Erm.
If you're wielding a sword offhand and a mace mainhand, a mace/sword spec combo will actually result in an offhand sword proccing a mainhand swing, which in turn can proc a mace stun.

That is, IF procs are still able to proc of procs, which Blizzard said wouldn't be working anymore. Yet they didn't say which procs were blocked. All (including poisons, weapon procs, etc), or only of the same type.

What utility are you lacking when you Cheapshot > SnD and begin to spend energy on SS? Kidney Shot is on a pretty long cooldown, using it early without the ability to close on your target's health is a surefire way for your target to escape with no danger at all. Any combat build will have Ruthlessness and Relentless Strikes, dropping a 2-3CP SnD is an amazing way to increase your damage, poison application and mace procs, like previously stated. Those mace procs are what allow you to chain Proc > Imp Kick > 5CP KS > Imp Kick and put your target down. We don't have that many finishers to choose from.

20s out of 40s(it's 30s...) is still a ton of extra damage when you're dual wielding double near 100dps maces. Your finisher efficiency is where those points in Ass. really come in handy, you don't need to spend 5cp on SnD to make it game changing.

well said Tower.

I guess the "utility" i'm refering to is: mod/camo and the nicer things from assasination like fleet footed and/or quick recovery. Also having your blind up every 1.5 min and your vanish every 3.5 min is NICE and so is prep - all of which yeild more options imo. Don't forget that even though combat has that nice +10% fear resist.. sub has +15% to resist all aoe attacks (include aoe fear :P).

Sub isn't that gimp in dmg either... +10% atk power, serrated blades (ALL attakcs ignore x amount of armor)

Like I said, I will def try combat maces. I just got a bit upset when I came back 2 weeks ago (last log in was nov 2005) and see everybody looking down on sub builds.

Eh, the utility from Sub is marginal is most pvp settings. It's nice to be able to be lazy and Stealth around quickly, but it's far from necessary. And the reduced cooldowns on Blind and Vanish have basically no use in Arena (though that may change once the Blind "fix" is in), and Vanishing in a Battleground is never really game-breaking. I won't even comment on the aoe avoidance talent...

By the way, spell and capitalize things correctly or you're gonna get your hand slapped.

Ah ok, wasn't following your reference to using points in Sub instead for more utility.

Since the nerf to Prep not resetting CloS and Blind, the precision of heavy Sub has lost its value in end game arenas. 5/AR/Prep builds can do pretty well in 2v2 and 3v3 setups, but you just can't match the brute force of Combat Maces right now, through good communication Mutilate comes very close though. 2 evasions, 2 vanishes and 2 sprints doesn't do you much good against warlock teams, which are rampant.

? Please elaborate, because I would like to know if I'm misunderstanding the mechanics of that talent.

Sorry, didn't mean to sound rude if I did. I just meant that if you're going deep Subt, there are several other talents that are much more worthy investments.

Would you mind linking your Armory or filling out your profile so I can see your talents? I'm curious to see what you gave up to get that talent.

jjj

Done

I think it's a good talent, and I intentionaly went that far into subt, atleast for the time being (still trying to get 2 maces).

What kind of gems do you guys use in your pvp gear? I am sort of thinking of using our guilds excess BT purple gems to replace some 16 AP gems i have. Should I stick with the 1500AP 10.4k HP I have now or gem in some more stamina/dodge/crit.
The Armory

I'm not really sure how you guys manage to have excess purple gems(no casters using MSD I guess?) but 10AP/7sta gems are probably your best bet. AP is relatively unmitigated because it's a raw DPS increase, and having the extra stamina will give you a nice buffer.

Yes but 5agi/7sta offers more synergy with Paladins, not to mention double defensive stat.

Gems haven't been a issue really since mother trash farming we do every once in a while.
(Red being the exception...).

There's 5crit/10ap. But I'd suggest against it. Agility is imo always better for pvp than pure AP. Dodge, crit and synergy with BoK. Then again I guess if one is using pure PvP Gear they are very low on AP... Down to personal preference I guess.

