I went ahead and specc'd Mutiliate for fun this week to see how I compare in the raid dps-wise. I am finding with the 4 piece t4 bonus and seal of fate plus ruthlessness proccs that I have a huge overflow of combo points. Keeping SnD up is not the problem, but rather figuring out what to do when I see a lot of finishers automatcially procc 2-3 combo points. One crit mut might give me 5combo points, but when I have 3combo points at the beginning of a cycle and I crit Mutilate, I am wasting a combo point. Plus, I often see I have rupture and SnD still going strong when I have 3-4 combo points up again and am just using Evis, sometimes 2-3 times in a row.

I do see a slight drop in my dps, particularly on trash pulls where I might have used blade flurry in the past, but I'm still remaining in my same position overall. I'm thinking that puncturing wounds change in 2.4 might even make up that difference. Plus I'm saving my badges for the badge reward daggers coming out. But I am finding it hard to maintain any real sort of rotation and would like to hear what other rogues are using with mutilate right now who have had more time to practice with the randomness that is our combo point generation. I want to make sure I am still maximizing my dps with this specc as best as I can. I haven't used envenom much, though I did try it once or twice when I saw I had cold blood up and 5combo points. But what I am finding most challenging is not wasting my combo points while trying to get 5CPs before a finisher because so often I have 3-4 CPs and I'm wondering should I go ahead and risk wasting one CP to get to 5, or just use a finisher with 3 or 4CPs and then keep going?

I know this was discussed briefly previously, but I was thinking that people's experience might have changed or that with the puncturing wounds addition which would increase CP generation, things may have changed.

I found that while there's a semblance of a rotation with Mutilate, it's much much more free form than any other spec (which, btw, I think is the big attraction of the spec for people). When you start to narrow down the options of a build into a single most-effective rotation, some of the fun starts to get sucked out. In general though, current-best-practice is to SnD -> Rupture -> Evis until you need to repeat steps one and/or two.

As currently modeled, Envenom is never worth using due to the DPS loss of the poison stack *except* in the case you specify - 5 full CPs and Cold Blood. However, it's always fun to use

I struggled with this for a while too. I think the general consensus is to never view a CP as being "wasted" and just build up to 5 (because you'll be doing a lot of Mutilate damage in the process), but it's an excellent question that I don't believe has any proven mathematical answer as of yet. I think it would look something like this (assuming one starts with 3 or 4 CPs)

(avg dmg from 3-4 CP finisher + avg dmg from mutilate + avg dmg from 3-4 CP finisher) / energy required

vs

(avg dmg from mutilate + avg dmg from 5 CP finisher) / energy requried

Then compare the return on energy invested. My guess would be that executing a finisher on 4CPs is better than mutilating again, but mutilating on 3 CPs is better than executing a finisher.

Here's how I deal with finisher rotations as mutilate:

Finisher at 3+/4+cps.
Slice and Dice #1
Rupture #2
Envenom #3
So, sometimes when I hit a streak, I can envenom 2-3 times before I need to rupture/snd again.

I use envenom and double deadly, I stack 5 stacks of deadly fast enough that the 5stack of DP isn't "lost" but rather just "replaced in a sec".

It's also important to not let Find Weakness drop, thus you need to make sure to hit at least 1 finisher every 10 seconds. If you mutilate more than twice, not only will you drop FW for 6+ seconds, but you're gaurenteed to waste one CP, and possibly two.

I'm not saying double DP/Envenom is better than ip/dp and evisc, but I like using it more, personally. It's why I'm mutilate in the first place, it's fun.

I have a question regarding Mutilate execution. Does anyone open with shiv, or do you just begin Mutilating and apply poisons that way?

Also, does anyone know of a mod which tracks Find Weakness uptime? I think I would find that very useful.

Just hit stuff, deadly poison applies very fast.

Worse comes to worse, shiv once, SnD to get you up to speed and get FW up and go nuts.

As for rotation, there are only a few conditions I put on my cycle:

1. 100% SnD uptime. There is no excuse for any rogue not to achieve this if they spend 100% of the time dps'ing the boss rather than running around like a nut. No brainer with so many CP's.
2. 100% FW uptime. Again, based on your time in contact with the boss. With the bonus to crit this should be even easier.
3. Close to 100% rupture uptime. If you have spare CP's to evis or envenom, rupture should be running 100% of the time.

