Just to note:

It doesn't matter if evis hits harder than rupture. That's not the whole picture. Evis also costs 28.6% more energy, and I'm guessing your evis doesn't do 28.6% more average damage with all relevant buffs/debuffs. I suppose technically evis costs 40% more energy (rupture costs ~71.4% of an evis) but that's not the useful number for the sake of comparison.

It's not a given that the somewhat rare mangle debuff will be present, though, and you should absolutely not be rupturing without it.

As long as we are on the topic of the new unheeded warning, does anyone know how much higher this puts it in the hierarchy of trinkets? This seems on principle to be a better buff for rogues in general, but I wonder if anyone has done testing with it to see how it fairs against other trinkets. Does it at least, unlike the live version, outperform the top-tier blue trinkets (tia's grace, key, and eye)?

I highly doubt anyone has done any testing with the new stats however, It is not likely to be better than the top Blue trinkets.

The reason is that the change is a static buff to Weapon Damage. This will buff white damage and combo generators. Finishers scale off of Attack Power not Weapon Damage. This proc will be a modifier on abilities that make up approximate 25-30% of our damage sources. That's not very impressive. [Key to the Endless Chamber] and [Tia's Grace] have procs that effect 100% of our damage sources.

This change will increase the value of [Unheeded Warning] but the trinket will still be lackluster.

Maybe I'm just doing something horribly, horribly wrong, but my white damage + SS (we should also include the small damage that comes from revealing strike's actual attack) makes up much more than 25-30% of my overall damage. I would say it is above 50%, though not by too much. Also, if you timed Killing Spree to coincide with this proc, it seems as though it would vastly improve the proc's value, particularly whenever it coincided with 3/3 BG.

How is the new unheeded warning working by the way is just adding a flat dmg increase to every auto attack? that would make its ep value higher if you took SnD and haste into consideration.

It is my understanding that the EP values of MH and OH DPS already take SnD and Haste into consideration.

you would be correct. Mh and oh take that into consideration or else their ep values would scale off of haste values.

So, computer repaired, I ran some numbers and got, quite literally, the exact same answers. Which probably implies that I have the same set of changes, which are... close to right. I haven't accounted for the change in weapon enchant proc uptimes due to having more MH attacks and fewer OH attacks, but overall the DPS effect of that should be minor.

So, Combat gained about 9%, and was theoretically only behind by 3 or 4 percent before, so in theory it should be better now; however, in practice, Combat typically performed much more like 15-20% behind (at least, if you believe the numbers found here, in which case a 10% difference will still leave Assassination ahead. So the question that must be asked is: who's right? Well, having looked at the numbers a bit, I suspect the answer is: neither.

See, I think the straight-across "top DPS" numbers are probably pretty skewed at this point. Because Assassination is better, more people play it; because the boss that drops MH Daggers is much easier (particularly on Hard Mode) than the bosses that drop MH Swords, Assassination has an advantage there; and so on. Thus, while at a given gear and skill level, the gap might only be (say) 5%, in practice gear and skill aren't usually equal when comparing top performance on fights, so the numbers reflect a larger difference.

That said: having thought about it, I suspect the Combat model in my spreadsheet better approximates optimal play than my Assassination model currently does, so the gap may well be somewhat larger than the spreadsheet predicts. I don't think its a *lot* bigger - probably a couple of percent at most - but its plausible to me that Combat is currently further behind than the spreadsheet predicts.

With that in mind, its really hard to say whether the 9% gain in Combat DPS - coupled with better target switching through the Restless Blades/Redirect interaction - is going to be sufficient to close the gap entirely. My best guess it that the specs are now reasonably comparable across all fights, but each has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. For instance: Assassination's large group AoE is still much better. Combat's 2-target AoE is now amazingly stronger due to Blade Flurry. Depending on time-on-target patterns, the need to Kick, positioning limitations, etc. etc., any given fight may favor one spec or the other. And I just don't feel confident enough to try to guess which will be better overall. There may ultimately be an advantage to one spec or the other... but at this stage, I don't know how that will favor. Note, however, that the point about Assassination MHs being easier to get still applies.

As an aside for those of you wondering about Subtlety:its theoretical damage gain is of comparable magnitude - just over 9%, to be specific. And given that it was clearly worse than Combat before... it still is. And thus clearly worse than Assassination before. Without even considering the awfulness of the cycle. Which is not to say that it isn't useful to spec for certain situations, but its still really a non-option as an everyday raiding spec.

I was just wondering by how much the EP value of Left of Rajh was going to change with the added chance to its proc rate mentioned in the blue posts.

This stratfu source is heavily outdated and not a good call for comparing both specs. Shadowcraft does actually pretty well in calculating the dps for combat. It probably does even undervalue combat a bit depending on the fight-length that is set and if prepotting is allowed for. You already spoke of the factors that lead to a not so clear assumptions, a minority of all rogues do play combat and the ones that play it probably don't have the gear to provide decent numbers. But all in all your estimate should be quite accurate literally that it won't matter that much which spec you will choose.

4.97 and 1.55 for the usual set of near-BIS gear. Slightly different depending on your exact gear level, how much haste/hit/mastery you have, etc.