Well we have Dismantle. I did about 20 2vs2 matches with a holy paladin as a Mutilate rogue. We pretty won every match against ret paladin teams. Usually the teams tried just to faceroll me or the paladin and failed. But I had to spent every defensive cooldown to survive their burst damage. Mage teams are much stronger in my opinion, especially if they have luck with the procs.

Playing with a paladin is really something I enjoy a lot as Mutilate and I think Paladins are at the moment (level 70 Patch 3.0) the best healers for Mutilate Rogues. Two reasons: First the can counter a lot control effects (blessing of freedom, dispel), they have a strong tool against melee burst damage on me (blessing of protection) and are much less vulnerable than right now.

Blessing of protection and Dismantle are usually enough to survive the faceroll strategy.

I see a couple of options for those of us (myself included) who don't have daggers. If you have daggers, play mutilate.

Option 1: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft This build is essentially a souped-up combat build and should be devastating against warriors, especially the DW type that will become popular.

Pros: 1 min imp sprint with glyph, very strong against melee. Cons: weak crits and no burst outside of AR.

Option 2: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft This build is a newer version of HARP. I really think the new nerves of steel is amazing and is worth taking over additional points in deadliness.

Pros: 1 min imp sprint with glyph, super survivable with prep Cons: Weak hemo, still no burst outside of AR

Option 3: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft SS/Combat. With some of the changes, combat has made huge strides against assassination. A spec like this has a million and one anti melee tools as well as 1 min imp sprint + shadowstep. The downside to sticking to your target like glue, is that you have no burst damage. Your sustained damage is fairly solid though. With the move of relentless strikes and murder, those first assassination points are actually really weak (especially since the new poison application rate and wound changes makes dispels less scary)

Option 4: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft This is a deep subt build. I personally hate shadow dance, so I've left 1 point open to be spent. There are 3 obvious places to spend it: (a) Master of Subtelty for another 10% damage on attacks out of stealth, (b) 1/3 honor among theives which is my favorite for 3v3 or 5v5, (c) shadow dance, probably worth it in 2v2.

Overall I think Option 4 has the most tricks to play with, and a 30 energy hemo is nothing to sneeze at. It doesn't have much controlled burst, but something like vanish + premed + shadow step -> garotte -> shadow dance -> cheap shot -> rupture with some nice hemos thrown in and the option to garotte or cheap shot again at the end of the dance has some potential. Still, this is a fairly high mobility spec (not as high as the combat/hemo builds) with cheap hemos and decent burst.

all your links are to the same build

The preparation glyph looks awesome:

Glyph of Preparation - Your Preparation ability also instantly resets the cooldown of Blade Flurry, Dismantle, and Kick.

Also combat gets more and more interesting:

Gouge - Damage now scales with attack power.
Aggression - Now increases the damage of your Sinister Strike, Backstab, and Eviscerate abilities by 3/6/9/12/15% (up from 2/4/6/8/10%).
Blade Twisting - Now also increases the damage dealt by Sinister Strike and Backstab by 5/10%.

What was the gear like? Specifically daggers. Was it at 70 or 80, PTR or Beta?

I'm running this comp now, but as ShS and will be moving to Mutilate once the patch comes out. I'm thinking that I might need to try and push for 1800 before the Season ends for at least one of the Vengeful daggers.

PTR with the old Poison bug (Instant poison hitting for insane numbers and old version of improved poison), but I used mostly Wound/Mind Numbing with Deadly Brew to get more reliable results (had an offhand to switch). The paladin had the Gladiator title and full S4 gear (except the shoulders) and I had S3 weapons (daggers), S4 honor/arena gear except shoulders, the 45 resilience insignia and a battlemaster trinket. I had 416 resilience I think and was specced 51/5/5 with 3/3 Deadened Nerves.

Edit: The current patch changes are quite bad for Mutilate/Holy. Most likely level 70 Patch 3.0 won't matter too much and a retribution paladin will work out way better with level 80 and Mutilate/Preparation. Even for PVE some Paladins seem to take a lot of retribution talents to heal.

