Wait just a cotton pickin' minute. You're telling me you bound your left turn to a mouse thumb button in some strange Derek Zoolander-esque move and now can't turn right? That's pretty odd. I want to know how you'd end up binding your keys if you ever played the Descent videogame series.
edit- I might warn you those Nagrand pillars are going to be a bitch if your opponent decides to kite you clockwise

I think 1/2 Heightened Senses is a reasonable use of that point.

Your spec is decent if you expect to be focused. Previously in this thread (or was it the PMR one?) there was a discussion about this- snare resist is better if you expect to be free to act, stun resist is better if you expect to be focused.

In my 4dps team (bets on whether 4dps is going to prosper in S3 is a different question) I'm never focused, ergo 5/5 deadliness > stun resist, runspeed meta and surefooted on boots.

This is also a strong factor making me want to try Mutilate (that I think it's 100x more fun); you may only have one Sprint/Vanish, but you do also get 20% snare resist with 15% movement speed, which is pretty damn nice...

Hey, with moves like Blue Steel why would I ever need to go right?

(I can go right, its just strafing right requires me to hold down a key).

i think hemo is a little OP at 125% and i don't think the 15% nerf will be a big deal.

He was asking whether or not to put 5/5 in Malice or Deadliness, that is a decision between 5% crit or +10%ap, I was saying when gemmed and enchanted with AP in mind, you get more offensive gains from 10%ap than 5% crit. My PvE comment was merely to add to the argument, that if you didn't want to respec every time you do any PvE, then 10%ap is even stronger than 5% crit as the buffs start to add up.

By all means socket for 8agility, +10%ap is still stronger than 5% crit.

Actually, it is a big deal. Hemo is now nerfed even more before it was even buffed, which is silly. PvE rogues will also be now returning to vanilla combat swords instead of the added flavor of hemo. The only part about hemo which makes it feel op is only when it's spammed in conjunction with AR.

I don't understand your argument about Dirty Deeds. The 20% extra damage you get does not get more benefit from AP than hit. The only reason rogues don't use any hit rating in PvP is because it's hard capped at 80 for specials.

If they had removed AR from Prep then it would've been even worse.

Well exactly.

Assumption: Arena rogues are hit capped on specials.
Fact: Dirty Deeds 20% extra damage only affects specials.

Based on that, obviously, AP is far better than Hit Rating when the target is under 35% HP!

What he said.

I'm anxiously awaiting how they change the Hemo debuff. Would be amazing to have them switch things up and have it be a stackable -healing debuff or something, but I doubt it.

Very useful. Because it helps in the matchups I need it the most (warriors). I have mod (SCT I think) says 'RIPOSTE' in large letters above my head when I parry, so I almost never miss one.

I'm not finding myself missing improved kick much. Honestly, it only ever helped out much when you use it proactively for a 2 sec silence. But the spell school lock out and interruption effect are more important anyway.

Agreed, my spec is a more survivability rather than DPS spec. My point was, there are three possible specs for AR/Prep now.

A) 4/33/24 - Nerves of Steel/Malice
B) 0/33/28 - Nerves of Steal/3 Deadliness
C) 0/31/30 - 5 Deadliness

I think A and C are both good, but for different reasons, I just think A > B.

Well after being mutilate for two full seasons I finally gave in and jumped on the bandwagon. I feel that the arena environment has shifted even further away from crit-based burst and that mutilate just wasn't cutting it any longer. The problem is that I am unable to hit 1850 without being AR/Prep to obtain the weapons that will enable me to hit 1850 rating. So instead I just ground out some honor for s1 maces to practice. All of this means I'm a total newb at the spec and am looking for some pointers.

My current strategy is to just pick some target that can't bubble and stunlock/rushdown them. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I'm getting the sense that there's something important I'm missing and I'd be grateful if someone could point it out.

Not really. Just use your cooldowns to stay on target and hold back on the ARs. Those and the BFs are the tactical bit IMO.

I.e.: Get on target, spam stuff, get an SnD going, get feared/poly'd/stuff a few times, use escapes/trinket. When you feel you have enough "diminishing returns armor" to stay on target reasonably, pop the first AR. Hopefully your target is getting towards 35% by then anyway and you can psuedo-burst them down.

