So, I just had the absurd luck of getting the Krol Decapitator and Landslide is still quite some time away for me, would I use Avalanche or Hurricane in the meantime? The only thing I could find is this post from Aldriana, which doesn't really answer my question. Have there been any new insights since then?

The short answer is "very". As a rule of thumb, its probably better to stick with the 1.8 dagger unless the 1.4 dagger is two full tiers higher, which, coupled with the trivial availability of Lacquered Lung-Leak Longknife, means you'd need an epic 1.4 dagger to displace it.

I was curious if there is a Pocket Guide available for reforging by tree. Such as, What to take off and reforge into.

Possibly in an order of preference for each?

The pocket guide is simple. Take the least valuable stat on an item and turn it into the most valuable stat you can. If the stats are equally bad, reforge whichever is numerically higher. When you approach them, figure out how to get expertise and hit capped with as little waste as possible. It's the exact same process as how you select what gear to use.

Quest wherever gets you 85 fastest. Or wherever you want. Blues are significantly better than greens, and epics are significantly better still. You'll get plenty of functional items for every slot, and higher level zones will give you better rewards. Pretty simple. The leveling path is fairly linear anyways, so I'm not really sure what your question was meant to get at. Prioritize uldum (ramkahen - helm enchant) and deepholm (therazane - shoulder enchant) because neither of those is going to be replaced by a dungeon drop.

For Mutilate, your OH needs to be fast, and your MH needs to be slow. There's not a lot of room for negotiation on either of those points. As noted, a fast dagger needs to be two tiers (26 ilvls) better than your best slow option to be worth using MH, and the badge OH is better than any available 1.8 dagger for the OH.

Aldriana, if you dont mind can you explain how you go about finding out this information? I remember you posting this same info months ago and have just lived by it at face value without understanding what formula I could use to determine when a fast dagger is good for a mainhand when you just have bad lucks for drops. I have 4 heroic fast offhands and only the new ring of blood mainhand. From what I understand the top end damage from mutilate for the mainhand is hard for a fast dagger to keep up with unless its ilevel is so high that the stats simply outweigh the slow dagger. Is there any math I can do so I always understand the reasoning behind it?

The short answer is that I wrote a spreadsheet to figure it out. Or, at current, a python library. However, to motivate the answer a little bit: LLLL is a 362.8 DPS 1.8 speed dagger; this means the average base weapon damage is 653.5, while an ilvl 346 1.4 speed dagger only does 573.5; hence your instant attacks are significantly smaller as a result. More generally, swapping a 333 1.8 dagger out for a 346 1.4 dagger gives:

• Smaller Backstabs
• Smaller Mutilates
• Fewer poison procs
• Lower proc uptime

In exchange for

• More base stats
• Higher autoattack damage

And when you work out the influence of all those factors, it works out that the 1.8 speed dagger does more total damage.

To be a little more numerical about the comparison: for a particular gear set I've been assessing, MH weapon DPS has an EP value of about 3.3, and using a 1.8 MH instead of a 1.4 gives roughly a 410 EP benefit. Those precise values will fluxuate somewhat based on variations in gear, but its sufficient to give us a ballpark figure. So comparing LLLL to Throat Slasher, we gain 15 agi and 29 rating stats for a total benefit of ~70 EP from stats, as well as 47 DPS for another 155 EP, for a total benefit of 225 EP... which is barely over half the 410 we lose from the speed difference. So a 1.4 weapon that's *one* tier better isn't anywhere close to as good, but a weapon two tiers higher would plausibly work out to be slightly better.

Yes, thank you for the answers on the weapons. After browsing the Cataclysm guide at Best Buy and reading that for Assassination, they recommended two fast daggers, I was questioning their accuracy as I know EJ does extensive testing and was hoping someone would touch on it.

So here is my noob question. It is pvp related.

I want to know what poisons i should be using as an assassanation rogue. To me, it seems like i should use Instant and wound poison. The reason being that if i use deadly poison, I will knock the opponent out of gouge every time. This is something i do not see as effecient, since I need to keep the person stunned for as long as possible.

I know that the blind glyph will remove all dots everytime i use it on someone, but if i try to gouge after the blind is almsot up then they will get the deadly poison dot.

If i am to not use deadly poison, then i will be using eviscerate. Maybe the reason I see a lot of people using deadly poison and envenom instead is because it is worth the damage? and gouge would more of less be used as an interupt ?

pvp mutilate spec without the use of deadly poison will drop your dmg to your target considerably. instant poison mh deadly oh for sure, wound poison (at least for pvp mutilate) is pretty much zero'd out with the nerf to the ms it applies, now being 10% down from 20%. in regard to gouges being broken because of the deadly poison dmg, it will happen. will it be game breaking? probably not. the massive envenoms will put more pressure than most teams can withstand. mind you, assasination pvp spec is supposed to be a "train" spec, so removing deadly poison, as i first stated, will nerf your dmg output. use gouge as an interrupt and a peel for your teammates.

I'm wondering how useful hurricane is currently: it seems to be bugged. With it on two weapons I have seen it proc 3 stacks on me of 450 haste. Also, there is no ICD and just simply a 15% proc chance. It seems to be pretty amazing unless i'm missing something.