Darlal's got some good points, Combat is looking very enticing. I smell an AR/Prep variant making a comeback. With the most recent Combat changes, Sinister Strike could be pulling ahead of Hemo. Someone would have to run the math to see which is more efficient damage/energy wise, as I lack the skill haha.

Combat/Subt: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Pros of Combat:

+ Amazing white damage due to DWS, Precision, and Weapon Expertise.
+ Riposte. 10 Energy, 150% damage, melee attack speed slowing effect, enough said.
+ Endurance. 2 min CD's on Evasion/Sprint. (1 min Sprint with Glyph)
+ Imp Sprint. Great mobility, considering the lack of Shs, and with a 2(1) min CD plus Prep, you'll be able to utilize it often.
+ Blade Flurry/Adrenaline Rush. Great burst on demand.
+ Nerves of Steel. Getting caught in a KS won't be quite as detrimental now, and could potentially save you from having to trinket.
+ Blade Twisting. An okay cover for missing out on Vile Poisons.
+ Vitality/Combat Potency/Relentless Strikes. You will literally be swimming in Energy. The high energy cost of SS may not be quite as bad as I thought.
+ Throwing Specialization. Since the DT interrupt has been removed from the PvP gloves, this allows you to have an edge over casters again, and more. Not only does it interrupt through the use of DT, but also Fan of Knives. FoK is a short range, AOE ability. In other words, with this talent, an AOE interrupt for anyone in range. Highly situational, but potentially very useful.
+ Unfair Advantage. Great edge over Rogues/Warriors. Evasion may not only be used as a defensive ability now against those classes.
+ Savage Combat. Good cover for Deadliness.
+ Surprise Attacks. Undodgeable finishers. Money.

+ Sinister Strike damage increases from Aggression, BT, and SA. Big yellow numbers.

Not to mention the Subt goodies. Serrated Blades, Elusiveness, Ghostly Strike (paired with UA = win), Dirty Tricks/Deeds, and of course Prep.

This build was centered around SS, obviously, but the numbers would have to be run to see how effective it would really be. Missing out on a weapon specialization in order to maximize on SS's core damage, but I think we'll have to play it or run more tests to find out which will put out more damage.

@Deva

You're probably going to still want to pick up Hemo and use the Hemo glyph, depending on how Major/Minor glyph setups work out. And you're missing one of the best synergies of Unfair Advantage by not taking maxed Setup, not only will you be striking your target wth an extra attack but you'll be adding a combo point to them. Great for warrior tanking, reverse overpower.

Unfortunately with the loss of Mace Stuns, AR prep is just really hurting. Those "skilled" mace stuns during AR are what allowed pairing with Spriests during s2 and some in season 3. Not sure what you'd pair with in 2v2 and combat builds in 3s, where snares, roots and CC are even more prevalent makes lack of mobility even more difficult.

I'd probably go with this build if I were looking for a heavy combat build.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Not picking up a weapon spec is a little silly. I think with all the extra energy regen, gemming all +hit and +ap, grabbing the +1CP to SS crits glyph and still grabbing Hemo with glyph and Ghostly Strike with glyph, probably going to have to drop 1-2 of those. Get Hemo up, Ghostly Strike then start to wail on them.

I apologize for linking the same build. I'll add the correct builds here so you can look at them. Again, sorry for something of a repost, but I want people to know what I'm talking about. Oh, and especially with the prep glyph changes, I see the top of assassination becoming much less tasty if you're not going mutilate.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Here's the core of the new SSARP. This build has 5 points free to be taken in either: 5/5 sword spec, or some combination with 3/3 vitality + either 2/2 imp SND, 2/2 imp Deadly Throw, 2/2 imp kick, or 3/3 camo (currently has 2) and 1/1 ghostly strike. Really there are lots of options for those last points, but I really think the new Vitality synergizes very well with SS in an arena setting...much better than combat potency.


Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Here's the core of the new HARP, also with 5 free points. Those points should go in a combination of Vitality, Nerves of Steel, and Deadliness. The new vitality is so tempting that I'd really think about taking another tier of combat over a 10 %ap boost, but it depends on your team. In a burst team, skip nerves of steel and possibly even vitality. If you're running HARP with a healer, think about dropping 1 from camo to take ghostly strike and also nerves of steel and vitality.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Here's a deeper combat build. Overall Unfair Advantage 2/2 is worth more than deadliness 5/5, but the big loss here (until lvl 80) is Perp.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Here's a deep hemo build. You lose your 1min imp sprint, but you hemo will actually hit harder than a wet noodle, and won't cost too much energy.

I personally am leaning towards SSARP at the moment (the prep + blade twisting change changed everything). I think it will be a great build in a 2dps makeup as well as with a healer or in 3s. In 5s I can really see alot of other ways to go.

I think I'm a little confused as to how the Hemo glyph actually works. From the sounds of it, it sounds like you get a 40% increase to the Hemo debuff? Or is it a 40% to the Hemo strike itself when the target has the debuff?

And wow, totally overlooked Setup. I'm so used to just grabbing Initiative I completely overlooked it. That's a great point you made.

Yea, Mace Stuns really made that spec incredible, but I still think the amount of damage and utility you have with a build like that is something worth trying. This, like every other build suggested is just going to have to get tried out so we can see for ourselves how it'll actually play out. I tend to play double dps rushdown comps for 2's, so Shadowdance is also looking enticing. Just going to have to tinker with it once the patch hits.

Some minor quibbles in what I consider excellent iconic builds.

How important is Camouflage? I normally consider it decent talent, but more something to drop points in to get to a higher tier. In your 10/51 build you are taking a point of Camouflage over a point in Shadowdance. Now, I know Shadowdance is not as good as it used to be, but it still seems quite a bit stronger than a single point in Camouflage.

I feel Honor among Thieves is very very good. Over in the PvE thread, they have it clocking in at 1cp/1.8 seconds based only on your own crits. If Hemo gives you 1 combo point per 30 energy and you regenerate 10 energy per second, then Hemo gives you 1cp per 3 seconds. So HaT gives you nearly twice the combo points that spamming Hemo does (admittedly, not at the beginning of combat). That's solo. Add one additional DPS (or, say, your battleground group, or even your healer in 2v2) and you can get close to 1cp/second. It's even stronger because you can get build combo points on your target even when you're CC'd. Surely this is better than 3/3 Master of Subtlety?

Finally, for your 0/48/13 build, what do you think of losing Elusiveness and a point in Camouflage for a couple points in either Combat Potency or Prey on the Weak, and Killing Spree? Losing fast Cloak hurts, but my understanding is Killing Spree can be quite the burst (including this patch's fix to autoattacks). It's like having two ARs again.

Actually the blind cooldown with Elusiveness is two minutes (up from 90 secnds).

I think subtlety's strength lies in more players. Previously we did not as well in 5v5 as in 2v2 or 3v3. Honor among thieves will probably be very strong in a 5v5 settings where the crits shall come more plentifully. The problem was that once out of stealth we were more or less slaughtered. I have come up with this build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Im not sure how will it will do in 5v5 but it should give the mobility of Shs with improved sprint, ghostly strike and riposte to fight off a swarm once caught out of stealth. Im not sure what to do with the remaining points but its just a cursory look at the moment.

Humm, Filthy Tricks+Glyph = 3min Prep, Deflection and Riposte are nice, but not really that good (especially since we have Dismantle now).
If anything I'd look at something like this: 0/19/52 however, I'm not sold on Honor among Thieves, hence it's possible to move those 3 points to something else.
Setup and Initiative are exchangeable.
Also Shadow Dance seems a bit weak, but if you're already at 50 in Sub, then picking it up isn't a bad thing. It allows some very nice combinations.

I think the strength of honor among thieves is the downtime between combat stints. For example i just killed the other parties priest and am going to the druid i target him. It takes me 4 seconds to get there. While running there and stealthing I get 4 free cps meaning no need to burn premed and such and an instant shs garrote---> rupture hemo vanish. Also take into consideration that when chasing a pillar humping druid you generate free cps. This can lead to many possibilities such as deadly throws to interupt many spells, assuming you carry your s4 gloves on you at all times which i hope people will. Again until we have a video or a disection of the talent we can only carry on with hypothetical situations but my belief is that in 5v5 subtlety will probably be the better spec to choose due to its more defensive oriented play style and cp generation.

