If I were to revamp Assassination I'd say the first thing that you have to do is take Mutilate off of a poison requirement. 41 talent points to get a move that's better than backstab is fine, it doesn't need something else.

Then I'd make Envenom into a useful move by giving it to any stacking poison (Wounding). No one uses the move. Why does it exist? Make it useful against hard targets, the way it was obviously intended to be.

Then I'd revamp Vigor. It's horrible right now. No one *wants* Vigor, they just take it because they have to. Either make it +20e on it's own or (my personal favorite) is make it into an ability that reduces the cost of finishing moves by 5e, which would be *huge*.

Then I would take a look at the unique talents Asn has: Quick Recovery, Fleet Footed, Imp KS, Master Poisoner, maybe Find Weakness. The rest of the talents in Asn are mostly 'do more damage' which is fine but they're not unique.

Quick Recovery is strong as is so leave it be. Same with Imp KS.

Fleet Footed needs some help. The problem is that snare resist is just not nearly as good as snare *breaking*. One idea would be to slap on a root breaker to another cooldown, let's say Evasion, here. Now a talent that's obviously designed to increase mobility actually *helps* increase mobility. Alternately add snare/root duration reduction here in large amounts. Say 50% for 2 talent points. That would be something very unique and also quite helpful. Now you can gear to resist flat out 25% snares and even if you do get snared it's for half as long when your rootbreakers aren't up.

Master Poisoner just needs to be better all around. 10% -resist is nice and the 30% self resist is also nice but that's all it is, nice. It should increase the effects of your poisons by 10% for 2 talents as well. 10% slower mind numbing. 10% slower crippling. 10% more wounding (60% -healing debuff). 10% more damage from instant and deadly. All of a sudden Asn rogues can bring slightly better tongues, MS, and snares which in itself suddenly catapults them towards being useful.

Find Weakness could apply a passive -armor or -rsl debuff while it's up as well. -rsl would be perfect. does nothing in PVE but in PVP allows a crit-based spec to work again. Even a nerfed version of the idea would help tremendously (by which I mean you can count on X% more crits that proc Seal Fate even if they don't score critical damage, sort of like Blessed Resilience in reverse)

Maybe all at once would be overpowering and I seriously doubt Blizzard will buff rogues before WotLK so I'm not sure how useful my post is, for which I apologize.

I used to CS > wait > Mut > KS as my opening move. It's not worth it anymore.

Now I CS > wait > Mut > EA (and SnD if Ruthlessness procs) and then build up CP on my target and try to keep my energy at at least 60-70 so I can kick, KS, evis or Mut on demand and see what the situation calls for. I try to KS with at least that much energy because it lets you renataki to fullish and then proceed to drop 5k into someone, so no, I don't wait until 120e.

It would be nice to be able to but you just run the risk of being thrown off your target and letting all those regen ticks go to waste, and energy = damage.

In 2vs2 yes. I quickly try to build up the combo points and keep every cooldown except evasion while autoattacking the target for poison application, then I pop CoS before using the KS/CB combo, also directly after the control hits. In 2vs2 we are often down to 40% by that point but are often able to drop fully geared warriors. The main problem is the stun resistance. So in the 15 to 20% where this fails we lose to any halfway decent team.

Whine:

I understand the draw. Personally I think the talent of the rogue him/herself outweighs any given spec. Play with what you feel comfortable with.

I still can't see myself going ShS just for the few nice abilities the Sub. tree has, scaling or not. Don't forget Surprise Attacks as a benefit to deep combat, which is huge against other rogues - namely one with potentially two evasions.

Yeah, I often end up doing the Evis combo you mention. But the best is from 120e on an exposed target is surely:

120e
Muti
60e
CB Muti + tick
20e
Renataki + Muti

Yes it wastes a lot of CPs, but isnt Muti > Evis on average?

I may be making a very wrong assumption there, I'm not sure... I Evis so little overall I'm not sure what it normally does.