The key to AR/Prep is the Prep, not the AR. With 2 x Sprint, 2 x Vanish, CoS weaved in when it's up and trinket, you can't really be controlled AT ALL before you're protected by DR. So for the first full minute of the match, or so, you can stay on your target. I'd go mutilate in a SECOND if it had this sort of snare/control protection.

That's my general policy anyway, I'm not denying that tips from longer time AR/Prepers would be good too, I don't like the lack of finesse in the spec either...

Oh and use your blind early and you'll easily get a second or third later. Even if it forces a trinket use, that can be very valuable.

What about 33/28 Nerves of Steel/Master of Subtletly? I realize you'd have even less sustained power than 3/5 Deadliness or 4/5 Malice, and you'd have to use Vanish offensively to get the most out of it instead of saving it to break a snare. But I think you'd put even more pressure if you catched them off-guard on the opener, and Vanish->CS in Dirty Deeds range would also be deadlier.

Are poison procs affected by spell penetration if they are affected by resists?

In light of the upcoming Hemo nerf, is it viable to go 0/31/30 Sinister Strike AR/Prep?

That is to say, would you expect the PvP damage/energy from Sinister Strikes (with Aggression and Imp SS, but no Surprise Attacks) to be better or worse than the damage/energy of Hemo in the traditional AR/Prep build?

I realize there are other considerations (combo point generation, debuff), but has anyone run the damage/energy numbers?

Hemo, with the debuff and increased CP generation, is still more damage after the nerf.

After reading a few posts about daggers with hemo/prep I tried playing around with a build for it. I'm in the same boat as previous posters-in the sense that I have the s2 daggers and have played mutilate for the last 2 seasons. I've never gone prep and would like to try it out but don't feel like dropping 35k honor on some s1 maces/swords.

The big issue with daggers is the CP gen, what do you guys think of this build?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Not having imp backstab seems to gimp it a lot

I was toying with the idea of switching out deadliness or heightened senses for setup, which may help the CP issues a bit? Again, I have 0 experience with the sub tree so any input would be great

Any thoughts?

You are kidding, right? The combo points you'd generate with a Sword, Fist or Mace is the same as you'd generate with a Dagger since Hemo is 35 energy regardless of what weapon you use. Even though its normalized, daggers use 1.7 speed as it's base speed and Sword/Fist/Mace use 2.4, and that's even before taking the Weapon damage of the actual weapon into consideration.

Hemo with a dagger is no better than Sinister Striking with a dagger, which is horrible. Go mutilate or 30/0/31 if you want to use daggers for PvP.

I realize this topic has been beaten to death in the various PvP threads, but since my 2v2 (Disc priest, Mut rogue) is still on the lower end of the ratings (1700ish) I think we can do better against this setup.

So far, we've tried two main strategies: a) I stay on the druid as much as possible. Usually requires burning my sprint to catch up with travel form and wasted stuns. On the off chance I do stick on the Druid for a little while, the warrior will get off my Priest buddy and Intercept and Hamstring me, leaving me quite useless. b) I attack the warrior and I can't kill him fast enough because of the druids heals. We've tried to MC and Fear the druid to force a trinket so I can blind him and he can't heal while I take down the warrior, but I usually can't do it fast enough.

Obviously, if I was AR/prep and had another sprint and vanish it would help tremendously, but I haven't had the drop luck or spare points to go with that spec yet. Anyway, I realize this setup is the rock to my scissors, but if I'm missing anything I'd appreciate it.

After doing 4 dps as shadowstep/assassination up to 1850s it is really nice to have shadowstep to get to your target or for a quick switch to another. Also playing against a 5 warlock team and seeing 5 shadowburn debuffs and still being alive makes me want to never respec out of cheat death again.

Any reason you don't show up in Armory? Wanted to check your stats/spec ...

Am I right in thinking that 20/0/41 is more sustained DPS than 0/31/30? I imagine 0/20/41 definitely is...

Top 11-16 points in Assassination are all good damage points, as is DW spec in Combat. Losses from AR/Prep with the 41 specs are mainly Blade Flurry, AR and Mace Spec, none of which affect sustained dps (well Mace Spec does, very slightly).

I am tempted to try 20/0/41 - Vile Poisons, Malice/Lethality, Shadowstep, Cheat Death (not that I die much in my 5s team as yet) and of course Sinister Calling should take my crit rate well over 30% ... which would be nice ...