The 35 point talent in Combat gives a chance to daze the target. With a similar talent in the Mage Fire tree, it seems the 41 point talent should have something to do with adding damage when the target is dazed.

Also, I hope they change the 41 pointers. ATM, they don't seem better then the current 30 pointers.

However, there is hope since 3 classes don't even have talents. Lots of time to change.

There's only one mage ability that lets you daze someone - that's the AE spell Blastwave, centered on the caster, on a 45 second cooldown.

Makes the mage talent slightly wierd looking in effect, especially the way it's worded. It seems to pretty much rely exclusively on someone else dazing a target at the moment.

For one, I like consistency, for two, not all targets will be level 73. The more consistent combo point generation for stunning adds etc outweighs +2 skill for one talent point in my mind.

These will both provide higher raid PvE dps than your builds:

Swords: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

Daggers:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

You're assuming you wont be fighting humanoids, beasts, dragonkin and giants in the expansion. But yeah, you're right, you're probably better off dropping the point in weapon specializations than the point in DW spec.

What really pisses me off is the fact that as it stands right now, a PvE raiding sword rogue has no use for ANY expansion talents. That should be a huge red flag for Blizzard, we'll see.

One thing to note is the chance for poisons to hit talent will not be as good as it is now, since Windfury will be there for everyone.

I would rather get the slaying talent and the increase damage of poisons talent (since using Deadly Poison will be cool with having 40 debuff slots). The mob preview has lots of those types of monsters. Although the talent is missing Demons and Elementals, which there are a fair share of to kill.

Hope they allow poisons effect elementals(especially now with mutilate), given deep wounds seems to afflict them just fine.

I think there's a bunch of orcs in their service, too.

dumb orcs

Here's a slightly different question. What spec do you think would be best for leveling, though?

If there isn't significant changes to swords vs daggers from the current implementation, I know I'll be looking to pick up some sweet daggers on the way to lvl 70. But, before then, I'll still be swords or maces for leveling purposes.
Was thinking of something like this, and just grinding slightly lower level casters, like the good old days. At 60, http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...000000000#none

I took endurance because, barring an unforeseen perfect leveling spot with 100% solo casters, you tend to have a few melee scattered throughout even a heavy caster area. I.e. the orc camp outside blackrock mountain. Evasion basically eliminates the downtime if used on a single mob. Or, when I've got BF at lvl 63, evasion + BF lets me take on a few mobs at once with relatively little risk.

Otherwise, the idea is to do a cheap shot, SnD, then SS to 3-5 cps, and either kidney shot or evisc/disembowel depending on circumstance.

I took remorseless attacks, just cause I feel like I want it to not be useless. I've never done the math on how much dps it adds even under ideal circumstances though. If your grinding the right mobs, with lower HP, I think the spike damage potential is pretty decent. I'm still not sold on the idea though. Not much else to take to improve dps though.

By lvl 69, http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...000000000#none

This is just a grinding build. At 70, would respec to some kind of better sustained dps build, of course.

I think you should still be using SnD, even without the talent.

Your AP is a bit lower than I'd look for to succeed with Hemo. 1k unbuffed would be nice to see.

a. More than that, actually. Figuring (we have similar unbuffed AP) that you're sitting around 1600 buffed, it's a 160 AP bonus. 160/14*1.5*1.3*.84*1.3 = 25 *white* DPS upgrade, plus the bonuses to your energy-derived damage. It'll make up a good portion of that 20%.
c. Your finisher rotation sucks. 5s/5r. Yes, non-combat builds should still generally use SnD for raiding in preference to anything else.

edit: You specced for PVP. Of course your damage is going to be low. There are PvE hemo specs that keep up, and they generally favor the talents you'd think they'd favor - you still pick up Imp SnD, for instance.

Thank you guys. I dont want to derail this thread into a "help ghost l2p" thread anymore than it has been. I'll try out SnD and if it shows success will try and fit a few points into the talent as well. :)

I guess I should clarify, our AQR hemo rogue kept up on a full clear, but he was right below combat daggers on a razuvius kill, by a small margin (until the 40k backstabs :P). It's significantly better on trash than daggers IMO.

