Agree with Dorvan. Quick Recovery isn't just about the heals. A dodged finisher is a huge waste of energy, and you save quite a bit with QR.

Also, this may just be personal preference, but I think it's smarter to grab 2/2 Imp Sinister than Lightning Reflexes. There's no reason you should be relying on dodge for anything, and having 2/2 Imp Sinister is nice for AoE pulls or fights like Aran when you're forced to DPS from the front occasionally.

My ideal PvE (raiding) build would look like this:

41/20/0

From what I've read here, separating points in Vile and Imp is slightly better (very very small amount, so if you don't like splitting you could just pick one). 3 in imp gouge for those rare PvP fights I partake in, and 2 in Imp SS because I just don't get any use out of 2 points in LReflexes.

I also always pick endurance for the significant time reduction to sprint/evade. Heavy PvPers out there might choose otherwise, but in a raid situation I find I use sprint considerably more because it's up more often. When I go back to the full 5 min cooldown I just can't stand it.

Carne, I'm assuming you don't raid with a WF totem and use IP on your main hand? I can't see how 2/5 Imp Poisons will provide more DPS than 5/5 Vile Poisons if you're only using DP on your off hand. Any chance you could link to that discussion?

I hope they don't do something like that. Mutilate doesn't need even more required pve talents in assassination. What would you give up to take 5/5 Deadened Nerves?

I was referencing this post by Left and that found in the Adv Mech thread he mentioned. I myself haven't run with split points so I'm basing purely on "what's hot" these days in rogue theorycrafting.

Also, I don't have a reference to it (somewhere on these boards though), but I read recently that GoA may grant a slight DPS gain over WF for all rogue builds. Something related to the dmg gain from GoA + the dmg gain from an additional poison puts you slightly ahead of WF. That's how I understood the discussion anyway.

Regardless, I believe GoA is better for Mutilate. True?

Consider the following build: this.

Since Deadened Nerves is so deep in the tree, it might make sense to reduce the points required to fill it out. Say, make it 2/2 for 4% reduction, and add a secondary effect with a PvE slant. This would leave you with the option of taking 2/2 Fleet Footed, 2/3 Imp. Kidney Shot or 2/2 Murder. You could even put a requirement on it, and link it to something like Vile Poisons.

I'm just thinking out loud, though.

According to the simulator I wrote, the first points in Vile Poisons, Improved Poisons, or Master Poisoner are worth more, relatively, than the last points. Thus, a split point set is theoretically better than all your points in one or the other. However, the difference is small enough to be negligible.

To address Ozzmar, most rogues assume that running DP on the offhand means that they will always have 5 stacks of DP on their target, thus making Improved Poisons worthless. This just isn't the case. Even with a Mutilate build, the DP stack has the potential to drop through unlucky procs, misses, or resists. When it drops, you lose your DP DPS until you can rebuild the stack. Improved poisons (a) makes it less likely that the stack will drop, and (b) makes rebuilding the stack quicker when it does drop.

It is very hard to evaluate the exact contribution Imp. Poisons without simulation, so I wrote the simulator (with lots of help from Aldriana) which computes the "average" number of DP stacks up over the course of a long fight, taking into account poison ticks, weapon speed, miss/dodge rates, and talents. You can get a baseline, and then add in 1-5 points of IP and see the % increase. I found that the first point of Improved Poisons for a well-geared rogue gives a 4.3% relative increase in the average DP stacks, which is better than a +4% flat damage increase from Vile. The fifth point gives only a 2.1% relative increase in the average DP stacks, which is significantly worse than a +4% damage modifier. Thus, you are better off throwing a couple points into Improved Poisons and the rest into Vile Poisons. And if you ever run IP on your main hand, Improved Poisons is a good bit better than Vile Poisons.

The worse your hit rate the more likely you are to lose a DP stack, therefore the better Improved Poisons is for you. Improved is also better for highly mobile fights, since you can rebuild a lost stack more quickly.

However, let me emphasize, we are talking about 2-3 DPS difference here, maximum, for a sustained fight. IE, it's not worth worrying about unless you are going all-out min-maxing. In my case, I prefer 5/5 vile in a Mutilate spec for the extra dispel resistance.

I believe this would be the case, as Mutilate has a lot of +poison talents, more yellow damage, more reliance on crit, and a lower white hit rate. Since GoA+IP is fairly close to WF for combat rogues, I'm willing to bet it is better for Mutilate rogues.

