Originally Posted by songster

OK, first thing is that if you are using daggers you should never be using Sinister Strike. Get behind the mob and use backstab. Sinister Strike is a skill that's used with slow, hard-hitting weapons. Next, you shouldn't generally shiv in PvE content. Shiv is a very low-damage move whose only benefit is that it applies poison. Its main use is in PvP combat, to make sure you get crippling poison (or wounding poison etc.) onto an opponent.

For combat daggers, you should use backstab to build combo points, keep SnD running, and spend any extra energy / combo points on Rupture. Combat swords/fists/maces are the same, except you use Sinister Strike rather than backstab.

That would be a very very bad idea, for much the same reason. Latro's is an extremely fast sword (fastest in the game, in fact). You use it in your offhand so as to get lots of poison procs and combat potency procs. However, because it is fast, the damage per hit is low, which means the Sinister Strike damage will also be low. For combat swords/fists/maces, you want the slowest main hand weapon you can get and the fastest offhand weapon you can get. It's as simple as that.