Evis hits for around 1k for 35e and -5cp

Mut hits for around 1500 for 60e and +2cp.

But honestly if SnD and EA are up, your KS is on cooldown ... what else are you going to do? Rupture?

Hm. Maybe I should start Rupturing ...

Ok, so at least my sequence is a reasonable one.

And yes, Rupture aint so bad

To be honest, in PvP I don't (can't?) keep/manage cycles, so usually I just refresh EA or most likely SnD (since its efficacy isn't affected by CP number). Or I might just wait with the 5CPs for the 10 seconds until the next KS, weaponswap Shiv some MN on, kick or go blind someone. I don't think sitting with 5CPs is so much of a waste it you're prepping for some burst.

Damn, this (and my S3 daggers) are going to make me regret having to spec out of Muti

I simply just can't play Mutilate. I hate the positioning requirement, I hate being kited so easily. I do love the on-demand burst and I love how it's not very CD reliant as is HARP.
I would never go back to combat/maces, just like Tiiki, I'm just not sold on it doing more dmg. You get kited a lot easier than as ShS.
I'm probably gonna just stay ShS/Ass and pick up S3 swords. Heh, last night we went 2-7 against the rank 15th team or so and they were PRM with a HARP rogue. The times we won were because we outlived the AR and dragged it on for a bit longer. After the AR and 2 Sprints, he was basically done for and was no longer a nuisance. It was a bit of a hard battle during the first 30 seconds, but after that it settles and we can win. We just need a little more practice i think. And all of them were using s3 weapons while we were all in s2's...might've helped. Shrug.

So do some find it more beneficial to save the KS for a full energy bar? Or do you do the 10second lockdown and wait for KS to come back?

I've been opening with CS -> Muti -> KS -> Muti -> muti (if energy permits), but I've been finding more and more lately that I'm not able to burn someone down effectively enough during this time now.

I can't speak much from the pov of playing as a rogue, but playing against them in 2s (with my druid/lock team), I'd much rather run into a warrior than ShS rogue. Rogues have more CC (sap if they're lucky, blind, CS/KS), so there are bigger gaps where I'm not throwing any heals at all.

I also find them much harder to kite than warriors...yeah warriors can stun and hamstring some, but even with intercept I have definitely breather periods to get hots on myself. With a rogue, it's much harder for me to keep track of what they have available at any given time -- have they trinketed/cloaked/sprinted/vanished/ShS'ed, with prep on top of all that? I've definitely gotten caught after feral charging away from a rogue, thinking I was good for a AP/lifebloom, and poof shadowstep and I'm eating a boosted eviscerate.

Having played Ass/ShS 17/0/44 I think ShS is actually quite a viable build for 2's and 3's. But it is a very gear dependant build. ShS does lack burst dmgs, I almost feel like its an outlast build. If you can manage to get the target below 35% (20% dmg buff) and full stacks of wound running most healers are hard pressed to keep up with the damage. IMO it's the best build if you run into Warr/Healer in 2s. The serr blades + hemo + EA + Rupture put a ton of pressure on. ShS locks casters DOWN. There are just so many tricks, and if use the cooldowns/trinks liberally it'll be hard for most casters to get spells off on you or a teammate. With HARP I felt like I had to play offensively so much of the time, and hope they couldn't outlast ARx2. (I do miss having the option to spec HARP no doubt) But ShS provides higher consistent damage and better mitigiation.

I notice many ShS rogues don't take enveloping shadows, but instead master of sub. I think it's one of the biggest benefits, esp against those pesky icemages (w/ enig skyfire or surefooted its 20% fn resist!). Resisting a warr/priest/lock aoe fear can be a game winnAr.

I haven't played mutilate in a bit, so i suppose I should see how it matches up. The only thing I don't like with mut is positional damage requirement, and reliance on crits. I'm just not sure I could go toe-2-toe with a warr in that spec.

