You should do more manual testing on this. I get Ruthlessness procs by SnD often, both on test dummies and in heroic/raid combat situations. Sit at a target dummy and just do 4+ SnD's for a while. You'll notice that sometimes your energy bar immediately refills 25 energy without any extra effects like a VW proc.

I must have missed that change. I'll have to go test it some more just to be certain, though, because i could have sworn I saw it proc from SnD yesterday.

Dear EJ, got a quick question.

I know their is a lot of very useful macros out their that not only enhance gameplay but reduce amount of buttons required on an action bar. My question is simply involving a modifier macro. I know that their can be a macro made for example:

#showtooltip [modifier:shift] Conjure Food; Conjure Water

That is a very simple Mage example for conjuring. I know that we have the ability to do a very similiar macro for mutilate and backstab. My question is if that instead of using a specific button as the modifier in this case Shift, I was wondering if it is possible to setup is the modifier will be when the targets health is 35%. Making it easier to revert from mutilate to backstab, while not having them both on the action bar.

Hope I can get an answer, thanks.

I don't believe there is a way to have a macro based on target health anymore. That would make it to easy for healers.

I got something that makes the switch considerably easier. I found it here on the rogue forums, and expanded on the macro. I can't remember who made it, but credit goes to the original author of course.
It doesn't make the switch automatic, but it does boil it down to the click of a single button.

• #showtooltip Backstab
  /swapactionbar 4 1

What this does is the following: a) Backstab as the icon for the macro b) switches your mainbar to a new bar. The number 4 in the macro represents the bar you switch to, and the number 1 represents the bar you want it to replace. If you need another bar to replace your mainbar, replace the '4' in the macro with whatever other bar you are using. You then click the macro, and you have the new bar up replacing your mainbar. You then c) make the new bar identical to your mainbar, only with Backstab in place of your Mutilate.

It is easy of course, to make a macro switching back to your original bar. Simply swap the two numbers around, and replace Backstab with Mutilate in the #showtooltip.

• #showtooltip Mutilate
  /swapactionbar 1 4

You can see it being used here.

That's a neat macro and all, but it's not really all that much easier than simply putting backstab on the button where you've put the macro. now, if you put the macro in with mutilate AND backstab on say, mod:shift so that your mutilate, backstab, and /swapactionbar are all on the same button, it might make sense to do it that way. that macro would look like this:

• #showtooltip mutilate
  /cast mutilate
  /swapactionbar [mod:shift] 1 4

This will reduce it down to 1 button. Yeah, you have to press a mod once to activate it, but if you need it down to 1 button and can't be bothered to hit a mod every time, this is probably the way to go.

The problem I've seen with doing this is that on a fight with movement, you may cap out energy trying to get back behind the mob, whereas it may be better to mutilate from the front and regen the 55 energy as you move to the back of the boss. If you do not have your mutilate easily available you could find yourself capped for that time instead.

As stated, garrote in general generates 36 energy per application whereas mutilate generates none. If assassination rogues were in a position where every GCD counts then being able to generate 3cp at an increased cost might be more of a factor. As it stands though, generating 1 CP and a superior amount of damage at the cost of 14 energy seems to outweigh the alternative of generating 2.6 CP and slightly less damage for 55 energy (21.15 energy per cp).

Garrote's position as an opener is further cemented by the fact that there's simply nothing a rogue would do with 2 or 3 CP that he couldn't do with 1 CP. A 1 CP rupture would generate 36 + 5 energy from venomous wounds and relentless strikes. A 2 CP rupture would generate 42 + 10 energy, and a 3 CP rupture would generate 48 + 15 energy. Furthermore, a slice and dice's CP cost is irrelevant in any situation where the rogue is able to refresh its duration using Envenom.

Going into the relative costs of each option:

Garrote + Rupture = 75 energy cost, 77 energy generated.
Mutilate (2CP) + Rupture = 80 energy cost, 52 energy generated. Spent - 28.
Mutilate (3CP) + Rupture = 80 energy cost, 63 energy generated. Spent - 17.
Garrote + Mutilate (2CP) + Rupture = 130 energy cost, 99 energy generated. Spent - 31.
Garrote + Mutilate (3CP) + Rupture = 130 energy cost, 110 energy generated. Spent - 20.

Conventional wisdom seems to indicate that both rupture (1CP) with venomous wounds and garrote with venomous wounds will outperform a mutilate damagewise. Given that generally a garrote into a rupture will result in an overall return of 2 energy, garrote into rupture looks the best on paper even before factoring in ruthlessness.

Edit: I spent the better part of my day putting together this post every time I had a few minutes of downtime at work and now it seems the discussion has moved on past this

So your proposed opener would be: Garrote + rupture + mut + snd, then back into the regular cycle?

Only if there is no ruth proc. The opener is garrote > rupture (+ ruth) > SND (mut no ruth > SND) > mut > mut > env

I've been following this since 4.0, and it works really smooth.

You'll want to throw in vendetta after snd and cold blood before envenom most fights.

Sounds reasonable. The only concern I would have is if you actually need to hit CB to refresh SnD in time and you aren't yet at 5 DP stacks, would this damage loss impact the overall efficiency of the cycle.