That's the impression I had gathered, but I was hoping for hope. Mutilate until he can get a non-dagger then, I suppose.

@ekval: it just seems to be missing something. Can't compete in toe to toe with Warriors or Combat Rogues, but can't get away without a lot of help. Gets kited once cooldowns are gone. It's got nice burst, but our coordination isn't to the point yet where we can really take advantage of it - I'm still trying to train him to talk on vent and call for CCs when he's has a chance at a kill. It also loses openers to everything, which hurt us in one of our losses last night.

EDIT
Link Removed

I'm very curious to hear some ShS experiences in 3v3 and 2v2. We play a Rogue/Priest/Warlock combo atm, and are experimenting with various talent specs while we are gearing up. Be interested to hear how other teams have found ShS vs Mutilate.

My partner has just specced into ShS from a mutilate build, which looks promising. You lose the burst on demand ability that deep assassination gives you, but you definitely have more options and escape tools. We were very surprised that the amount of damage you can do with a Garrote/Rupture/Hemo opener. I think your bang on with regards to the MH weapon. Your going to want a slow (mace or fist) mainhand for Hemo and most mutilate specced rogues will have to work toward this.

Curious about your skipping feral charge for PVE though. Obviously for PVP its invaluable for interrupts. I still find it very useful in PVE for locking down targets in heroics after CC, or intercepting adds on a pull. I also find it a great tool for avoiding too much boss movement during the initial pull on those fights where you are running into postion, rather than having the boss pulled to you (less time for movement during prox aggro)

I could see forgoing it if you were in a tanking role 100% of the time and never running instances though.

I'm Resto. I went 11 deep in balance - cast time on Wrath for Leotheras, Imp Cyclone for PvP/Heroics, and Insect Swarm for soloing, with partial points in Nature's Grasp. The rest gets me the PvE resto talents + Natural Perfection. I could free up 3 points from Naturalist; that's a relic from when I was freshly 70 and needed HT + full hots to keep a tank up in Heroics.

Also, please don't sign your posts - that's in the forum guidelines.

I play ShS on my rogue alt (razorwraith on Kalecgos), and my 2s partner is a druid. By far, the easiest teams I play against are anything that doesn't have a warrior. My partner hits cyclones and roots when I need them, and I'm cross CCing with blind and gouge. ShS rogue + druid doesn't have the burst damage, but you're in effect a melee drain team. You widdle down your opposition until they make a mistake and you close in for the kill.

The problem with warriors is that they just take too long to widdle down. A warrior / paladin is a counter comp to the ShS rogue / druid. The warrior jumps your druid and your druid will die before he has a chance to shapeshift. The warrior jumps you (the rogue) and you're locked down unable to pop evasion or vanish. The paladin provides extra stuns when he can, and it's very effective because the whole time, neither the warrior or the paly are moving around alot (which is what the ShS rogue is designed for).

On the other hand, I fought a druid / hunter combo, and the hunter's pet was dead before the druid even came out of hiding. The druid just tried to continually kite me (the rogue), but with deadly throw and shiv (OH = crippling), the druid couldn't go very far, and when he did start to get too far, a simple ShS put me back in the game. When the druid finally roots you and breaks away, I'd pop sprint and run over to the hunter and whail on him until the druid showed up again. Combining this with my druid partner's cyclone, roots, moonfire, charge...made the fight a very long but easily done match. Our tactic, outlast them. Piss them off and make them waste as much mana as they had to. ShS is definitely all about survivability and mobility, which means you have MORE time on the target, less time spent running around chasing some damned kitty, which in turn means...more dps.

Prior to 2.3.2 I played as HARP with a Disc Priest for 2v2. Since the changes to Hemo, I've abandoned the build and began searching for something new and effective, which brought me (back) here. I currently own two S1 maces, two S1 daggers (shanker/shiv) and a Heartrazor. My armor is mostly S1 arena (3/5), with 2/5 S3 arena and Vindi's in all other slots. But I digress.

After poring over this thread, I have arrived at a build that I consider to be effective, based on the discussions I've read. However, I would appreciate a bit of advice in certain tweakings I feel would be more in-line with my playstyle. The build I have arrived at is an ShS variant: here.

To summarize.

I felt the +hit from Precision would be rather imperative since my PvP gear has so little. Additionally, the imp sprint (even with prep + ShS) seems rather handy for root/snare effects. Assassination seems failry self-explanatory. As for Subtlety, from what I've read, Enveloping Shadows and Cheat Death both sound very helpful and Setup seems like a good CP builder due to CoS and Evasion.

IMO you're focusing too much on mobility at the cost of sustained damage. Imp sprint isnt worth losing relentless, ruthlessness, and Imp EA when you have ShS, especially with points in enveloping shadows.

---

My next question is whether 3/3 enveloping shadows and 2/5 vile poisons or 5/5 vile poisons is superior for 2s and 3s...

Last time I asked this I got answer that Imp. Poisons doesn't add much, but today I've been playing with talent calculator once again while waiting teammates to show up, and started to think how useful Imp. KS really is compared to Imp. Poisons in Mutilate build? After playing yesterday against druid and orc warrior in 2v2 with my disc priest, and getting all my CS + KS resisted, it got me to thinking if I should get rid of Imp. KS and use those points to poison talents like this.

Mutilate is almost all about poisons and I sometimes (more frequently these days) miss the Imp. Poisons talent for faster poison application, but 5x/0/x really seems to lack damage for my taste.

