... which are all blue.

Have a look at the current Itemization: How many really good Epic Offhand Swords are there on live for a Combat Potency skilled Rogue? I count 2, the Warbalde of the Hakkari and Iblis. And according to pf's spreadsheet the Warblade is worse than Core Hound Tooth even without any points in dagger spec. In contrast to that there are three epic daggers of speed 1.7 or faster, and the 1.8 daggers are also decent albeit not optimal choices for an offhand.

Looking at the weapons that are known on the beta servers, the trend seems to continue. There are epic daggers of 1.4 speed or faster (including one of the arena rewards), while there is no epic fist or sword faster than 1.6.

I am not claiming 16/45 Claw-Dagger-Combat to be the be-all-end-all combat rogue build, just an option worth considering since currently you loose almost nothing by obtaining Dagger Specialization.

The talent description explicitly states the proc chance. Do you have reason to believe that it is incorrect?

you talk about stuff that didnt drop, i just said there drops stuff suitable...

and if you go after trends of known items from beta... sorry, but then we wont see any sword combat speccs, cause the only good MH swords known are those pvp'D, crafted or dropped from netherspite....

Nothnig else then the fact that it then forces rogues to only take fast offhands, and as stated. ther aint all that many epics that is verry fast in the game atm.

Edit: yeh, I ment for non-dagger rogues

sorry to say, but you wont die using a blue 70 dps offhand for some time.... dont be so narrow minded...

Not like there haven't been itemization gaps for MH swords in the past, like between AQR and Gressil...

Basically one of two things can happen:
a) On all tiers of loot the fastest offhand sword will be as fast as the fastest offhand dagger.
b) On some/most/all tiers of loot the fastest offhand dagger will be faster than the fastest offhand sword.

Combining
- current itemization
- known beta itemization
- in RL daggers are a faster weapon and Blizzard just might want to model that somewhat in its game

I would dare to speculate that alternative b) is more likely.

Pastasaus just stated a - correct - observation. No need to insult him.

The problem here is if the OH-swords can not keep up with the daggers speedwise, this will create "item-bottlenecks".

For example currently the best offhand available for a regular 11/40/0 sword rogue going into Naxxramas is the Blessed Quiraji Pugio. It's bad enough if all dagger rogues want the thing, there does not need to be any further competition.

Before the introduction of Combat Potency Sword Rogues would stick to OH swords for the most part, even if daggers were available that were somewhat superior statwise, since sword specialization would make up for these deficits. With Combat Potency entering the picture this might no longer be enough.

1.8, Spanky.

Ack, my mistake.

Don't get me wrong, the 1.8 speed is still pretty decent, especially given the stats on the sword. It's not going to be the best for squeezing out the most -- but how many sustained fights are there really going to be on the way to 70? Most 5-man fights are going to be over and done in a few minutes, one of the places where DPS cycles are going to be truncated... So, a 1.8 speed offhand with good stats will still be very good, and you still get a bit of sword spec out of it.

Has anyone done formal testing in beta with shiv? Ming claims Shiv cannot be dodged or parried, and the poison application cannot be resisted (with regards to crippling anyway, not sure what he claims about partial Instant resists).

The poison application from shiv can definitely be resisted and I'm pretty sure I've had a dodge or two.

DSM and I just did some controlled testing of it.

Poison application is *definitely* resistable.

Doesn't appear to be dodgeable, though; I had evasion up with a base dodge of 23% (so 73% overall dodge) and never dodged it once over several Evasion periods.

(Oh, and the normalization is also by weapon type, so, daggers get fucked again!)

I have some questions about spec and dps cycles going into TBC 5mans as a lvl60 with a 44/0/7 spec.

I realize talking about dps cycles in 5 mans is a bit of a non sequitur, since dps cycles are for near 100% time on target encounters, and those are rarely the case in 5mans, especially trash. But when KS isn’t up, and a mob has lots of health left, I’m a little confused as to which finisher is the top choice.

I recall Kalman mentioning something in this thread (I think) about how without Imp. SnD in a mutilate build, Imp. Evisc might put out better dps than non-imp. SnD. But at lvl62 we get Envenom, which is suppose to be a better finisher for a mutilate build with Vile Poisons than Evisc (assuming 5 stacks of DP). So post lvl62 are we just going to be spamming KS and Envenom, with the occasional SnD when there’s multiple mobs and your target is about to die? Is there even a point to having Imp. Evisc post lvl62? Or do you still stick an Evisc in there waiting for your 5stacks to build in 5mans (I imagine Evisc gets more use soloing when you can kill your mob easily before the 5 DP stacks build)? Or is SnD still the reigning finisher even non-improved?

