Essentially what you're asking is trading 20% increased damage on mutilate, backstab and garrote for a 2 minute vanish. I'm going off the top of my head but with about 20% haste you're regenning 12 energy per second. Assuming the 30% haste stacks multiplicatively you're gaining about 3.6 energy per second or a total of 72 energy per overkill. Then you're getting 6 extra ticks of garrote that have a 60% chance to proc venomous wounds so 3.6 ticks at 10 energy gives you another 36 for a total of 108. So you get 2 extra mutilates or 1 extra mutilate and 2 backstabs, and the damage from the garrote and its venomous wound procs.

Just from looking at your damage breakdowns the first thing that I notice is you either didn't open with garrote or you missed a vanish because you'd ideally have 18 ticks of garrote one from you opener one from your vanish 20 seconds in and the other at 3:20 seconds in. I don't know how you have 28 ticks of garrote on a 5:35 long fight. Even with a 2 minute vanish you're only going to get 4 garrotes off: :00, :20, 2:20, and 4:20 at 6 ticks each. Assuming that's a typo, on the 5:35 fight you gained the 2 mutilates and the garrote damage I described above. You performed 121 mutilates and 21 backstab, and lets say your untalented base mutilate average is 13k and your base backstab damage is 11k. That works out like this

Eluiveness Muti damage 1,570,000 121*13,000
Opportun. Muti damage 1,872,000 120*(13,000*1.2)

Elusiveness BS Damage 231,000 21*11,000
Opportunity BS Damage 250,800 19*(11,000*1.2)

Opportunity is 321,000 damage ahead.I would think that gap would continue to get wider as your gear increased. Vanish is also very situational the best time to use it varies widely. Given my very very rough napkin math it doesn't seem like its a theory worth pursuing.

How's the new Alchemy trinket holding up on the EP values? I did some quick math and came up with 1475EP, but that seems wrong to me. Was wondering if this might be worth picking up right away.

I think now the order will be:

1)Engineering;
2)JC;
3)All other crafting professions;

According with the EP values from page 1 of the guide.

Looks like the guy you quoted calculated incorrectly, I'm surprised I didn't notice (80 agility x 2.6EP is 208)

You are correct, Engineering leads with 249.6EP (based on the previous calculation, I did not look this over). Following, is Jewelcrafting by 2.6 EP at 210.6EP (as JC earns 81 agility whilst other professions gain 80).

Enchanting (2x40agi ring), Leatherworking (130agi enchant), Blacksmithing (2x40agi socket) each earn an overall benefit of 80 agility, leaving it at 208EP.

tl;dr - Engineering - 249.6EP // JC - 210.6EP // Everything else that gives agility as a bonus - 208EP

[e] Engeering maths is fine, 12/60 uptime every minute (1/5th), 1/5 * 480 agility = 96 agility average. 96 x 2.6EP = 249.6EP
[e2] Strings was nerfed to 10 seconds (from 12), dropping Engineering to 208EP.

You can reforge 77 crit rating into hit or mastery depending on your gear arrangement (this doesn't get the incorrect value of 1475 EP).

to delete

Assuming we'll be reforging the crit into either hit or mastery, I still don't see how you've come up with the 1475 EP value:

Agility- 351 [including socket bonus and +40 Agi gem] * 2.6EP = 912.6

Crit- 117 [after reforging 77 points into a secondary stat] * .9 = 105.3

This puts baseline EP value to 1017.9 without adding in 77 points of stat benefits in yellow/spell hit cap or mastery.

_____

Baseline trinket EP value + ...

(Yellow hit- 77 * 1.75 = 134.75) = 1152.65

(Spell hit- 77 * 1.4 = 107.8) = 1125.7

(Mastery- 77 * 1.3 = 100.1) = 1118


Based solely on EP value, it's still behind Left Eye of Rajh (probably by a lot more due to the increase in proc chance) and slightly ahead of Unsolvable Riddle.

Even if it is intended that the tinker has a 1/6 uptime, it would have somewhat of an edge on the other professions in that you will always be able to line it up with other Assassination cooldowns.

However, you also risk losing uptime on interrupted fights - if there's target swaps or whatever at spacings that allow getting a full 12 seconds benefit out of 60 (or 10 out of 60, or whatever it ends up being), you'll get less average-case benefit. And it takes a bit more attention to optimize, as well.

In short: if it were 1/6 uptime rather than 1/5, there'd be a reasonable argument to be made. In some ways its better; in others its not as good. Hence, depending on personal preference and current content, some would choose to use it, and some would not. And that, I would argue, is the goal (or should be, at least) of profession balance.

Is there official word on whether or not Unheeded Warning - Item - World of Warcraft has had its value increased with the upcoming changes to it? Currently, Tia's Grace is ranked higher, I'm wondering if this will be the case come the patch, still? I saw some math on it a few posts back, but I'm not sure if this was the final say on it or anything yet.

Is there something I don't know about the Bolt Gun that is keeping us from factoring it into our Engineering EP value? A cursory glance at the damage of the gun (6800-10200, 2 minute cooldown) works out to 70.83 dps average-case before even factoring in crit, which is not insubstantial.