If they buff Hemorrage, and with the buff to "dirty deeds" and the really nice buff to fleet footed, i'm thinking of trying this build after 2.3 hits the ground.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'm currently specced combat swords for PvP, was Mutilate for a long time, but I'm prefering combat swords right now, since AR+BF + Non Positional... is Ace.

What do you think?

I can't see critting enough to make Seal Fate worth getting. If you don't want Premed, maybe Imp KS would be a bit more group friendly.

I have almost 32% unbuffed crit.

I am sealfate/AR spec for my arena team.

Why are fist weps so underated?

sealfate/ar allows me to put 5 points into imp expose armor right off the bat

then pop AR, SnD, and sinister striking ppl to death (after shiving 5 wounds on them first)

i am a royal pain on healer's mana bars which is great cuz i run a drain tank / dps squishy 3v3 team



why don't more people go fist? the high % to crit pwns for seal fate.

i crit all the time in arenas and it feels great everytime i get 2 combo points instead of once because i can do so much more while streaming disgusting white dmg all over clothies.

blizz gave us fist weps for a reason. nobodies using fists so i hope blizz gives us fist users a random buff in the near future....not that we need it lol.

Ye, that is an issue, but I still think Seal Fate even with only 1 crit in 3 or 4 Hemos are worth enough, since the CP generation will be really nice, comprable to mutilate with more survavility.

But that will need testing ofc. and also... to see if some buff is going to be giving to hemorrage to make it worthwihile.

I open with a Cheap shot and shiv away until there's 5 combo points (usually takes 2 shivs)

then I pop imp expose armor, shiv shiv shiv, SND.

Depending on the situation, I will pop AR and go ballistic sinister striking the dude.

I make sure to keep 5 wound poisons on my target at all times to make healing a pain.

I alternate between kidney shots, SND, CB+evis, and imp expose armor for my combo points.

I have kick binded to F so I'm always looking out for the casting bars so I can punt my target in the face.



**
Also, I believe that the amount of versatility I get from all the CP's I'm getting more then makes up for a sword proc and mace stun. I honestly believe that rogues should look into a seal fate fist build (because using fist weps without seal fate and fist spec is not worth it)



***
side note: I just started playing recently after a 3 month hiatus. Catching up in terms of gear has been a grind in itself.... CANNOT wait until S3 (I'm saving 75k bg points and 5k arena points)

Mutilate will get you more CP/E by a rather large margin than SF-Fist, which itself won't get you much more than a normal combat build that has combat potency.

Given a rogue with 30% base crit.
Given a target with max rsl of -10% crit.

Seal Fate Fist's has a 30+5-10 = 25% crit rate. CPE is easy (you have no combat potency) to derive as 1.25 cp / 40e = .031 CP/E.

Mutilate has a 30-10 = 20 % crit rate. CP is 2 + (1-.2)*(1-.2) = 2.64 cp. Divide by 60e = .044 CP/E.

For reference let's take a combat sword build that has combat potency but not seal fate using a 1.4 gladiator offhand and for easy math let's just say that he has max hit so his offhand never misses, which means his SS costs 37e (flooring hit makes it 37.5ish e). That's about .026 CP/E.

So you jump .05 combo points per energy by going from combat to seal fate fists, but you jump so much more (.13 cpe) just going full mutilate that I'm not sure it's really worth going full SF/Fists. What do you really gain? Adrenaline Rush and Imp Kick vs. Find Weakness and 30% more combo points?

Update: I have 32.52% crit atm. Going to get a new meta gem which will put me at 33% crit.




There are too many things you are not taking into account when you are comparing mutilate with combat build.

You only took into account the generation when one is sinister striking...
Honestly you use shiv way more then SS with this build (stacking wounds and cheap energy cost make this super efficient)

One needs to take into account that you won't always have position and be behind ur target for a mutilate. What happens when you can't land a single mutilate because of just positioning issues? No combo points. And we all know no combo points = you lose.