Again this is only hypothetical atm. Momentarily i am looking at this build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Again I stress that in a 5v5 situation once you start attacking the other teams primary healer they will most likely go straight for you. Hence i stress the importance of playing defensive. I have left 3 points but i would most likely take riposte. Dismantle is useful yes but riposte and ghostly strike are not normalized. As such i would use these as in place of dismantle while keeping dismantle for saving my priest from the warrior beating on him and so on and so forth. BF is there for burning down something quick. Thats my reasoning behind this build anyways.

My complaint would be that this build seems to lack direction. Particularly with regards to Deflection/Riposte, since you don't have opportunity or improved ambush, why 5 points in close quarters combat (unless you've got 2 S3 or 4 fists)? I agree that this is superior with fists (it makes up for the loss of malice), but how many of us have S3 or 4 fist weapons laying around? Furthermore, riposte is the single best attack we have in any tree in terms of damage per energy, and debuff. 6% physical mitigation also is nothing to sneeze at for 3 points. Overall, unless you have brutal glad fists in your bank, I'd take riposte.

On top of that, all the builds I linked were lvl 70 builds for the coming patch, not lvl 80 builds. My gut feeling is that mutilate will be the standard pvp spec at early 80. There will probably be teams that look for the rogue to take different talents, but something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft just looks so tasty with reduced duration snares, increased move speed, spikey damage, controlled burst, prep, solid damage reduction (hello deadened nerves), 20% healing buff...I really don't see any combat or sub builds being anything more than specialty builds. At lvl 70 where many of us don't have top end daggers, it's a different stroy.

This.

Also,

The Prep glyph no longer reduces the cooldown, now it resets the CD's for Blade Flurry, Kick and Dismantle on top of what it already resets.

I was replaying to Coldfuzion actually, although now that I look at it, it's too much "utility" and probably not enough DPS compared to Daggers/SSARP.
Anyway, I think it's probably a bit early to speculate on which spec will "rule them all", with no information on the meta-game at 80.


However talking about 3.0, Here are my thoughts on probably specs:

42/17/2 You get super-sprint for mobility, 1/3 Master Poisoner and Improved Kidney for Double DPS (Can drop those points into murder/quick recovery when playing with a healer).
There's also an option for a more poison centric built if your partner can offer their own MS on the target with This. Go Double-Instant Poison for extra damage.
Glyphs: Sprint + one of: Evasion/SnD/Rupture/Crippling/Shiv/Deadly Throw(?).

x/3x/2x With RS being moved to Subtlety it revitalizes HARP in the form of SSARP with the last 4 points going to either Cruelty/HS/Deadliness.
Not sure about Vitality thought, and overall the spec is probably only viable with Double DPS.
With SS Glyph and Fists I see a nice synergy there.
Glyphs: Sinister Strike, Sprint

20/0/41. The main problem with the classic ShS spec is that, you'll probably play with a healer and in that case you really need Vile Poison.
However since murder got moved down, you're forced to take Imp Evisc instead. So essentially you gain nothing compared to "now". While 42/17/2 offers superior damage, superior poison application and similar mobility (via Super Sprint). Quick Recovery brings synergy with healers as well.
I think it's too early to pronounce 20/0/41 dead, but it's definitely not the top-dog.
Glyphs: Hemorrhage, one of: Sprint/Evasion/SnD/Rupture/Crippling/Prep/Shiv.


As for not having fists/daggers, time to make a ticket or start saving points. Harsh, but true.
Or just get the superior ones from Kil'jaeden.

PvE has a huge amount of analysis on which WotLK talents give the best DPS performance. I realize that comparing Improved Sprint against Fleetfooted is difficult, but surely we can give a ballpark estimation of the DPS benefits of DPS talents in PvP.

