Imp Ambush scenarios:

First, the gear check: I am using a shard of Azzinoth from Illidan, which ups the ol' ambush by a fair amount. Even versus resilience, I have a ball-park 64% chance or so for it to crit which is helpful - usually 1100-1300 on non-crits. Fruther, 120 energy ensures that I can follow up with a mutilate and now will have four or five combo points generated within approx. two seconds.

Talent check: Having fleet-footed and the 3 points in camo talent is huge. I've noticed that players will not see me on their client side until I am in place and already ambushing.

Amazing scenarios: I've found it helps lure a trinket if I sap a healer, then ambush a soft target - the sudden loss of 15-25% makes the healer skittish and now open for blind, then sheep.

Second AS: As part of a called burst once imp. KS is called out for focus. Have the 5 combo points, let energy tick back up then KS. I then Mutilate once, vanish, ambush again and now have 4-5 points available for a CB evisc as needed. Bear in mind the first ambush and mut recieve +10% from find weakness as well as an additional 9% from Imp. KS. If timed right I can sneak in the Evisc within the 6 seconds as well.

I simply don't understand why don't you just mutilate 2nd time instead of ambush? Both cost same energy, mutilate doesn't require you to be in stealth (wasting vanish for silly ambush), it can give you 3CP if either of the hands crit + the crit chance is almost same compared to imp. ambush when considering that just only one of your mutilate hands need to crit, and onehand mutilate crit does same damage than ambush crit, not even talking about double hand mutilate crit.

This is true, and although I haven't tried Ambush thoroughly myself, I would expect a scenario in arenas to open with CS or sap > garrote.

You can make the most out of ambush and imp ambush when the target is at 30% health and pop trinket, vanish ShS > ambush, then use prep and do it all over again if the target is not dead. Of course this is very situational and won't work when you have dots on you.

Speaking of a ShS dagger build, and with the sinister calling talent, and deadliness talent, I am curious as to stack AP gems or AGI gems, or other gems?

I'm quite sure that agility gems are the best when talking about ShS gemming (Sinister Calling and Deadliness), agility gems just have really really good synergy with both talents and AP gems only have with Deadliness.

I ambush because it has a much higher chance to crit, and it hits noticeably harder. Larger hits can spook some people to doing silly things like popping trinket "just because".

So far tonight: Largest mute crit: 2119. Largest Ambush: 2907.

Not sure what you might be doing wrong but my mainhand mutilate crit is between 2000-3000, add there 1000-1500 offhand crit (/w opportunity) and you have pretty much blown away ambush damage. Add top of that the fact that mutilate crit gives you 3CP over ambush crit which gives you only 2CP. If I remember right, with base 25% crit chance your mutilate has about 47% chance to crit for 3CP (you only need to crit with one hand to gain SF proc). Higher your crit chance goes, worse the Imp. ambush scales compared to mutilate. With T6 trinket and prober gemming you can have about 40% crit chance which means with mutilate you have about 70-80% chance to proc SF (?), while adding 40% crit + 45% Imp. ambush you only get about 85% crit chance.

My mutilate definetly hits harder than ambush hits, not even talking about critting (and gaining 1 extra CP). At this moment (before next patch hits live), I don't see any point using ambush over mutilate.

On a different note though Ekval, what does your resil hover around? I've been having trouble balancing out keeping resil above 400, hit above 112, crit above 30%. One more BT clear and I will be able to pick up the crit trinket you suggested, and I am going to switch boot enchants to surefooted most likely given the run speed within the tree and the stacking snare resists. Thoughts?

Does anyone really drop big ruptures in Arena? Even with Serrated I never really did...

I really don't use it seriously besides from keeping other rogues to vanish.

Depends which gear I run with, full PvP or my hybrid PvE/PvP gear. With full PvP gear I'm hovering in ~350 resilience (which seems to be enough), only 87hr, 34% crit. With hybrid ~200 resilience, 130hr, 36% crit. Add in T6 trinket with really high uptime and your CP's are flying. Surefooted is the real boot enchant for mutilate for sure but haven't decide if the 12crit + 5snare metagem is worth of it over 12agi + 3% crit dmg.

Been thinking the same and probably staying with 50/0/11 spec. I rarely rupture in arenas and poison talents are powerful for mutilate.

