line with the reasons why Combat Swords takes the edge. Also, white damage is the non-positional aspect to our attack, so if we miss out on a little bit of yellow, we'll still get solid white behind with a less noticeable drop in damage.

We basically need two things to make CDag better in PvE: 1) Higher white damage, either through passive haste or armor penetration or something else not mentioned in this thread. 2) More combo points for higher rupture uptime and easier SnD management.

This is way the hell out there in hypothetical world, but part of me has always thought that "Combat" and daggers were somewhat oxymoronic.

Warriors have two distinct trees for DPS. If you want to use a 2h-weapon, go Arms. If you like dual wielding, go Fury. (Yes, you can go 2h Fury, but just roll with me for a second.)

Again, conceptually, Combat seems like something useful for going toe-to-toe. Dodging, parrying, disarming, hitting really hard with a non-directional attack. Oh, and a few scattered talents that affect Backstab too? What the heck?

Assassination and big, bursty Backstab/Mutilate crits seem more logical. Ideally, I would think that the generic DPS talents like Imp SnD, Dual Wield Spec, Precision, etc would be at the top of the Combat tree (which they are, and it's great), but things like Improved Sinister, Sword, Mace, and Fist Spec would be further down in the Combat tree, along with talents that make your Sinisters and Eviscerates hit harder (bravo so far). Then, use Assassination for Dagger Spec, right alongside things like Seal Fate which work excellent with the high crit rate of Backstab.

Basically, if 41/20/0 and 20/41/0 were interchangably efficient DPS specs, I think a lot of people would be happier. Of course that would mean getting rid of Opportunity, which I don't think anyone would argue with...

* Dagger Specialization - Increase your damage done with daggers by 1/2/3/4/5%
Since white damage is the main source or damage for a rogue, improving it will probably make daggers viable again. Combat swords are 3% higher in dps according the roguecraft 101, this could make daggers 2% ahead.

* Find Weakness - Increases the rogue damage by 2/4/6/8/10% ( now including white dmg )
This talent is so deep on the assassination tree that almost only Mutilate builds will take it, this could make mutilate a viable raid build again.
Following the rule that Mutilate builds are 10% below combat swords ( unconfirmed ), this could make both builds equal.

* replace Vile poisons, Improved Poisons and master Poisoner by a 5/5 Master Poisoner Talent that combine the effects or all others 12 talent points.
( IMHO the same thing should be done with Master of deception, Camouflage and Heithened Senses )
This could free up some important points on a mutilate and combat/assassination builds.
Poisons are responsable for less then 5% of a rogue dps, and 12 talent points to enhance them a bit doesn't make them worth.

* The new 5/5 Master Poisoner Talent should be pre-requisite to a 1/1 lvl 31 talent, that should be a new poison.
This new poison should apply to any mob ( including elementals, bosses, etc ), and if it causes any damage, it should not break gouge or blind.
Some suggestions:
- Increases the raid/party/rogue melee chance to hit the target by 1/2/3/4/5%
- Increases the raid/party/rogue damage done on the boss by 0.5/1/1.5/2/2.5%
- Reduces the rogue total threat by 1/2/3/4/5%
- Allow the rogue to apply his poisons to other raid/party weapons ( same mechanism as an enchant )
With this i can see some raid utility plus a poison that allow mutilate specs viable on any boss encounter.

* Replace Improved Kidney shot by: During Stunned your attacks ignore the targets armor and/or resiliense by 33/66/100%.
Since resilience ( and high armored guys ) killed any crit based build, this could make crits viable again

* Vigor and Mutilate could swap places, and Vigor could become: Increases your energy regeneration by 5 ( making it 25 per tick instead of 20 ).
+10Energy helps on burst situations, but its not worth a 31 talent point, instead include any talent that increases the rogue energy regeneration rate in passive mode. Maybe, with a strong talent as this, assassination could compete with Combat Potency on the energy regen "market".

* Improved Backstab should also reduce its energy cost by 5/10
My backstab damage per energy is 16.5 ( according to Obart <Shadow Fate> Warsong )
Recuding its energy cost to 50, will make it something like 19.8 ( almost 20% dmg increase, since backstab is responsable for 30% of a rogue dps, this can increase the whole dps by 6.6% ).

Ok, i know, some of this changes are a little OP, but i am not suggesting all of them, just of few of them could help rogues a lot, and specially, improving daggers(backstab/mutilate) viability once more.

Be careful what you wish for. Druids depend (nearly) entirely on energy and yellow damage and as a result scale very poorly from things like haste.

At times in here it reads as if the daggers rogues are hoping/wishing for 80% yellow damage/20% white or something equally unbalanced in terms of ratio.

Personally, I don't really see the dire need for both Combat Daggers -and- Mutilate to be raid viable. I'd be happy enough if they actually managed to fix one of them to work right. Mutilate seems the most interesting of choices at least and would be in much better shape if it either dropped that stupid poison requirement or let it rely on some other things, such as Hunter Stings, as well. Anything really, as long as it affects all bosses. Or most all anyway - a couple of classes are faced with respecs at times (compare frost immune SSC mobs vs fire immune Al'ar).

Let's not get carried away - if you increase dagger dps by only 5% it would beat out Swords. I just don't think we need to add even more damage based on passively attacking.

I just think that dagger specs are innately built around the dagger damage itself and also that high white damage is one of the things that makes non-dagger builds so dull.

I think the best suggestion has actually been the Vigor one, so it increases energy generated by 5 per tick. +10 energy is a bit crappy if you ask me and is only ever good for stealing killing blows with Ambush/Backstab combos in BGs.

Not a bad idea at all. Make Muti very much PvP-centred and Combat Daggers PvE-centred. The question is how to do it. Obviously it only needs a few small changes (or 1 small change) to make Backstab work better in PvE. What can we think to make Mutilate more powerful in PvP (or to add more utility to the deep Assassination talents)?

What then happens to the Subtlety tree? Shouldn't 41-point Sub build be viable for something?

I could have sworn hunter stings satisfied the "Poison" requirement for mutilate, but I honestly haven't played with it since Pre-TBC when the 41 point trees first came out. Maybe it's only certain stings (I thought they were all classed as poisons), or maybe they took that out completely.

Remove the positioning requirement on Mutilate. It's already got a poison requirement, which I think would be fine in PVP if it didn't have the positional as well. There's no "lorelol" reason for Mut to have a positional requirement, and it's definitely the downfall of the build in PVP in my opinion. Would it make it overpowered? I don't see how, it's a 41 point talent that requires your target to be poisoned pretty much guaranteeing that you need to Shiv reactively based on defensive dispells. It still costs 60 energy, which means you can't really spam it.

Shadowstep could be much, much more powerful if they ever go through with making combo points apply to any target which is a change I fully support. Mut could be the big damage PVP build, while Sub could offer decent burst and a ton of control over opponents. As far as making Combat Daggers more PVE-centric, I'm not sure how to do that without increasing it's effectiveness in PVP too...

Edit: Hunter stings do satisfy the poison requirement for Mutilate unless they changed it very recently.

Might've been one of the useless stings only or just my memory screwing up - wouldn't be the first time. Probably the bosses are immune to stings as much as rogue poison is what's throwing me off.