Enveloping Shadows is seriously underrated talent, atleast when combined with other same type effects (HS, ESD, Surefooted etc.). The damage boost from MoS is so little and in arena situations you need to most likely burn Vanish to even benefit from it at all, and even then its just 6seconds. It's nice if you do Vanish -> Shadowstep -> SB'ed Rupture on under 35% target but I never liked the talent really.

About Rupture part, I've kinda always Ruptured over Eviscerate as Mutilate rogue, Eviscerate is just so lackluster talent at current state. If spreadsheets are telling me the truth my SB'ed Rupture should do about 3500-3700 damage in PvP gear which sounds whole alot better than noncritting Eviscerate. If you do the 5CP Rupture Imp. KS you start doing over 4000 Ruptures in PvP gear. I'd consider Mutilating over Eviscerate even when sitting at 5CP because Eviscerate just seems waste of combo points (and energy).

I realize combat for pvp is a little out of style, but I have a combat pvp question:

Weapon expertise vs Vitality? I'm 13/41/7, with combat potency. I'm sorely undergeared, so the extra vitality, albeit so little, would be helpful, but I thought expertise might proc more potency....any suggestions/thoughts?

My Rogue only hit 70 about a week or two, and I'm holding 1500 in 2v2 while using level 60 blues and various questing greens. :P From what I've seen, Cold Blood is still very nice for cutting through alot of resilence and I actually find myself dropping alot of better geared people in BGs.

I recently spec'd 20-0-41 for 2's and realized that we were going up against a ton of rogues. It is a huge advantage to get the opener on the opposing rogue because it allows you to control him. This is what has worked for me so far:

Perception (I'm human and have increased stealth to cloak) > Premed > CS > Hemo > BB + 5 pt rupture > Ruthlessness Proc - run away and DT > re stealth > CS etc..

It, for the most part, absolutely shuts them down. The next time I open on them I put EA up (I have 2/2 imp EA) and pop 1-2 cps in SnD.

Your spec hardly matters- if you're Human, you get the opener. It's a very big advantage in 2s and 3s.

As for specs: Mutilate is clearly less gear dependent than 41 Subt. By definition, almost, 41 Subt has the huge scaling talents, so with great gear it does good damage. If it did good damage in bad gear, it'd do INSANE damage in great gear. So Mutilate *must* scale more linearly with gear than Step? Apart, I guess from the better returns on crit via Seal Fate I suppose...

Good thought. my build. Also, here's my armory link....i've added vindicators boots. Here's my armory link: Rippley armory. I'm rebuilding a toon that was out of wow for 9 months.

I'm planning on shedding blade twisiting....doesn't proc enough to merit the 2 pts. Just wondering where those 2 should go. Thanks for the thoughts.

If you're going 41 into combat, you should think about picking up Blade Twisting. It helps counter Abolish poison kiting problems that are absolutely rampant in 2v2 and 3v3. And without poison talents and a low hitrate, it can help a lot. I also wouldn't invest in Imp Evis, with mace spec and combat potency SnD is almost always a better finisher. You're not dropping a lot of finishers in this spec, getting SnD up early to put pressure on your opponent is better than the slightly better than mediocre Evis.

Here's the spec I'd roll with in your position of gearing up as Combat Maces, although I'd grab Riposte.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Depending on your partners, you can get away with a 11/50 spec like I'm running. I have to communicate a lot with my Disc Priest partner (we're screwing around with new specs since he's been Shadow for 2 seasons), but if you're running say mage/rogue or warlock/rogue 2dps you don't have to worry about being sapped so much with offensive AE and paranoia available.

Edit: And to answer your question, going straight from your build if you had to spend the 2 points not in Blade Twisting, I'd drop 1/2 in Expertise and 1/3 Imp SnD.

I just started playing again and have been doing the honor grind to gear up this rogue alt that I'm playing most of the time now. I've been doing 2v2s with S1 gear, and with a disc priest, we're at 1569 right now and neither of us have done arenas before. I have a muti spec I'm still playing a bit with but I'm fairly happy with. I had been muti since it came out so I have some practice with it, but it does take some getting used to.