I know, I get yelled at every time I suggest this. "Our targets have different armor!", "Every fight is different!", and so forth. PvE fights have variables like this too, but they still create models, and the models are still used by Rogues everywhere. It's only a model.

Let's start with the values of DPS talents in PvE, and work from there. For example, from Aldriana on Mutiliate we have:

Malice - 164 DPS for 5 points, or 33 DPS per point.
Ruthlessness - 124 DPS for 3 points, or 41 DPS per point.
Puncturing Wounds - 118 DPS for 3 points, or 39 DPS per point.
Lethality - 108 DPS for 5 points, or 22 DPS per point.
Seal Fate - 187 DPS for 5 points, or 37 DPS per point
Focused Attacks - 232 DPS for 3 points, or 77 DPS per point.
Find Weakness - 82 DPS for 3 points, or 27 DPS per point.
Turn the Tables - 47 DPS for 3 points, or 16 DPS per point
HFB - 325 DPS for 1 point
DW Spec - 387 DPS for 5 points, or 77 DPS per point
Precision - 300 DPS for 5 points, or 60 DPS per point
CQC - Same as Malice, 33 DPS per point
Relentless Strikes - 330 DPS for 5 points, or 66 DPS per point
Opportunity - 171 DPS for 2 points, or 85 DPS per point

(I've ignored Improved Poisons, Vile Poisons, and QR, since they have very different DPS characteristics and PvP evaluations)

Of course, we have to modify our model for PvP. Malice is worth less, because our targets take ~20% less damage from crits. It might be worth ~20% less, or 27DPS per point. (as a second order consideration, Malice increases the variance of your damage, but for now lets ignore that beneficial effect). Similarly for Lethality, if with a 40% crit rate it gives us 108dps, then with a 30% crit rate it gives 81DPS, or 16DPS per point.

It's difficult to measure the benefit of combo points in PvP. I feel that Ruthlessness is worth much more than Seal Fate per point, since it's vitally important to get a single combo point on a target, but the relative value of getting 3 combo points rather than 2 is worth less. Most of the time, I am not maintaining a PvE cycle in PvP which might get disrupted if I don't have combo points. I would guess that combo points, especially the 3rd through 5th combo points, are worth relatively less in PvP. How much DPS would you say 1 combo point a second is worth?

Another consideration for PvP is time off target allows one to regenerate energy and makes yellow attacks proportionally more valuable than white attacks. Does anyone have any data on their %damage from yellow vs. white attacks in PvP?

One trend I've seen in a lot of PvP builds is "blindly" taking Find Weakness over Focused Attacks. Both only benefit your yellow attacks. On the other hand, Focused Attacks might be worth slightly less because you have less time on target per yellow attack (and crit 10% less). Still, Focus Attacks is worth more than twice as much in PvE than Find Weakness. Do people really think that Find Weakness gets two times better than Focused Attacks when we move from PvE to PvP?

All the links are the same :-P

See my next post where I tossed some specs up. Sorry about the bad links though

Leveling on Lich King, I found all those classes easy pickings. (mutilate)

Ret Pallys were dangerous , but the fight would usually go:

I open, rip them apart, they bubble right before I land the killing blow, I sprint-vanish-cloak. Wait for bubble to fade, rinse repeat. Win.

Fury/arms seems much weaker now without mace spec. Dismantle just adds insult to injury.

DK were interesting because usually they would drop before kidney faded or right as it did, BUT, even when killed they rise from the dead as a ghoul and come after you. So even in death DKs are a dangerous.

I copied a 80 over and did some bg (didn't feel like grinding it all out myself to just get reset later) and from what I played not much changed from 70-74~ 80.

Mind you, because this was world pvp most of my experience is with my starting the fight from stealth. If a ret pally gets you out of stealth, it's a loss. I was able to overcome the DK and Wars that caught me, but I'm not sure if that was due to skill or gear, or whatnot.

My initial reaction is plate seems weaker to me then before, with the exclusion of ret pallys, (who everyone seems to think will get nerfed), but as a rogue, you beat there bubble, you beat them.