Feel free to pm me if you find any mistakes, be it spelling or content.

Latest revision: Nov 28, 2012

I'd like to thank Aldriana and Pathal for their general support and also everyone who put effort into providing this thread with all the information it contains. Credit goes also to Therya for letting me use the layout of the talents section of the restoration shaman thread.

 

Contents

1Abbreviations 2Talents and Glyphs 2.1Talents 2.2Glyphs 3Combat and Rotation 3.1Poisons 3.2Single-Target 3.3Multi-Target 3.4Anticipation 3.5Cooldowns 4Stats and Caps 4.1Stats 4.2Stat Weights 4.3Caps 5Gearing 5.1Best in Slot 5.2Set Bonuses 5.3Trinket EPs 5.4Reforging 5.5Gemming 5.6Enchanting 6Consumables 7Races and Professions 7.1Races 7.2Professions 8Encounter Tips 8.1Tier 14 9Macros 10Addons 11Tools 12Thread Change Log

[top]Abbreviations

Abbreviation	Meaning
Agi	Agility
AoE	Area of Effect
AP	Attack Power
AR	Adrenaline Rush
BF	Blade Flurry
BG	Bandit's Guile
BiS	Best in Slot
Capping	Hitting max. energy
CC	Crowd Control
CD	Cooldown
Clipping	Refreshing something that's still active
CoS	Cloak of Shadows
CP	Combo Point(s)
CR	Combat Readiness
CT	Crimson Tempest
DoT	Damage over Time
DP	Deadly Poison
DPE	Damage per execution
DPR	Damage per resource(energy) point spent
DPS	Damage per second
EP	Equivalence Point
Evis	Eviscerate
FoK	Fan of Knives
GCD	Global Cooldown
KS	Killing Spree
MG	Main Gauche
MH	Main Hand
MS	Mortal Strike Effect (healing reduction debuff)
NYD	Not yet determined
ICD	Internal Cooldown
OH	Off Hand
Rep	Reputation
RF	Raid Finder
RvS	Revealing Strike
SB	Shadow Blades
SnD	Slice and Dice
TotT	Tricks of the Trade
WP	Wound Poison

[top]Talents and Glyphs

[top]Talents

Tier	Talent	Recommendation	Comments
15	Nightstalker	Skip	This talent makes your opener and skills used while vanished do 25% more damage, but the dps gain is inferior to shadow focus.
15	Subterfuge	Skip	This makes it possible to not getting targeted by some encounter mechanics for 3 seconds after breaking stealth, but provides no dps gain at all.
15	Shadow Focus	Recommended	With this talent you can use ambush as an opener and also while vanished for 0 energy costs to get free damage and 2 CP. It's the best choice of this tier for dps.
30	Deadly Throw	Situational	Might be useful in combination with shuriken toss for encounters with segments of the fight, where you can't be in melee range of anything or if you need another interrupt in addition to kick.
30	Nerve Strike	Situational	Can reduce the taken raid damage if there are stunnable adds.
30	Combat Readiness	Situational	Adds another defense cooldown for our reportoire which can be used on several encounters to help our healers. Probably the best choice of this tier for most encounters.
45	Cheat Death	Skip	Currently there are no known encounters where this talent could be useful, e.g. for soaking a high-damage raid mechanic all by yourself. It's better to use leeching poison or elusiveness to prevent getting into situations where you'd need cheat death.
45	Leeching Poison	Situational	Provides you with an extra non-lethal poison which when used gives an additional 10% of the damage from following abilities as heal to yourself: Whitehits, SS, RvS, Ambush, FoK, Evis and CTs initial hit. Recommended for fights with no or low burst damage phases, but sustained damage taken. Compared to elusiveness this talent doesn't require energy or GCDs to help your healers, but it's effect is not as strong most of the time. It may even boost DPS if it triggers procs like it did for Fangs of the Father.
45	Elusiveness	Situational	Grants you 30% damage reduction against almost every encounter mechanic for 5 seconds after using feint, so this can have up to 100% uptime if you decide to sacrifice the energy for doing so. Recommended for fights with low sustained, but high burst damage phases to help out your healers. Note that the duration of elusiveness will extend to 7 seconds with the use of glyph of feint.
60	Preperation	Situational	Provides a dps boost for minor to no movement involving fights when using prep -> vanish -> ambush with the T15 shadow focus talent. Shadowstep or burst of speed provide a higher dps gain on mid to heavy movement fights though.
60	Shadowstep	Situational	Gives you the possibliity to teleport up to 25 yards to an enemy or ally. Useful to get away from or back to a boss instead of running.
60	Burst of Speed	Situational	Provides you with an extra skill which can be used without cooldown to give you a movespeed bonus for a short amount of time and it can also be used to clear movement-impairing effects. Useful for encounters with heavy and/or many movement phases, where shadowstep isn't ready everytime you'd need it.
75	Prey on the Weak	Situational	Provides a dps boost for your raid and sometimes even for yourself if targets are stunnable. Useless otherwise.
75	Paralytic Poison	Situational	Adds another non-lethal poison to your repertoire which can be used to often stun targets. Can be used in combination with shiv to root a target for 4 seconds. If there are stunnable targets, prey on the weak is usually the better choice.
75	Dirty Tricks	Skip	Pretty much useless on all encounters.
90	Shuriken Toss	Situational	Useful for encounters with phases where you can't be in melee range of anything.
90	Versatility	Situational	Really useful for fights that involve a lot of target swapping.
90	Anticipation	Situational	Best choice for boosting your dps if neither shuriken toss nor versatility are desperately needed. Refer to the anticipation section on how to get the most out of it.