Personally, I've got more use out of Improved Sprint than I ever did out of Endurance. There are a few times, far between, when I wish my sprint CD was shorter, but in most cases the difference between 3.5 and 5 minutes is very minor. My guild is in SSC, and I could see Endurance helping me get, maybe, one extra sprint in between Lurker adds, one shorter Watery Grave downtime (depending on timing), maybe time to spring from Fathom Lord's third add to Fathom Lord. Maybe give me more survivability on the bog lords. That's... about it.

Improved Sprint, on the other hand, is excellent. I tend to use it as a secondary cloak of shadows for movement impairing effects. Going back as far as I can remember here...

*Aran: Use it to get out of Arcane Explosion faster when I'm in a bind; allows me to save CloS for a real emergency. (This is still useful to me, as we do Kara for badges.)
*Lurker: Break a daze if I need to get to another add fast
*Fathomlord: Get out of the earthbind totem for a second when moving towards or away from the shaman add
*Vashj: Get out of roots so I can run away from the main tank when he is static charged (thus not getting roflpwned)
*SSC/TK trash: Break out of any one of a hundred movement impairing effects, allowing me to DPS trash faster

Basically, I just like knowing that if I have to sprint, I'll actually be going fast when I do so. But, it's a personal preference.

I agree that deadened nerves is currently garbage, but even so, its replacement would have to be very awesome and very cheap pointwise.

As others have said, assassination has a lot of "required" talents. Maybe they aren't all really *required*, but the tree has so many talents that are *good*. What talents in assass suck? Remorseless and Deadened Nerves. Pretty much every other talent in the tree is something I would like to have, but I just don't have the points to spend on them.

There are more points worth of damage increasing talents in assass than other trees. I'm counting 47 points of damage talents in the tree that are relevant to mutilate, and that leaves out 9 points of situational/arguable ones (murder, imp. EA, Fleet footed, imp KS). A typical rogue with surprise attacks invests 35 points in combat for damage, and a few fillers to claim the 41, and that's EVERY damage talent in the tree, unless you want to call riposte a damage talent or specialize in multiple weapon types.

The biggest offenders in my mind are the poison talents. 12 points you can (and probably would like to, but can never afford to) spend on poisons. It's just too much. Something needs to be condensed.

Perhaps GoA is better for a Rogue, but unless you're in a 10-man (without a Warrior in your group) you have to be realistic and realize that WF is what you *should* still be getting, because the difference between WF and GoA for a Warrior (especially an Arms warrior) is hundreds and hundreds of DPS. The difference between you getting a Warrior's Battle Shout and a Shaman's Windfury instead of just the Shaman's Grace of Air is significant... And I would argue that for practical reasons they really are mutually exclusive options (totem twisting aside).

Yes, I would agree with you there. However, what you might be able to do is get into a hunter/druid group with a shaman. GoA is significantly better for hunter and druids, and you will get as much benefit from the +5% crit and possibly Ferocious Inspiration as you would have from the warrior group. So while what is dropped does depend highly on raid makeup, I could imagine two shamans dropping different things for different sets, ie:

Group 1 - Warrior, Combat Rogue, Combat Rogue, Feral Druid, Shaman
Group 2 - Hunter, Hunter, Mutilate Rogue, Feral Druid, Shaman

If you run three rogues, someone has to go to the second group anyway... might as well be one who gets greater benefit from the agility totem. Not to mention, if it's an enhancement shaman he'll get more personal DPS out of GoA than WF, as WF doesn't benefit him at all.

But you are totally correct in stating that what you get depends on what helps everyone else most.

Yep, I went back and changed it from 2/3 Imp gouge to 2/2 imp SS, I edited it to change that but I guess the copypasta fell through, but:

Rogue Talents

P.S. Wowdb has bugs when linking talent builds, sorry.

I think I would rather sacrifice poison talents and maybe even murder for the new talent (puncturing wounds). i just don't like the idea of running around without QR.

The bad thing is that sometimes I make decisions on what I can actually see because I can get used to having less poison apply chance (the change only appears on the tooltip) but since I'm used to FF and QR now, I won't be able to get used to getting normal heals from pots/bandages, losing full energy on dodges and running at the same speed as everyone else.

I think I would go as far as to keep 5 in Vile Poisons and remove all talents from Imp Poisons... or would removing the two talents from murder be better?