Wasted CP's and evis/envenoms are kinda irrelevant on a mutilate build. If you go relentless/ruthless you can get close to mutilate/finish/mutilate/finish with a bit of luck. 3 point finishers are almost as attractive to me as 4-5 pointers because it means I keep FW up 100% of the time (the 60% chance of 25 energy is sufficient to keep a nice energy income rolling).

Raiding the past couple of days (BT and MH) with WF on mh and two slow daggers I see my mutilates hitting harder (some great crits there) but poison application sucks so much that using Envenom as the 3rd finisher is out of the question. Therefore as people stated before I am thinking of dropping points from 5/5 vile poisons and max improved Evis while keeping like 2-3 points on vile poisons 1-2 on improved poisons and 1 on master poisoner since many times due to ruthlessness procs and muti crits I am back at 4 cps with rupture and s&d already on and plenty of time left on them. Wasting these points on Envenom and clearing the stack is a no go as my reapplication takes too much time so I am considering splitting poison talents and use some for improved Evis.

This is the build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft I am considering when the Puncturing Wounds change goes live. I thought about dropping points from FF and QR but a dead rogue is no DPS. FF is great from fleeing AoE damage quickly and coming back in haste, QR may save you when drinking a pot or using a warlock HS while you taking damage. I think that extra healing could keep you long enough for that big heal to land.

Because the problem of finisher, ruth proc, mut crit, 4cps in just one mutilate hit will be even bigger with increased muti chance to crit. I always raid with WF on main hand and a slow dagger off hand so there is no way I can use envenom as my third finisher (1st S&D, 2nd Rupture), too low poison reapplication, therefore I believe that leaving the deadly poison stack tick and use Evis instead of Envenom (you have spare cps you need to use them somehow) is a much better option. Still I need to see if the +15% damage for my 3rd priority finisher is any good or I should just reinvest those 3 points back to poison talents.

Think about it like this:

Poisons are about 5-7% of any rogue's DPS...

If you get vile poisons, that's +20% to 5-7% of your damage

If you get Imp. Evisc, that's +15% to X% of your damage.

Fill in the rest.

For me, I used envenom because I can get +20% envenom damage, while I can only get +15% evisc damage, and it doesn't add to poisons.

I only run 1/5 imp. poisons, btw.

Also, a Ruth proc followed by a crit mutilate => 4cps is what you want. If I could muti/finisher/muti/... constantly, that would rule.

I'd like some feedback on this build: 43/0/18.

Obviously, it doesn't have the white damage potential as 41/20/0, but according to the DPS spreadsheet it only loses 1-2% damage-wise overall. The reason I like it is the ability to pick up other utility in the subtlety tree that isn't really available in the combat tree.

The challenge with a sub/mut build is to get enough other finishers in to keep SnD up, since the build lacks Imp. SnD. However, I think it is doable to run a 3+/3+ cycle: SnD on 3+ combo points, Rupture on 3+ combo points. Most of the time this will mean Mutilate + SnD + Mutilate + Rupture, repeat. No other finishers would be used. Cycle energy is 60*2 + (2/5)*(25)*2 = 140, thus cycle time is 14 seconds. You should be able to keep SnD up indefinitely, and Rupture up at least 80% of the time. My biggest worry would be energy efficiency not using 4-5 point finishers.

The alternative would be to try a 5/5 cycle: Mutilate + Mutilate + SnD + Mutilate + Mutilate + Rupture. However, this suffers from lower FW uptime (it isn't up for rupture), and since the cycle time is 24 seconds you couldn't keep it up without the 2pT4 set bonus.

For comparison, in a 41/20/0 build you have Imp. SnD, so it would be possible to sustain a 3+/4-5 rotation: Mutilate + SnD + Mutilate (+ Mutilate) + Rupture, for a total cycle time of ~13-19 seconds and a total rupture uptime of, again, 80% or better. Really, the only advantage of Imp. SnD is the ability to chain in a third finisher (evis) if you get lucky on combo point procs... but at that point you have to ask yourself whether it is worth it.

I'm assuming since you mention cycling you are talking about PvE. Why would you want to trade DPS talents for unneeded utility talents? You mentioned it would be a 1-2% damage reduction so I don't see the advantages of speccing this way unless you were trying to PvP with the same spec. I also don't think you'd enjoy PvEing without Improved Slice and Dice.