For general purposes i'd recommend using this spec.
Check the encounter tips section for further advice.

[top]Glyphs

Recommended:
[Glyph of Adrenaline Rush] - Helps to prevent energy capping during adrenaline rush.

Situational:
[Glyph of Cloak of Shadows] - Any fights where you take physical damage.
[Glyph of Blade Flurry] - Helps to apply utility poisons.
[Glyph of Crippling Poison] - Helps to apply crippling poison.
[Glyph of Shiv] - More frequent applications of the improved utility poisons and/or enrage dispels.
[Glyph of Deadly Momentum] - Any fight with adds which can proc the glyph.
[Glyph of Feint] - Any fight with AoE raid damage. Also adds 2 seconds to the duration of the elusiveness talent.
[Glyph of Sprint] - Any fight with movement.
[Glyph of Kick] - Any fight where you have to interrupt.
[Glyph of Evasion] - Any fight where you have to tank adds or bosses.
[Glyph of Sap] - Any fight where you have to cc an add before the pull.
[Glyph of Expose Armor] - If you have to maintain your raids weakened armor debuff.

Check the encounter tips section for further advice on where to use them.

[top]Combat and Rotation

[top]Poisons

You can have one lethal and one non-lethal poison active at the same time. The usage of shiv activates a more powerful version of your current non-lethal poison.

Lethal Poisons

Poison	Benefit
Deadly Poison	Your main dps poison.
Wound Poison	If you really need to apply the healing debuff. You will lose dps as a trade-off.

Non-Lethal Poisons

Poison	Benefit	Shiv effect
Crippling Poison	If you need to slow a target.	Reduces the target’s speed by 70% for 12 seconds.
Mind-numbing Poison	If you need to increase casting times of targets.	Increases the casting time of an enemy's next spellcast within 8 seconds by 100%.
Leeching Poison(talent)	Gives a sustained selfheal.	Instantly restores 5% of the Rogue’s health.
Paralytic Poison(talent)	If you need to stun targets often.	Roots the target in place for 4 seconds.

Check the encounter tips section for further advice on where to use them.