Currently raiding SSC/TK and about half the bosses aren't affected by murder are they? But I guess most bosses around are humanoids and it's still a must... aaaaargh I dunno where to get me talents from

Always pick Fleet Footed and Quick Recovery if you go Mutilate (or over 21 points in Assassination tree mostly), the whole edge of Mutilate is in those two talents. Fleet Footed is pure DPS increase if the fight is mobile enough and Quick Recovery is so must to have and considering there ain't anything better to spend those points on anyway.

If you need to take points away take them from poison talents for sure, the damage increase from those talents is really minimal. I'd prefer Murder over poison talents by far even in SSC/TK zones even if it's not affected all the time.

If you want to look optimal 41/20/0 build I'd go with this. It's proven that splitting poison talents is better than maxing out one, therefore taking 2/2/1 talent contribution between VP IP MP. I prefer 1 or 2 point in MP over IP just for poison resistance and what I've heard first point in MP is as good as one point in IP.

I would also only take 1pts in Imp SnD and run 4+ s / 4+ r cycle and forget whole Envenom/Eviscerate from cycles because those finishers are inferior and it is a lot easier for player to run earlier mentationed cycle. 1pts should be enough to smoothen the Ruthlessness luck to be able to run 4s/4r cycle well, it is matter of taste thought what type of cycle you prefer and I don't think there is any theorycrafting about this (higher Rupture uptime vs 3rd finisher).

Combat tree first tier fillers doesn't matter much, one could pick Imp. Gouge for PvP, I prefer dodge for occasional cleaves. From my experience Imp. SS isn't required at all with Mutilate even if it's nice in some situations it's most of the time wasted talent points compared to 'all the time effecting' Lightning Reflexes.

Conclusion: Do not skip QR or FF if you go Mutilate.

I think that's just about universally true.

But, my main point is that I'm confused about Master Poisoner, does it have any use in PVE/raids?

Ekval - That's my point. I would never remove QR and FF. Seems that it's gonna be taken from poison talents.

And just to make one thing clear: I'm not _going_ mutilate I always have been!

Well I did go as combat daggers to a VR raid once cos I promised my mate (who is also class leader and keeps bitching that I am using "the wrong spec" - he's swords of course. bloody min-maxer) and you will not believe how much I hated it!!! How the hell can someone stay awake by backstabbing and getting only 1 CP per hit? So boring! Especially the trash. I wanted to cut my wrists. Going from 2-3 finishers per mob to 0-1. 0??? Backstab... backstab.. backstab... oh look I got 3 CP after 10 mins of backstabbing. Let's throw a finisher BAM! Mob dead with three of my hard earned CPs still hanging over his corpse

Ok back to the serious business:
My version of the build
I kinda see your point about not going full SnD but I'm not completely convinced by it.
As for where I got the talent points for the new talent, I had 3/5 Imp poisons and completely removed it. I might go 3/5 Vile and 2/5 Imp in the end, but from what I hear the DPS increase/decrease when playing with these two talents is negligent.

I raided as Mutilate when BC came out, up until SSC. So I have been thinking of trying Mutilate for raiding once 2.4 comes out, so I need some feedback on this.

This is the gear I have in mind:
4/5 T5
4/8 T6

Now for some ability rotations. With the new ability and talent changes happening in 2.4 (i.e Puncturing Wounds and Envenom no longer consuming the doses) I'm debating between 2 mutilates > 5 pt Envenom and SnD whenever Ruthlessness procs or just Mutilate and keep Find Weakness up and pull off Envenoms when the t5 4 piece procs. SnD every once in awhile when I don't got 2 or 3 points tops. From personal experience I did better damage if I didn't keep SnD up all the time as opposed to combat.

I'm just stuck debating what will result in more mutilate damage, opportunity or dual wield spec.

I'm open to any suggestions.

The rogue dps spreadsheet will answer this and many other questions about life for you. Though, I can tell you right off the bat that excluding Rupture is a mistake.

I'm out of the loop this weekend; has this been confirmed, or are people still speculating based on those possible internal notes?

Puncturing wounds has been confirmed as far as being in the 2.4 patch notes on WoW.com. Envenom no longer using up DP is still a rumor.

If you capped out expertise (and obviously hit on specials), would Quick Recovery still be worthwhile just for the incoming heals, or would any of you start considering it as the talent to drop for Puncturing Wounds?

Why would you ever want to drop QR instead of some poison talents? It shouldn't be even option.