I would think it would come down to a choice between elf and undead, personally. The value of an AoE silence on demand cannot be overlooked.

@Lexia
Don't focus prep rogues in 2v2 when their partners are healers and you are running 2dps, they have too many outs to make you waste cooldowns and your precious near unrenewable HP. You can CC the rogue and burn a priest down much easier than vice versa I've found. A smart rogue/priest is going to mainly focus the rogue while his healer kites out of los, not sure why they're focusing you. I stun and CC the rogue and drop the occasional gouge on the mage when I'm running rogue/Disc priest. Or at least don't focus Shadowstep rogues, AR/prep isn't too hard to burst, just don't be afraid to switch dps targets to the priest when the rogue makes a run for it with sprint and vanish.

@Icemax
Undead is the best for 2v2 and 3v3, while I'd put Orc stun resist above a single fear break in 5v5 since 5v5 is a warriors playground.

Thanks for the advice Tower, I suppose focusing a Disc Priest is easier than a ShS Rogue where Cheat Death and his CDs make him really hard to burst. I'm just afraid after trinketing out of Psychic Scream either me or my mage will be susceptible to blind, and it will take all of our joint burst CDs to get a Disc priest to 0.

We've traditionally just CC'd the healer when we face healer/DPS combos as CS + sheeps is so golden vs Palis, Shamis and Priests. Facing warrior/palis is our favorite combo. I'm afraid the priest may just dispel his sheeped rogue buddy if we try to CC the rogue, but if we're applying enough pressure to him hopefully he won't get a chance.

~Icemax

I'd probably pick undead overall. IMO being feared is time that you are not doing damage, u are taking dmg, and have to make up distance to get back on target. Even if you are taking stuns from warrs or rogues they are on diminishing return, and u don't have to get back on target.

I dunno what alliance class u have. For arena human rogues are superior off the start for 2's 3's coz of perception. (luckily i rolled human unlike 99% of the pop that rolled NELF) Gnomes are sweet too, not as great before, but escape artist is huge vs mages/warrs. Plus a gnome on sprint is so hard to target and harder to see animation of what they are doing

Hello beautiful people

I've recently started to 2v2 with a discipline Priest. While he has decent pvp gear(250ish resilience and 10k hp unbuffed I think)I'm kind of lazy and use my PvE gear. Hopefully I'll have 9100 hp and 100ish resilience by tomorrow. Since I'm combat daggers when raiding I decided to PvP as Mutilate, currently using 49/0/12as spec. Although as I was reading the thread I noticed that 41/20 is prefered for 2v2. So I've got a pack of questions:

a)At the moment we're still on the 1500~ level, we encounter people in almost full S1 or even better gear already, is it crazy to try getting to 1600-1700 with my current gear level? While my offensive stats are decent my survivability sucks.

b)The main reason I'm staying out of 41/20 is the lack of MoD. I already lose the openers against most rogues due to Highetened Senses, but at least I can get the opener on druids and this is really nice against resto ones. How do you work around with this?

c)Mutilate is really vulnerable to kiting, once I used my cooldowns good kiters are really devastating. Especially the Hunter+Druid combos make me wanna cry. Hunter lays down a frost trap and druid stands on it. If I try to get near him I either get cycloned or rooted or entrapment procs. Do you have any tip against this combo?

d)Since my defensive stats suck at the moment, wouldn't it be wise to gem defensive stats until I have a decent amount of health and resilience? From what I'm reading gemming defensive stats is a "No no!" for rogues.

I've been spinning around my spec again lately and been thinking of taking 2pts from Lethality for 2/2 Imp. EA. Started to doubt Lethalitys usefulness in PvP situation and it totally seems to suck in theory against 400 resilience targets (not that it's really that good for PvE either).

So so, I'd assume that taking 2pts from Lethality for 2/2 Imp. EA is good thing to do atleast if your target wont hit zero armor before Imp. EA? In paper it is definetly this way but does the added burst boost from Lethality win more games than the Imp. EA? Other thing is that I have about 1100 ArP with Serrated Blades, add normal EA 2000 ArP so does Imp. EA become overkill? Imp. EA still seems to be good DPS increase even against plate and with Mutilate you can have quite high uptime for EA. Dump Lethality for good and take 2/2 Imp. EA and maybe 3/3 Imp. Eviscerate or go 2/2 Imp. EA + 3/5 Lethality? Or just keep full Lethality? I barely never use Eviscerate so I don't probably go for that but just a thought.

5/5 Lethality
2/2 Imp. EA, 3/5 Lethality
2/2 Imp. EA, 3/3 Imp. Eviscerate

So, talk about Lethality in Mutilate build, is it worth of the points or not.

Except that Dwarf/Drenai Priests are actually by far the best because of Chastise.

Re: defensive gemming- YES. We only gem offensive because full S3 is a little 'too' defensive for a Rogue. I currently have 11.2k HP with basically 100% offensive gemming. I wish I could get a bit less (!)