[top]Single-Target

Use ambush when stealthed(pre-pull or vanish).
Refresh SnD with whatever CP you have when less than two seconds are remaining.
Keep the RvS debuff up for every SS, eviscerate and rupture.
Prioritizing rupture over eviscerate results in a minor dps gain. Always use them with 5 CP.
If you didn't spec into anticipation and shadow blades is active, it might be better to finish with 4-5 CP instead(needs testing).
Clipping the last tick of rupture from a higher insight level won't affect your dps. The higher damage for the clipped tick will be added to the first tick of your new rupture. might result in a slight dps loss since the higher tick damage of insight is lost.
Energy pooling before RvS can boost DPS if you can't reach a higher insight level immediately.
Energy pooling when deep insight is about to fade and you can't weave in another finisher might increase your dps as well.

[top]Multi-Target

Activate blade flurry for 2 or more targets and keep on doing your single-target rotation, but don't use rupture now as blade flurry won't copy it.

When there are a lot of targets(exact number not yet determined) use fan of knives for CP generation and crimson tempest as your finisher instead. You could also weave in slice and dice to fetch energy restore procs via combat potency.

Blizzard: "Anticipation now generates the correct number of combo points when Crimson Tempest is used."

Taken from post #9 of this thread, credit goes to bural:

[top]Anticipation

The Anticipation talent allows us to store up to 10 CP. When performing offensive finishing moves with anticipation charges, the finishing move will use up 5 CP and the number of anticipation charges will be granted as CP afterwards. Using Slice and Dice does not grant the CP, but you will keep the anticipation charges instead.
This mechanic can be used to delay your offensive finishers and reach higher insight levels(shallow, moderate, deep) for an increase in dps.
What you want to do is to keep using SS and RvS to reach a higher insight level whilst adding anticipation charges before you use a finisher. Keep in mind that your SS can generate up to 2 CP via the RvS debuff and up to 3 CP during shadow blades, so you want to either use your finisher or another RvS followed by your finisher when reaching four or three anticipation charges respectively to avoid losing a CP.
Addons like Bandits Guile Helper can help you track your current insight level.

[top]Cooldowns

Not added.

[top]Stats and Caps

[top]Stats

Agility increases our attack power and critical strike chance. 1 agility gives 2 attack power and roughly 1300 agility give an additional 1% chance to crit.

Hit Rating reduces the chance that our attacks and poisons will miss the target. 340 hit rating give an additional 1% chance to hit.

Expertise Rating reduces the chance that our attacks will be dodged(and parried). 340 expertise rating reduce the dodge chance of our target by 1%.

Mastery rating increases our chance to proc Main Gauche. 300 mastery rating give an additional 1% chance to proc.

Haste rating increases our attack speed and energy regeneration. 425 haste rating give an additional 1% haste.

Critical strike rating increases our chance to critically hit. 600 crit rating give an additional 1% crit chance.

[top]Stat Weights

These are sample stats weights for T14 BiS according to Shadowcraft (commit 07a9119d9e042e4d3044f6a4c54ab7fba0cc73e9, Oct 20). The current script may require further optimizations which could sway data.

Stat	T14 EP
Agility	2.74
Expertise Rating	2.43
Yellow Hit Rating	2.40
Haste Rating	1.50
Mastery Rating	1.22
Crit Rating	1.02
White Hit Rating	1.00
MH Expertise	1.84
OH Expertise	0.59

This leaves us with the following stat priority:

Agility > 7.5% Expertise = 7.5% Hit > Haste > Mastery > Crit

[top]Caps

Hit

Yellow	White
2550 (7.5%)	9010 (26.5%)

The yellow hit cap is 7.5% against bosses and requires 2550 hit rating to be reached. Hit rating is still useful afterwards for our white-hits until a hit percentage of 26.5%, but heavily loses on EP value(see above).

Expertise

	Dodge
No Racial	2550 (7.5%)
Racial	2210 (6.5%)

The dodge cap is 7.5% against bosses and requires 2550(2210 with racials) expertise rating to be reached. Expertise rating is usually useless afterwards, unless you hit bosses from the front, but you should avoid doing that at all times. Note that you still want to reach your expertise cap for your MH if you got it for your OH already with a racial. If you got your MH expertise with a racial already, you can ignore the OH expertise afterwards.

