Hi all,
I am a little confused on the our gemming strategy. Are we using orange gems instead of red gems with red sockets when the bonus is 60 agility or more? Is 160 mastery > 80 agility in these cases? Also is crit now better than haste? I have seen mixed postings on which is better. Thanks for the help.

I think a lot of us are still waiting for a final ruling on the stat weight stuff. Shadowcraft is telling me to leave a .4% expertise gap, and I'm filling it basicly with hit rating that could be reforged to crit. My dps goes from 85.1k with Shadowcrafts way, to 84.5 with my expertise capped. I'd certainly want that couple of hundred dps, but I am reluctant to drop my expertise cap because other sources are still trying to tell me to cap expertise.

I will try to compare the two specs in LFR but I have a feeling it will be so close I won't notice. If expertise

Really depends what modeling you use. As far as I can tell as your gear increases the value of mastery and crit does as well (in relation to agility). I am 500 ilvl and 1 agi > 2 mastery still, so unless you have a very high gear level I would say that agi gems in red sockets is still the way to go.

As far as crit vs haste, shadowcraft shows crit well ahead of haste for me. This makes sense to me because it takes quite a bit of haste to really make a difference on energy regen (and thus play-style), whereas it takes somewhat less crit to increase CP generation in a noticeable way. More CP's = better envenom uptime, etc etc. But it's close enough that you could probably go for whichever playstyle you want and not notice a huge difference.

Hey, I'm thinking about swapping from combat to assassination as soon as I get a second dagger but I have a few concerns.

Should I always wait for 5 cb when it comes to envenom or should I go with 4 aswell?

In my opener I'm currently thinking stealth->mutilate->rupture->mutilate->snd->muti->muti->envenom, do you guys have any input on this?

Also, should I focus on having my rupture close to 100% uptime, or should I only cast it with 5 combo points?

Thanks in advance!

Without knowing proc rates for the different trinks and all the math, is it safe to assume that whatever trinket SC is showing as higher DPS atm, would be the better VP upgrade? I guess the issue would really be, do I upgrade one twice, or both once for a better immediate upgrade. I'm debating between Relic of Xuen and Bottle of Infinite Stars Normal.

That is exactly what I do. Use the most expensive ability when clearcasting through Shadow Focus. I know Ambush does more damage but I am willing to sacrifice that for a chance at a Dispatch proc.

If you have anticipation for the fight (which should be almost every fight as mutilate) then yes, always 5 CP+ envenoms, unless your SND is about to fall, then do whatever you have available to refresh.

That's similar to the opener I do, except I weave in vendetta and SB after SND is up if I don't need them for some other purpose in the next 2 minutes.

100% uptime on rupture. Though if you are playing the spec right (pooling here and there, maxing out CP's by taking advantage of dispatch procs and doing extra mutilates during envenom buff) then most of the time you'll be able to do a 5 point rupture without a problem.

PS: Anyone wanting to know how to parse high on heroic wind lord (or normal) still, PM me and I'll give you a link to a video from my PoV.

You're doing all this while maintaining as much envenom buff uptime as you can.

I have two more questions,

In a scenario where I proc blindsight and I'm sitting with 5 CP, shall I use dispatch before I envenom?

If I got everything right, if I have enough energy I should envenom to maximize the uptime on the buff, but if I am starved on energy I should just use the dispatch and then envenom. Except for if my anticipation has 4 or 5 stacks, in that case I will hold on and dispatch after envenom.

Correct?

The second thing I want confirmed is that when using shadow blades, I should not vanish during the duration of it right? I should rather wait untill it runs out and use vanish with vendetta only.

If you have room for 2 more CP (3 if shadow blades is up) and envenom buff is still up, use the dispatch. Otherwise use the envenom then the dispatch.

Use vanish during shadow blades only if you get energy starved, which will usually happen at some point unless hero is up.

But it can proc Seal Fate and thus give 2. And since wasting CP - even Seal Fate procs - is bad...