AMBER SHAPER:

If you use vanish while "reshape life" is channeld on you, you wont get transformed (and nobody else will) until next cast of reshape life.

we use one guy who is doing it all fight long, so we have enough stacks and enough pools for p3. and if u vanish ur raid dont have to hit u under 20%, thats all dmg u can use for the boss ...

I thought I had written this two weeks back, but can't find it.

When soaking Titan Sparks on Will of the Emperor with feint. After you pop it so the animation goes off, you can Shadow Step (preferably to a ranged player). And you will avoid the damage. It takes a little bit of practice, but it is not too hard. You can visually identify the animation going off and then Shadow Step within reasonable reaction time and play it off flawlessly ten times out of ten.

When entering phase 2 of Blade Lord Ta'yak, if you use Killing Spree just before he teleports everyone to the center of the room (right when he hits 20%) you can immune yourself from being put into a tornado. This puts you in the middle of the room instead of on either side at the start of the phase.

So now that weve been raiding for awhile, what is everyone thoughts on top rogue dps specs. Combat for cleave fights and assassination for single target? I Swapped to assassination on Garajal from combat(which is my normal spec) and it seemed to up my dps about 5k. Whats everyone else finding?

I've only done it on a few attempts in 10 man normal and LFR, but was able to do it consistently. So I'm not sure how much it'd hurt doing it in 25 man.

I think its a little more subtle than that, overall. I think in pure sustained DPS, the specs are actually pretty close - Assassination may have a lead, but its not particularly large. While on a fight of sufficient length Assassination probably has a nontrivial advantage, the practical reality of typical raid fights is that the answer most often comes down to whether Combat was able to squeeze a 5th AR+SB in, and whether Assassination makes it to their 4th Vendetta + 3rd SB (or whatever, depending on the exact fight length). Combat's damage is bursty, so the exact number of times it gets its cooldowns is a major factor in how good its going to be. This is also why Combat tends to jump out to a lead at the beginning of a fight, while Assassination will provide more consistent DPS throughout the fight and gradually overtake Combat, particularly once Execute range hits.

Hence: in the Patchwerk scenario, the winner likely comes down to fight length - more likely favoring Assassination, but not always and not by a large margin. However, Patchwerk fights basically don't exist anymore - the closest you find is Gara'jal, where, indeed, Assassination has a narrow edge. In practice, figuring out which spec if favored is more often a question of their secondary benefits: Combat wins on Stone Guards because of its cleave, while Assassination wins on Feng because of its superior AoE. If an execute is helpful, Assassination holds an edge; if burst damage is more important, that favors Combat. In most cases, the winner is a question of when you need damage on what more than anything else.

To expand a bit Aldriana words, on the practical side, the most important thing to consider on an encounter that doesn't favor one or the other (ie. cleave or important execute phase, Spirit Kings are by the way an interesting fight as both matter) is your weapons. As you can see with the stat weights, be it EJ's EP or SimC ones, weapons' DPS form the core of your DPS.
Subtlities such as the exact fight duration come mostly if your weapons, and especially your MH, have the same iLvl.

You don't even need to vanish, if you don't get out of stealth, you won't suffer any damage from Song.

Garalon Combat (among other classes) Hotfix

Source

Guess they just realized that "duplicate the damage to a second target" actually means duplicate, which apparently wasn't intended. Combat is still going to be the go to spec for the fight, but not by that much.

Based on some quick testing on a frost mage and his pet it looks like bf mirroring applies before target damage modifiers.

Using prey on the weak to put a 10% damage buff on the mage BFing onto his pet.

SS without stun: 3053
SS with stun 3356
BF without stun 1336
BF with stun 1336

EDIT: Full blue post explanation of changes.

Combat. Hands down.

Assassination's single target lead is greatly exaggerated. Multidotting with Rupture+VW+DP is minor in comparison to BF. Both specs should at least be auto attacking the boss while they run from leg to leg. Combat has quicker Redirects with restless blades.