Yes, I'm primarily talking about PvE. However, one of my pet peeves is getting put on sap duty in TK and needed to vanish to avoid being seen during saps. (We're often short on mages.) I also don't care enough about arenas to drop 100G per week in respecs, but I do enjoy them and would like a viable arena spec.

The whole analysis above was to show that Imp. SnD doesn't actually do anything extraordinary for a Mutilate build. Even without Imp. SnD it is possible to keep up nearly 100% SnD and Rupture uptime; the only difference is that you won't as easily be able to throw in a third, lower quality finisher (such as Eviscerate).

The DPS spreadsheet shows the cycle as a 2-4SnD/4-5Rupt cycle, and I'm proposing a 3+/3+ cycle which I think would be tighter and yield more DPS. The tight cycle, high rupture uptime, armor ignore, and increased rupture damage are close to making up for the loss of Precision and DW Spec. It's not quite even, but awfully close.

Ah, i guess the DP-envenom change still is an urban legend.

Yes, I'm thinking of giving it some time on the PTRs if I can motivate myself to download the client. If I do so I'll let you know what I come up with.

Well, 41/20 is a perfectly viable PvE spec as well as Arena spec.

43/0/18 or 51/0/10 is not "perfectly viable" pve, yet is in Arena.

Your choice, but I just stick with 41/20 when I don't want to respec.

Weighing in on what has been said here, especially about Imp Evis., I find it a very nice talent to have. Currently, we just killed Illidan last week, and now since we really don't have to min/max (by being combat), I went to this build:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. I don't see where else you would invest your talent points if you didn't spec into Imp Evis. I mean, envenom is nice, but if you're just chaining finishers it's going to run into a stall eventually when you don't have enough poison stacks/when you're getting half damage mutilates, and you pretty much will never lose a poison stack with an intermediate speed OH, like 1.5, so basically Imp Poisons is worthless unless you're going for an envenom build, which I've tried, but I mean, it gets hairy when your poisons don't proc really fast. Anyways...it's pretty much nitpicking, considering you have SND and Rupture priorities, but I find it provides more consistancy/overall dps to use Evis over Envenom. Also, the damage you get from having that deadly poison stack tick helps make up for some of the raw damage that Envenom does over Evis.

What I find works really well is opening up with an Ambush, which hopefully crits, right into a Cold Blood Mutilate. 4 or 5 CP to open SnD with right off the bat, and hopefully your poison procs before you have a chance to mutilate. As for mods, I know Xperl shows a duration in seconds remaining on buffs under the Unit Frame, that's what I use for SnD/Find Weakness, and it also does debuffs under your target frame, so I use it for rupture too. Hope I helped =)

Wouldn't opening with Mutilate be better than opening with an untalented Ambush?

You should "TECHNICALLY" never have a half damage mutilate. But people die, get stuck away from the boss (Archimonde for example), or, you could very well just be the only rogue in the raid at the time. But yes, optimally, a half damage mutilate should never happen, although, things very rarely happen 100% optimally.

Considering that that mutilate will probably be half-damage since it's your first move, and I paid attention to whether this happened or not while going through BT last night, my ambush, even without talents to improve it's damage, typically hits harder than a half damage mutilate. Unpoisoned, I get crits ~2k-2.2k. With ambush, I see roughly the same amount, 2.2kish almost every time, and 1100ish on a non crit, which again, is about the same as a non crit, non poisoned, mutilate.

EDIT: Fixing for going off topic and not answering the question: Not really, but again, it's not really worse, so...

Except you get more combo points for Mutilating.

But if you use your Cold Blood on the next mutilate ( I can't see any other use for Cold Blood than using it to generate necessary combo points to get a cycle back on track in the middle of a fight), then you're capping at 5 combo points if your ambush crits, so, you pretty much end up with the same amount of combo points. What could happen is you could crit on that first mutilate, and then you'd open up with a 3 Pt SnD. I'd rather the guaranteed 4-5 combo points of the ambush --> CB muti opener, but I guess you could eek out maybe...a few hundred extra points of damage.

Now if you have a better use for Cold Blood than I can see, by all means, please let me know =P.