Currently? You might get as much mileage from Imp. Evis as you would from Imp. Poisons, or Imp. EA, or whatever. It's a decent talent for a Mutilate spec. In 2.4, those points should drop into Puncturing Wounds, which is far better than Imp. Evis.

I definitely agree, but currently, I wouldn't take anything but Imp. Evis. for raiding, with those talent points.

Yeah, looking at your build, I don't really see a different talent that would yield more DPS in a raid situation. In a long fight, imp. evis + DP ticks will probably beat envenom minus lost ticks.

Envenom is in such a sad state as a finisher. It's really only worth using once per fight. I think that they should have made it a talent. They could replace vigor with envenom and change the deadly stacks requirement to just "poisoned" like mutilate. Then for deep assass rogues, env would be a usable replacement for evis that synergizes with other poison related talents in the tree.

It's not like anything BUT a deep assass build gets much mileage out of envenom the way it is now.

That's actually a fairly good suggestion, but I don't think that PvP Mutilate rogue would be happy losing 120 energy. Why not make it a 1 point talent that replaces Deadened Nerves, and condense Vile and Imp poisons down to 3 point talents.

I don't think having 120 energy really gives you that much over having 110. Sure, if you have 120, you can drop 2 mutilates in (1 + latency + button spamming speed) seconds. However, you're probably doing this right after a 5-pt imp. KS, and you waited for full energy to use that KS, so in reality, your energy is gonna tick during the GCD from the first Mut, and you won't need to have 120 to pull off 2 of them back to back.

This is a pretty rough diagram, but let one pipe character ( "|" )represent half a second.

|Energy not full
| ---- tick, full energy
| | ---- KS, RS restores the 25 from the finisher, still full
| |
| | ---- Mut, energy is (full - 60)
| | ---- tick (full - 40)
| | ---- Mut (even with no vigor and no pvp gear, you have 60 energy to spend)
| |

This would get boned if you have to wait longer and KS less than one second before an energy tick, essentially losing that tick while full during the KS GCD. This will push your 2nd mutilate at most 1 second away, but in practice, probably less. You'll still get 2 mutilates off during the KS unless it's all the way down to 25% duration from DR.

But just because you CAN guarantee 2 combo points from Ambush by wasting a 3 minute cooldown, doesn't mean that it's better than using an ability that gives you 2 combo points no matter what. If there really is no difference in average damage, which I certainly expect is not the case. (By the way, Mutilate does 2/3 damage when unpoisoned, not 1/2.)

As far as Cold Blood goes, you should be using it every cooldown. It increases the expected damage of your next attack; I'm not sure why you see this as not having a "use". It's better spent on a Mutilate while Find Weakness is active and the boss is fully debuffed (i.e. armor debuffs) and you have no more than 2 combo points (since you know you will get 3 from it).

Edit: Untalented Ambush does about 30% more damage than an unpoisoned Mutilate. After the Punctured Wounds change, it becomes closer to 15%.

Sad part being that even after spending all those talents into improving poisons, Evenom is still only on par, or highly situationally better.

I was always under the impression that Mutilate unpoisoned was half damage, but that's besides the point. No matter how much the actual damage reduction is, if you open with a mutilate, it will happen. I also said use ambush, then pop cold blood for your next mutilate, which will always put you at 4 or 5 combo points no matter what. My other point about cold blood is that it provides more utlity to keeping an already erratic cycle that depends on crits, like not letting SnD drop, as opposed to the damage increase of a talent like Blade Flurry. I am not saying not to use cold blood when it is up, but I can't think of a better use for the beginning of a fight. By use, I only mean that it can provide utility vs. a relatively weak damage increase, which in some cases may outweigh the bonus damage from a crit.

EDIT: Typo

Personally, I always opened with a Garotte (or Shiv if stealth is impractical) and a one-point S&D, to get Find Weakness up right off the bat and start swinging into a cycle of 4-5 Rupture/3-5 S&D with Eviscerates tossed in to refresh FW when needed. Of course, it's been several months since I was Muti. I used to save CB for Envenoms later on during the "Blow your cooldowns!" phase of a fight, but since CB doesn't really synergize with any of the temporary group buffs (almost all haste-based) it seems like a better idea to use it on a very early Muti as mentioned above.

I find that I achieve nice DPS by opening with ambush, tossing on an SnD, and then wait a couple ticks for poison to proc. If it doesn't, before my energy caps out, I shiv and then mutilate. If your tank's tps is an issue, I think garrote is a good option, but it will do less damage than your other opener options.

On a side note, has it been discussed before whether using shiv only in the rare case where your stack is about to fall off is worth it? I understand its damage per energy output is low, but if used only in this case it seems it would be highly valuable. This is assuming a raid setting with DP offhand and WF mainhand.

About the CB part - i prefer using it when FW is up.
Also preferring the opener-snd-(cb?)muti .. no matter what the opener is, don't like to waste time without SnD.

Another factor to consider is that on many (most?) fights, the extra gain from ambush instead of an unpoisoned Mut could well be offset by the increased time to run into position while stealthed.