How useful people see Imp. KS? Everytime my Kidney Shot gets resisted I think "I should have used those points in to Imp. Poisons for atleast some help". Imp. Poisons seemed to help quite alot for kiting/mobility issue of Mutilate because you most of the time reapply crippling poison before target gets too far away.

Imp. KS vs Imp. Poisons, which one is winner for 2v2 (/w disc priest) and 3v3 bracket (/w warlock, druid)? Where to put last 2 points in this build, I'm not big fan of Elusiveness myself so thought about maxing Lethality + MP and just leave both poison talents to 4/5.

Build

I've played a good deal of Disc Priest/ShS and all I can tell you is... do not run Shadowstep with a Disc Priest. ShS works with a druid somewhat because your druid is a very slippery and mana efficient target. If a team decides to focus your druid he can kite while you are left to focus one of their team, and the beauty of ShS means even if they focus you you still have solid damage and mobility to stay on your target. This is not true for Dpriest/ShS. All anyone has to do it focus your priest and you will lose, you lack mace stuns to control a dps and save your priest, so a warrior or AR/prep rogue will just eat them up, especially if they're playing with a druid or another dps.

Shadowstep is a great 2dps 2v2 build, the long term mobility and defensive aspects of the subtelty try are lost when your partner is better focus target than you. This pretty much goes for 3v3 as well. The idea with Shadowstep honestly is to be focused, you've got solid melee damage mitigation, some solid magic migitation, an ok focus fire prevention talent and a gimp intercept/intervene. Different teams will focus you for different reasons, but if you're running with a priest and he's mana burning and healing and I see you're Shadowstep, I will be on that priest in no time, and you are going to have to burn all your cooldowns trying to keep him alive.

Losing Imp KS for Imp Poisons seems like a very bad trade to me. As a mutilate rogue your role is to apply as much on demand burst as possible. Ie: Set up EA, SnD and then when the team is co-ordinated drop a KS and cold blood mutilate. The extra 9% damage to your entire team during the burst is significant and fits very well with your role.

@Evkal
Interesting idea. When playing with a disciplin priest Improved Kidney Shot isn't really to big of a deal, but when playing with controlled bursts it really adds up. I think your combination (as well for exampel playing with a pure resto druid) improved kidney shot isn't really worth it. With a healer and without improved Slice and Dice I think Improved poisons can really help.

Improved Kidney into Cold Blood Mutilate > Mutilate + Power Infusion > Dot+PW is a force to be reckoned with.

Fist average hit is 268
Sword average hit is 268

Pick the one you can stand to be stuck with in pve? Pick the one you think looks better.

Since the average damage is the same, I'd rather go with the damage range that had a smaller gap, which is the sword. If you ever want to go for a better PvE build, you will also have access to the the best option from PvP.

This is a slight tangent from the topics at hand but still something that has been bugging me ever since Season 2 started. Why do they keep broadening the range of the mainhand weapons? Every season the low end gets lower and the top end gets higher. The top end is increasing faster than the low end is dropping so the net goes up, but I still have to wonder sometimes why exactly are they doing this. Why make a downside to the next season of weapons. Even the season 3 weapons within different weapon types have alterations: look at the quoted fist weapon vs the sword. Why?

I'm sure a similar answer could be found as to why previously ret paladin pvp gear had no resilience. Inconsistent design and project management.

I think it is also about randomness involved. Blizzard likes randomness and you can really get lucky sometimes (2300+ ripostes etc.).

And why are all the best PvP weapons in Season 2 from PvE? Stormherald, Syphon, Catacysm. And we know dps and stats don't make for the best PvP weapons, it's their slow speeds when combined with instant strike mechanics that make them powerful. Why did we go from 3.0 swords and 2.0 Rank 14 weaponry to 2.6 speed Pvp rewards vs 2.8 speed PvE? Stupidity.

Also, as an update. There was a WoW Rogue Forum post circulating about how combat pulses were causing random destealthing of rogues (honestly, didn't we all assume this? it has occured in PvE boss fights since forever) and showed how to recreate the effect in duels, so now Blue is saying they've found a way to fix the vanish and destealthing bug. 3 years of broken vanish and a forum poster solves the problem? And how am I not to think weaponry design is inconsistent vs. mysteriously intelligent.

Also saying the 99% Cheat Death bug is somehow "not fixable", which is maybe a small pat on the ass to rogues who've spent 3 years with our big escape mechanic being a coin toss.

Does a reason exist to not to use a fast offhand dagger while using a slower mace/sword mainhand when specced ShS? It seems that the additional poison procs and casting knockback would be preferred.

Most just haven't had the points laying around to purchase the Vengeful Shiv, while many players picked up Season 3 Mainhand and Offhand maces to go AR/prep once season 3 started, with the option of going Shadowstep. Mutilate rogues pick up the Vengeful Mutilator for bigger mutilates as well.

I'm sure most who stick with Shadowstep will pick up the Vengeful Shiv later in the season.

This is simply untrue. http://shadowpanther.net/rogueweapons.htm

203 low end on the sword to 214. Seems like an increase to me. Please do some homework before posting silly misinformation.

Alright, I'm partially wrong. Take a look at season 1 stuff, though; it's a 189 minimum on the sword and mace and in season 2 it drops to 177 on the mace, while the sword goes up. Now the mainhand mace/fist are up to 187 minimum, which is still below the season 1 mace min. It's still really odd.

Also shiv is normalized so dagger shivs, while costing 1 less energy, do not hit as hard as mace/sword/fist shivs. Maybe a non-factor but true nevertheless!

In other news, I got 100-0'd today in 2v2 vs retpal/fmage during a HoJ (foolishly trinked a poly earlier). Retpal is the new mutrogue?