[top]Gearing

Always use a slow(2.6s speed) mainhand.

OFFHAND ONLY: 1.8s daggers, and 2.6s axe/fist/sword/mace are exceptionally close in performance. However, 2.6s weapons appear to have a fraction of a % of an advantage. Try to keep a 1.8s dagger around for when you can't use Killing Spree optimally. Because of their racial passive, orc rogues should always use a 2.6s offhand if it's a fist weapon or axe and they also use a fist weapon or axe as their mainhand.

[top]Best in Slot

This may change in the future as we better understand any changes to EP weights.

Best in Slot Gear

Slot	Item
Helm	[Helmet of the Thousandfold Blades]
Neck	[Pheromone-Coated Choker]*
Shoulders	[Spaulders of the Thousandfold Blades]
Back	NYD
Chest	[Tunic of the Thousandfold Blades]
Wrists	NYD
Gloves	[Gloves of the Thousandfold Blades]
Belt	NYD
Legs	[Legguards of Failing Purification]
Boots	[Treads of Deadly Secretions]
Ring 1	[Regail's Band of the Endless]
Ring 2	[Painful Thorned Ring]
Trinket 1	[Bottle of Infinite Stars]
Trinket 2	[Terror in the Mists]
Mainhand	[Claws of Shek'zeer]
Offhand	NYD**

*Heroic version of [Pheromone-Coated Choker].

**[Claws of Shek'zeer] for orc rogues.

[top]Set Bonuses

[T14 2P] - Increases the damage done by your Venomous Wounds ability by 20%, increases the damage done by your Sinister Strike ability by 15%, and increases the damage done by your Backstab ability by 10%(NYD EP).
[T14 4P] - Increases the duration of your Shadow Blades ability by 12 sec for assassination and subtlety and by 6 sec for combat(NYD EP).

[top]Trinket EPs

All EPs are calculated with t14 BiS values from Shadowcraft, as seen above.

Name	EP
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (heroic) (->haste)	6,070.92
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (heroic)	5,934.50
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (normal) (->haste)	5,377.96
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (normal)	5,257.11
[Terror in the Mists] (heroic)	5,076.65
[Relic of Xuen] (Darkmoon)	4,881.43
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (RF) (->haste)	4,763.54
[Bottle of Infinite Stars] (RF)	4,656.47
[Terror in the Mists] (normal)	4,498.61
[Jade Bandit Figurine] (normal)	4,304.59
[Hawkmaster's Talon] (rep)	4,304.59
[Terror in the Mists] (RF)	3,986.76
[Flashing Steel Talisman] (dungeon)	3,965.41
[Zen Alchemist Stone] (alchemy, 55s ICD?)	3,935.95
[Windswept Pages] (dungeon)	3,883.55
[Searing Words] (dungeon) (->haste)	3,754.90
[Searing Words] (dungeon)	3,592.66
[Coren's Cold Chromium Coaster] (holiday) (->haste)	3,265.25
[Coren's Cold Chromium Coaster] (holiday)	3,091.68

[top]Reforging

Reforging allows you to remove 40% of a secondary stat present on an item and increase the value of another secondary stat not already present on that item by the same amount. Your general goal when reforging is to lose as much as possible from your worse stats and increase your good stats instead.

As a rule of thumb you should aim for haste > mastery > crit as present stats on your gear, while maintaining both your hit and expertise cap.

You can also use tools like wowreforge to further optimize your reforge.

[top]Gemming

Socket type	Gems	Bonus
Meta	Agile Primal Diamond	+216 Agility, +3% Critical damage
Red	Delicate Primordial Ruby / Deft Vermilion Onyx	+160 Agility / +80 Agility, +160 Haste
Yellow	Deft Vermilion Onyx / Quick Sun's Radiance	+80 Agility, +160 Haste / +320 Haste
Blue	Glinting Imperial Amethyst / Lightning Wild Jade	+80 Agility, 160 Hit / +160 Haste, +160 Hit
Prismatic	Delicate Primordial Ruby / Quick Sun's Radiance	+160 Agility / +320 Haste
Sha-Touched	Crystallized Dread	+500 Agility

At some point your gear will reach a level where two haste rating is higher valued than one agility and you should start gemming towards haste. Exact calculations are not yet done, but initial tests showed that this happens around item level 480-490. It's best to check one's individual weights using tools like SimC or Shadowcraft and gem accordingly.
Currently there are no known socket bonuses worth skipping, unless they are expertise and you have a hard time not overcapping after reforging.