There are more things to take into account. I feel this build is much more flexible in terms of movement, positioning, and combo point generation. Sure you may say that mutilate generates 30% more CP then the seal fate build does when the rogue has 30% crit and is blindly sinister striking (which you shouldn't be doing) One should be shiving until 5 wounds are on before even thinking about sinister striking.


Furthermore,


Am I the only one who thinks a well-timed adrenaline rush is WAY better then find weakness? You have SND up, your target has -2050 armor with imp expose, and you hit AR (and any trinkets) and sinister strike /shiv nonstop (2 points every time you crit) and cb+evis. kidney shot when needed and you will always have the energy for your kick.

Very versatile.

I've found that its a very effective and a fun way to do arenas (cuz most of the time rogues are chasing around casters anyway). Definitely a pain for the healers trying to outheal all of this steady damage.... oh right didnt even mention how much my whites crit.


Yeah.... and there are a LOT of white crits... all the time. lol

As you add more and more crit mutilate's CPE advantage actually goes up, not down, because the attack rolls twice to see if it scores a crit.

Shiv costs the same amount of energy for both SF-fists and Mutilate as neither has potency. I suppose SF-fists will score 5% more combo points from those shivs, but it strikes me as very odd to try to build around a non-primary attack. But then again, Mutilate strikes with both hands (or you can think of it as 30e per hand, twice) so for every 30e I sink into attacking I get an extra poison proc chance, compared to 40e for SS, which means more poisons naturally. I do Shiv frequently, but it's definitely not my primary means of doing damage.

A well timed AR is indeed devastating, but so is a full energy KS > CB Mutilate > Renataki > Mutilate > Eviscerate combo. I can do upwards of 4k burst in around three seconds.

Not trying to get into a list war -- my point is that I'm not sure I see what going SF-fists has over just going full combat or full assassination.

Er, you're using Shiv way too liberally. And having Wounding on your offhand is ok if your teammates have on demand snares, but more often than not you're going to find yourself wishing you could snare someone by choice and not just communication or luck (SS or mainhand hit applying it).

Shiv'ing that much in a 30/31 build versus a 20/41 variant is also pretty huge once you put Combat Potency in the equation. You're basically choosing to get Wounding up fast at the cost of a lot more damage (using energy to SS instead) and ignoring the ability for your SS and white hits to apply those ever-so-important poisons. In regards to Seal Fate, CP efficiency is nice and all, but does it give more burst than what Surprise Attacks allows in +10% to SS and having no finishers missing? Not at all. Rogues are limited by energy, in no way does a SF/Fist build using shiv and more finishers outdamage a 20/41 combat variant, it doesn't, people have done the math over and over. Not to mention Seal Fate is a resilience mitigated talent, meaning crit is devalued in PvP due to opponents consistently wearing 425+ resilience, nearly halving your crit chance and half your chances to proc Seal Fate. It's still strong with Mutilate because of it's mechanics, but with SS, not so much.

Now, once you've calculated your damage gains from going past 31 in combat, you can see what other useful combat talents are extremely useful, like an extra 10% fear and stun resist and Combat Potency (which can offer a ton of extra burst with SnD and Bloodlust up).

If you're looking for more build discussion pre 2.3, feel free to search the other rogue pvp threads that have fallen by the wayside. I'm pretty sure there's been 30/31 discussion and even Seal Fate/Hemo variants. They certainly have their strengths, but the most common builds being used in the 2k+ rated arenas are common for a reason. If anything, 30/31 maces is a solid build, if only because you get mace stuns and Quick Recovery, along with an improved speed increase come 2.3

And please use proper grammar and punctuation, no "u" "cuz" etc, it's in the forum rules.

For pvp and pve I use maces, Dragonstrike main, Merciless off. I've never regretted it. Swords are better for pve(though my guild isnt progressed enough to get the next tier sword, and I'd argue haste on dragonstrike makes it equal to Talon, our WWS's agree with me)

Mace, in pvp, is awesome. Nothing is better than a mace stun.