Sorry if this post is erroneous or plain old stupid, but I haven’t experienced beta and I’m trying to get a feel for what to expect in TBC.

Whoa whoa. Not all talents are good for all players, ok sure. But the daze thing is not good for ANY player. Do you really think someone is going to go deep combat in a pvp build just for a small chance to daze on specials? You're out of your mind.

The WE buff is basically pointless. WE is not effective anymore and it will take more than an extra 5 points of it to make rogues a viable dps choice again.

I don't bother with Imp Evis in my Mutilate specs once I have Envenom. Soloing, I rarely had a point where I had 5 CP I wanted to spend on Envenom without having 5 layers up, due to KS being better for the first finisher anyway.

I've pretty much made up my mind. Barring a massive buff to the rogue class including some utility, especially CC, I'm going shaman in the expansion. There is just no reason to be a rogue at present, and really I could use a change after 7 years of playing a rogue.]

That said, I'm sure rogues will be viable in raids at some point in the future. It might be a long time or it might be just a couple months after release, but it will happen. I just don't want to stick around and wait for that time.

People are underestimating the importance of speed on the number of procs for a fixed percentage mechanic like Combat Potency. While a 1.6 speed weapon procs 12% more than a 1.8, a 1.3 speed one procs 38% more. That is definitely a noticable difference.

Med-Longish time lurker here.
Although not directly related to Rogue abilities & talents I made a small discovery on beta before the servers went down last night.

As a level 70 Rogue on beta I decided on a whim to go and hit Highlord Taelan Fordring in Hearthglen. (as you do)
I found that, although he is still level 63 and shows up as a green level to me, he lands crushing blows and some of my white hits glance.

17% (26/152) of attacks were crushing and 41% (139/339) attacks glanced (for roughly 87.2% non-glance damage)
This is including misses/dodges/etc.
I have 350 defense, 349 main (fist) skill & 350 off (sword) skill. No weapon expertise.

Anyway this seems to support a crush/glance flag that is independent of the 'boss' flag or enemy weapon skill as Patchwerk (and Loatheb from what I've heard) seem to support.

That also occurs on the Silithus elite bugs, often the level 60 ones will give glancing blows. Also with the style of that questline it is not surprising that he is more powerful than his level indicates.

On another note, with Kaubel closing off a few of the other TBC class threads, how do you guys think the rogue class has come along?

PvP specs seem to make more sense than they did before, and Mutilate has given a bit of a change in style for the Combat Daggers. Hemo will lose out some with the lack of extremely slow weapons, and everyone will have greater health pools.

Overall though the feeling on the last few pages seems to be negative. Is it a case of wait for itemisation or are there still some major issues that should be addressed?

Nearly every rogue worth thier salt that I know has decided to play another class in the expansion. Sadly, I am the class lead for my guild and I'm pretty much saddled to this class. My GM understands the problems with the class and that it is pretty much a dead end at this point. He made me aware that I would be able to raid with my shadow-priest at end game and still have a slot if things didn't change. It's that bad.

As far as waiting for itemization to try to fix class issues... Weapons are the only itemization pieces that can make a difference for our class because we scale piss poor with every stat. Weapons unfortunately are not class specific. Weapons make every melee (and ranged) class stronger. Talents and mechanics are what make a class viable, not itemization/weapons.

This class has serious raid synergy, viability and scaling issues. The class has had these problems since weapon skill was nerfed into the ground as it was the only thing equalizing us with other damage classes in pve. The class at end game is literally dead and all of the smart players have seen the writing on the wall for a while. I'm not exactly sure what Blizzard wants us to do. I would love to get an explaination for the absolute abandonment of the class on a pve-raid level.

I feel like I've wasted a lot of time on this character at the moment.

:(

I'm torn right now, I really enjoyed playing paladin in beta, but I don't want to intrude on longtime members for a raid spot since we're likely to have 3-4 active paladins initially. We're definitely losing a couple rogues though(two to shaman re-rolls, possibly me if I switch to paladin), so we'll be down to maybe 2-3 active. I'm probably going to just pull double time and level my rogue and paladin, mostly playing my paladin when the rest of my group is on and instancing and such, and then switching to my rogue when hardly anyone is on and just solo grinding quests.

I'm doing it for two reasons: for one, one of our paladins is still unsure if he's going to have the time to play, so if he does I'll just stick with rogue. And secondly, because I'm a very self-sufficient person, so having my rogue at 70 to gather stuff for gems and whatnot is pretty huge; I'll likely end up putting my first epic flying mount on my rogue since I'll be doing a lot of the "farming" as a rogue - paladin didn't feel too great at farming even at 70.