And yeah, keep SnD going.

If you 'try it out' and it doesn't work, then you need to get better at using it. If your only doing 400 dps, a low number even for a hemo spec and your gear, a 1 pt, untalented SnD can do ~540 damage. That's a really conservative estimate too. Evisc and rupture don't come close to that. 1 pt rank 9 eviscerate does 224-332 base, for 10 more energy then SnD. Rupture, rank 6, does 272 damage for the same energy cost. Both of them go a little higher with gear and talents, but so does SnD, so I was just comparing base stats. SnD scales better then either one, so it just gets worse as you factor these things in anyway.

Your going to want to do lead off fights with a 1pt SnD, then go from there. Some fights you'll build up to 5 pts just as the 1 pt wears off, then do a 5pt SnD and squeeze in a evisc/rupture during the SnD time. Ideally, your back at 5 pts just as the previous 5 pt SnD wears off, to get it again. Basically, keep SnD up 100% of the time, but minimize any 'wasted' SnD time by overlapping SnD.

On trash, you can't always do this, and you really have to be knowledgable about exactly how long a mob is going to live to get the most use out of your finishers and energy.

I don't remember TBH, but whatever the gap was it was small enough to still be in the Rogue section of the meters. :) But yeah, it was a damage loss on a fight like that from Combat Swords. I don't think the gap going from CS to Hemo is as wide as CD to SF though, which is how I measure those builds against each other (pve-focused vs. pvp-focused).

Has anyone else pointed out the possibility of a 31/8/22 build?

Like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=fGe0oxxoVzZGcZV0eccok

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't seal fate plus preparation seem grossly overpowered for pvp?

And yes, Surprise Attacks seems extremely underwhelming (to say the least). It's like they were trying to create a replacement effect (the MtG player in me pops up once again :D) for dodge, but forgot that you have to replace it with something *good*. Maybe if dodge was replaced with guaranteed crit? But even then it's only 5% of your BS/SS/Gouge that are dodged and you only waste 11 energy on a dodged BS, so it wouldn't help your damage all that much. Maybe if it applied to *all* attacks, we would be in business...

I think, given the current situation of talents, that 31/8/22 will be bar none THE best pvp build for nearly all situations. You have excellent burst damage from daggers and you can again take full imp ambush. Seal Fate AND initiative will mean that ambush will open with 3 cps most of the time. You get prep which is as close to an I win button as rogues are going to get. You have 1/2 dirty deeds AND vigor, which means you can pull off some fairly elaborate stunlocks. I would take elusiveness and full serrated blades over imp sap personally, but I think thats a choice you have to make. More or less you get almost all of the best PvP talents we have, you get great combo point generation, highly damaging special attacks...

What more can you ask for really? I doubt even 41 subtlety will be better except in that you can completely avoid spells once every 3 minutes. If I go daggers PvP, it will certainly be 31/8/22.

If BC raids were as combat-dagger friendly as current raids, and had the same sort of boss mobs, i'd probably do:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

with the 25 man change (meaning rogues will need to add more utility, probably), i'm not sure how it's going to shake out. The build above is pretty much just a BC'd version of current combat daggers, with a little bit of fun thrown in (fleet footed instead of pure-dps like poisons, and imp sprint instead of parry) to make yourself more mobile for the encounters in which moving around is probably going to be more important than it currently is. (ok, and its a bit of a guilty nod for some pvp fun too )

I tend to think that 5/5 SF and 1/2 weap ex would probably be better, as the +skill loss can be made up through gear, while the SF loss can't.

Edit: I suppose that 2/2 weap ex would come out ahead if +skill itemization is as lousy in late xpack as it is now.

My assumption is that + skill will be slightly more common come the expansion. That said you get the most bang for your buck with 1 WE than 2 , where as SF is linear and as Nonplussed noted, cant be made up in other fields.