My question would be should I just buy the S2 weapons or save up for S3 at this point? I'm trying to get the rest of S1 gear and better gems/enchants as gold permits.

Skip the s2 weapons and armor, should concentrate on getting at least 2 piece s1 gear for the resilience bonus, filling any other gear gaps with epic PvE gear or Vindicator's gear. Arena points will start flowing in, but I don't see any reason to waste them on Season 2 gear/weapons when Season 1 is near as good, but for honor, which can be farmed on a day to day basis. Some season 3 gear pieces have +Hit and armor pen, which is why you want to get those pieces first and to completely skip using any arena points on season 2 gear.

Also, make sure you buy the Vindicator's Feral leather bracers, they're slightly better than the rogue ones.

(Sorry for the machinegun replies... slow day at work ;|)

Hi all, my Arcane mage partner and I have been having difficulty since the 2.3.2 patch against ShS rogue/Disc Priest combos. My partner runs an Arcane/Icy Veins spec for playstyle preference and raiding and we've done well on our battlegroup (Bloodlust), which is pretty competitive (currently hovering around 1700). I logged out in my PvE gear, but in PVP gear I'm sitting at 406 resil, S2 daggers and am gemmed offensively with +8 agi and 4 agi/4hit gems in all relevant slots and Renataki's.

I've been a longtime fan of 41/20 and enjoy the versatility in PVP and decent PVE DPS, and ShS is such a different playstyle from Muti that I can't really get into it. Anyways, back to the topic at hand: how to beat a ShS Rogue + Disc Priest with my team's setup:

First, let's evaluate the strengths of the ShS Rogue/Disc Priest team:

*High mobility: Rogue has ShS every 30 seconds with newly enhanced speed buff, as well as Two Sprints, Two Vanishes, CloS, and Priest to dispel magic roots.
*Extremely high survivability: Cheat Death in its bugged form reduces damage by 99% for 3 seconds if I'm not mistaken, so even if I drop a KS + Renataki CB Muti he still lives. Toss in Pain Suppression, CloS, Evasion, and this is one very hard target for us to finish.
*High burst damage: good ShS rogues have been getting 3K ambushes followed immediately by a 2K backstab and 2k Evis on my mage. Mana Shield helps but it gets burned down quickly, and being Arcane it's hard to kite the rogue given his mobility. I do my best to wait for the rogue and CS him when he steps to my mage, but his Vanish/Sprint/Evasion CDs can really mitigate my ability to lock him down.
*Ability to last: Shadow Fiend + Mana Burn from the Disc Priest means they win the outlast game.
*Moderate control: a rogue can lock down most casters with the ease of getting off a Garrotte, kick and blind every 90 seconds.

Next, let's evaluate the weaknesses of this team:
*Low sustained damage: without the ability to restealth, the rogue loses a lot of hitting power.
*Priest is susceptible to CC: only way for Priest to avoid CC is his trinket.

So let's theorize how to beat this team:
*I Rupture on the rogue whenever possible to mitigate his ability to vanish and get healed up to full.
*CC'ing the priest when the rogue is low on HP is the only way to ensure a win, we've found. Otherwise, the rogue will get to 1% HP and get healed up quick while his Cheat Death procs or he receives Pain Suppression.
*Surving the rogue's first rush of Cooldowns is key. Locking the rogue with roots, stuns, etc. to force his CDs and leave him without any outs later in the fight is paramount.

We're about 30% win over good ShS/Priest teams, any additional tips are appreciated. We've found that the rogue consistently goes after my mage, and the ShS rogue can typically survive long enough to outlast my mage's three sheeps of the priest, leaving us with few CC options for the rogue's healer.

Don't punch me in the face, please. I'm rerolling to horde rogue now & have standart question but with some limitations - which racials more useful in Arena small brackets like 2v2/3v3 on ratings 1850-1900 and 2000-2100.
We are talking about making choice between ud & orc.

Want to hear opinions of rogues which have that ratings.