In S1, especially, Rogues gemmed full Solid Stars because the opposite was true. So, yes, put Solid Stars and Mystic Dawnstones in every slot until you hit at least 350 resi and 10k+ HP, I'd say.

How necessary (or essential) is a Renataki trinket for a mutilate build? Could a 4x/0/1x spec still work well with a Tsunami Talisman or BB as the DPS trinket?

Yes.

Renataki is only an element of surprise. Few rogues have it and you can extend your burst damage. On the long run basically any other trinket is stronger than Renataki.

Any more than 2/5 Lethality for Mut is a waste of points I think. Only because countering res a *little* is better than 10% evis damage.

Lately I've been questioning the usefulness of Seal Fate in a Mut build. If you skip it you can take full poisons as 41/20/0 or 42/12/7, and 3cp instead of 2cp on the occasional crit mut is really not that big of a deal.

Thoughts?

Would be interesting to do the maths on that. I rarely ever use eviscerate and I think that mages are the only class where it's actually worthwhile using it. Slice&Dice replaces Improved Poisons quite well. The only point I see is to put two points out of lethality to get 5/5 Vile Poisons and 2/2 Master Poisoneer.

Point would be to take 2 talent points from Lethality to get Imp. EA.

I've just specced Step/Hemo and tried some AVs. Now we have a 5v5 with no Paladin, so no freedom, so I need the manouverability of Prep/Step. Sadly that puts my 2 x daggers in the bank. Even the OH (1.8 Mutilator) is probably inferior to S2 OH mace?

Anyway, the lack of burst is annoying but it does make you feel much 'stronger'- and the scaling is very nice too.

My question is- what talents are people going for for 5v5? I've got Enveloping Shadows over Cheat Death, and am currently on 18/0/41, 2/5 Vile, 0/2 Imp Expose, 0/3 Imp Evis (and 2 pts spare)... what's the general view on this spec's filler?

This is what I would use for 5v5.

Edit vol. 2:
This is what I would use for 5v5.
Although I'm not sure if I would drop vile poison 4/5 for full Deadliness and Cheat Death.
Then again vile helps against druids.


P.S. Remove the other post please. Too much arena and Quote buttons start to look like Edit buttons.

I gotta tell you I feel the opposite. Maybe it's just the "new spec jibblies", but Mutilate feels like it has so much more muscle compared to ShSHemo. Staying on the target is the best part about ShS but beyond that I feel like I'm just dumping glasses of water on them with the occasional spell lockout.

Again, you're probably enjoying the mobility because Mut has problems with that, and I probably like the damage because ShS has problems with that. But for the record, 41 pts into any tree is pretty much the same as far as effectiveness goes.

Hah, perhaps. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Muti and would spec back in a second. Esp as I have double S3 Mongoosed Daggers and S2 Maces only

But I've been doing Premed/CS/Expose and then spamming some Hemos. And on clothies they hit embarrasingly hard.

I got a 2.3k Hemo crit on a Mage today ffs. I realise that's in AV, but jesus!

I HAVEN'T tried it in Arena *at all* yet- but I don't know about you, but our AVs are actually normally full of decently geared folk.

THIS is what I would use.
Good catch Tiiki.

As for talents, I respec for every bracket and for when I PvE.
Gold isn't really a issue since I play the AH market and occasionally sell 2v2 teams that I don't use anymore.

Hehe, well our AVs are usually green/blue with some scattered s1 because people are just farming
4-5pt expose was my typical opener as well, followed by a 1pt SnD if the stars aligned properly. Keep in mind that 2.3k crit hemo becomes more like a 500 crit hemo on bearform, and you don't have the white damage to cover it. If you didn't take Vile Poisons expect to be using shadowstep a lot to catch abolished runners who also, by the way, won't have any wound up

There are good things, of course. I loved having "counterspell", but truth be told I hate the design of shadowstep. It feels so last minute and clunky, like they just kept tossing on random attributes to it in order to make it appealing. Some of them are direct "hey guys I found this idea on the official rogue forums!" counters to crappy design limitations, like the speed boost... it's just so... blah.

The old talent Improved Vanish was a better idea.

I agree about Step's design. I don't like it. Deep Subt is a TOTAL mess. They just put scaling on scaling 10% Hemo, 10% AP, 15% agi, the run speed, etc., just to make it viable. It has bugger all flavour.

Step itself does, but as you said... *meh*

And I'd never DPS a Druid in Bear, basically :P

Man I WISH gold wasn't an issue. Currently can't afford to Mongoose my fresh S3 OH Mace. What do you play on the AH?

Right

I'd definitely would've (and have) taken 5/5 deadliness > 5/5 camo though. Currently at 1727 AP, 33.1% crit and 80 hit rating- which actually sounds a bit low. Esp with no Might in 5s. Needed to swap in some agi/hit orange gems too, to get above 5% hit. And will have to do again with S3 MH too. Quite annoying, though Hit is never bad I guess.

Check my armory - am I gearing wrong somewhere?