I rarely rupture in arenas as well, but wouldn't the armor ignore from serrated blades be a big enough reason for it?

So lets assume that I would go for 43/0/18 spec, which one is better to take 3/5 Improved Poisons or 3/3 Improved Kidney Shot? I found out that both Vile Poisons and Master Poisoner are superior compared to Imp. Poisons but just can't decide usefulness of between 3/5 Imp. Poisons vs 3/3 Imp. KS. Imp. Poisons help alot with Mutilates poison application issues (therefore probably increase your overall Mutilate damage) but Imp. KS is quite nice synergy between Find Weakness etc.

- Imp. Poison variation
- Imp. Kidney Shot variation

3 pts into Imp poisons is only 6% extra chance to apply poisons, which takes you from a 1 in 5 chance to apply a poison to a little bit less than 1 in 4 chance. As mutilate, you should have no problems applying poisons anyway. IMO I would spec imp KS because that's extra damage from every attack from all sources and because you won't notice a 6% extra chance to proc poisons.

Thanks for helping out with decision, I'm quite confident to go with 43/0/18 with Imp. KS. If the Imp. Poison talent is that "weak" as you stated I don't see it that big loss.

Why is Master Poisoner (especially the second point) so good? Doesn't it do nothing offensively in PvP?

Is the general view at the moment: Vile > Master > Imp ?

I mostly take the second point in MP for 15% more poison resist which is in my mind quite underrated talent overall. You can get near 50% Crippling Poison resist with all Fleet Footed + metagem/Surefooted + 2/2 MP. That is quite big factor against other rogues in arenas, not even talking about how hard it is to stack 5x Wound Poison against 2/2 MP.

My personal preference is MP > VP > IP.

Backstabbing in Arena in its current (or 2.3.2) form is not viable. Fin.

Might be slightly off-topic but I just want everyone's opinion on what two builds two rogues should be on the same arena team for maximum synergy in terms of: Burst DPS, consistent DPS, poison application, mobility (getting and staying on your target for example), and CC.

I am currently running Rogue/Rogue/Druid on my team and we have beaten the Merciless Gladiator team in our battlegroup (which consisted of Warlock/Warrior/Druid when we played them). Due to the new changes for 2.3.2, neither me or my partner want to spec AR/prep (Duh), and we were thinking about my partner speccing full mutilate and me shadowstep maces.

We both believe this is the best synergy of 2 rogue builds on the same team because it provides excellent mobility, poison application, great burst and consistent pressure along with amazing CC. I want to know everyone's opinions on exactly what specs would go the best together because we have yet to try these builds on the PTR (which we will be doing later today).

I would appreciate it if you guys gave some helpful suggestions because this is all we could come up with, and we don't know how effective this setup will be with the upcoming changes (cough NERFS cough) to our class. Thanks.

I'd say mutilate + combat maces. Shadowstep has more synergy with partners that offer more burst and can switch targets easier, ie mages and warriors, not really rogues as we all know.

Not be a downer on your CC, but 2 rogue / druid is horrible CC. Your druid is going to have a lot of time at the beginning of the battle to cyclPWN multiple targets while your evasions and cloaks mitigate and free you up, however when it comes time for that clutch Blind you will likely be on some sort of Diminishing Returns due to the cycloning.

A rogue by the name of Tosan released a video not too long ago containing his journeys to Gladiator ranking in a 2 rogue setup. Both were spec'd Subtlety Mutilate and it was simply amazing to watch. It showed off how 2 rogues with basically on demand finishers could tag team any class with ease. It really sold me on the synergy of double mutilate rogues in a group.

Tosan Twos: Renataki Twins (Rogue/Rogue 2v2) By Tosan is the link to the movie if you care to watch it

Problem with double mutilate is a poison immune target is a nigh invincible one, just too many damn dwarven priests and druids in 2v2 and 3v3 to endorse double mutilate in my opinion.

If you have two Rogues, why not just use Wound Poison + Deadly Poison on one, and Crippling Poison + Wound Poison on the other? Dwarfs would be an issue depending on what the other class is you could probably stall for the 8s needed before it wears off, but a Druid isn't going to be able to keep up with Wound Poison + Deadly Poison stack while shape shifting.

It takes 8 seconds for a Druid for a Druid to remove 5 Poisons, or 1.5 seconds per one if they spam Abolish Poison but it means they aren't shifting or healing then.