Many? I don't know about that.

In BT you can probably easily ambush Naj'entus, Gorefiend, Akama of course, Bloodboil, Shahraz, and Illidari Council (if assigned to dps Gathios). All of these are fights where you are pretty much waiting for tank to get the boss in the right position first anyway. Supremus is probably iffy, and Reliquary seems very doubtful. I can't comment on Illidan.

Naj i tried to garrote before, but always got aoed 2 seconds after entering combat. Might be just my luck though...
Gore.. sure, possible.
Akama acceptable
BB not an issue...
Mom doable as well.
Council i can't comment, always been on that bloody priest add. =/
On Supremus i usually go make some food...
Reliq.. hm, got more than enough time to run there.

So, yes its possible, but don't like the idea of ambush. (The thought of getting 1 CP from a skill after being muti for over a year now makes me sick :P)

well, if you're threat-capped for the first few seconds you're in range (I assume that's what you're referring to with the positioning comment) then the point is moot anyway....if you pick a lower damage opener you can just start slightly earlier.

I'm actually calculating a higher DPE with Garrote than with (untalented) Ambush for most gear levels. This is assuming 25% armor mitigation by the boss, which is actually probably a low estimate since the boss probably isn't going to be fully sundered and such by the time you use your opener. This of course is subject to other raid debuffs and passive armor penetration. I'd be happy to try this at different armor values if someone thinks my estimation of 25% is not good.

Even if Ambush does slightly pass Garrote in DPE, it might still be worthwhile to use Garrote anyway because 1) you are spending less energy so you can get your cycle started more quickly; 2) there is no worry of a huge threat spike from a crit Ambush, so you could feasibly use your opener earlier.

On the other hand, Garrote can't earn you 2 combo points.

I haven't done the calculation with daggers, but I know with combat swords it is definitely worthwhile to use Shiv to save a poison stack from falling off. Shiv actually has a surprisingly "decent" DPE when used with very fast swords, maces, or fist weapons because it is affected by Dual Wield Specialization, has a 20% chance of proccing Combat Potency, and perhaps most importantly is a normalized attack (and thus gains 2.4 speed worth of AP despite being a 1.4-1.5 speed weapon).

However, I would have to guess that it's not worthwhile to use Shiv with Mutilate. You'd probably be using a slower dagger (1.8 speed, thus higher energy cost for Shiv), it would be normalized at 1.7 instead of 2.4, and you wouldn't get the benefit of Combat Potency. However this is just speculation.

It's probably sufficient to compare the DPE of a Shiv + poisoned Mutilate, and compare it to simply an unpoisoned Mutilate. It would at least give a reasonably close answer, if we can assume a poison proc would occur within the 6 seconds before your energy caps again for the second Mutilate.

Incorrect, they're normalised at 1.7 as drumbum stated.

Here's a question that I'm sure belongs here and in the DPS spreadsheet thread, but I'm a mutilate fan and enjoy reading this thread more . After equipping the t4 helm - which I do no have yet - in place of Mask of the Deceiver and in conjunction with the T4 gloves and all the new badge loot (chest, belt, pants...I currently have T4 pants + Gloves) I have X amount of DPS. However, after breaking my current T4 2pc by using the new badge pants I gain substantial DPS increase. Furthermore, upon reinstating T4 2pc with the helm, I lose significant DPS and am supposedly better off w/o the bonus at all (and am therefore better off with the Trickster's Stickyfingers in palce of T4). I was wondering why this is. Is it because the spreadsheet thinks that longer SnD's = less FW uptime?? I can't really see a problem having longer SnD's. In fact, it just solidifies the notion that it will ALWAYS be up. Says my cycle is 3-4 SnD/5-5 Rupt w/o the bonus, and I believe it's 2-4 SnD/5-5 Rupt with the bonus.

The simple (and I believe correct) answer is that badge pieces are higher quality than T4, such that the 2-piece T4 set bonus doesn't offset the loss of DPS in downgrading your gear to get it. On a more speculative note, I'd imagine the 2-piece T4 is less useful for Mut rogues than for combat rogues.

that makes sense, thanks. i wasnt overly concerned with it, just something that caught my eye, and with the amount of CPs being generated its not overly difficult to keep snd up...i think i actually played mut better than cswords :S

The spreadsheet is currently somewhat bugged with respect to SnD and Mutilate. The Improved SnD talent, along with anything else that affects SnD (such as 2pT4) actually hurts DPS because SnD cutting isn't properly modeled for Mutilate. At some point, that needs to be looked at, and it is a known issue. However, the results are only 1-2% off, maximum, so it isn't terrible.

I generally just disable Imp. SnD (even if I have it) when I'm looking at a Mutilate build.

The big thing for me with 120 energy isn't double mutilates, it's the extra energy reserve to have a Gouge after doing CS / Mutilate / KS / Mutilate. The extra energy lets me very consistently Gouge to restealth and reopen.

For me this is the huge boon of imp Gouge as well, the possibility of dropping combat during the time your target is gouged is huge for raw control, you can move directly into a sap and all.