As a jewelcrafter you should always use two [Delicate Serpent's Eye] in two of your red sockets.

[top]Enchanting

Slot	Enchant	Bonus
Shoulders	Greater Tiger Claw Inscription / Secret Tiger Claw Inscription (Inscription)	+200 Agility, +100 Crit / + 520 Agility, +100 Crit
Cloak	Accuracy / Superior Critical Strike / Swordguard Embroidery (Tailoring)	+180 Hit / +180 Crit / Chance to proc 4000 AP
Chest	Glorious Stats	+80 to all primary stats
Wrist	Greater Agility* / Agility (Leatherworking)	+180 Agility / +500 Agility
Hands	Greater Haste	+170 Haste
Waist	Living Steel Belt Buckle	Adds a prismatic gem socket.
Legs	Shadowleather Leg Armor	+285 Agility, +165 Crit
Feet	Blurred Speed	+140 Agility, +8% Movespeed
Ring 1	Greater Agility (Enchanting)	+160 Agility
Ring 2	Greater Agility (Enchanting)	+160 Agility
Main Hand	Dancing Steel	Chance to proc 1650 Agility.
Off Hand	Dancing Steel	Chance to proc 1650 Agility.

*Tooltip shows +170 agi, but the added ingame value is +180 agi.

When using dancing steel on both weapons, each enchant procs and refreshes itself individually, so you can have up to two buffs active at the same time.

[top]Consumables

Flask: [Flask of Spring Blossoms] - Adds 1000 agility(1320 for alchemists) for 1 hour(2 hours for alchemists). Persists through death.
Food: [Sea Mist Rice Noodles] - Adds 300 agility(600 for Pandaren) for 1 hour. Disappears on death.
Potion: [Virmen's Bite] - Adds 4000 agility for 25 seconds. Can be used once per fight and also once before the pull(Pre-pot).

[top]Races and Professions

[top]Races

Alliance

Race	Benefit
Dwarf	Expertise with One-Handed Maces increases by 1%(up to 826.2 EP)*. Can activate Stoneform for defensive purposes and they also take 1% less frost damage.
Gnome	Expertise with Daggers and One-Handed swords increased by 1%(up to 826.2 EP)*. Can clear movement-impairing effects every 1.5 minutes with Escape Artist. They also take 1% less arcane damage.
Human	Expertise with One-Handed Maces and One-Handed Swords increased by 1%(up to 826.2 EP)*. Can also clear CC every 2 minutes with Every Man for Himself.
Night elf	Can use another ambush every 2 minutes with Shadowmeld(NYD EP). They also have an additional 2% chance to dodge and take 1% less nature damage.
Pandaren	Gain 100% more stats from bufffood. This is an additional 300 agility(822 EP) for the highest food currently available. Can also use a short CC with Quaking Palm every 2 minutes.
Worgen	They get a 1% additional chance to crit(612 EP), can activate their 2 minute Darkflight cooldown for a short movespeed-boost and they also take 1% less shadow and nature damage.

*Since the T14-content offers no maces or swords with agility, those racials currently don't have any value. The 1% expertise for gnomes using OH daggers can also be overlooked, since you want to cap your MH expertise regardless.

Horde

Race	Benefit
Blood elf	They can restore 15 energy and silence(2s duration)/interrupt(3s duration) all targets within 8 yards every 2 minutes with Arcane Torrent(NYD EP) and also take 1% less arcane damage.
Goblin	They get an additional 1% haste and can also shoot their Rocket Barrage(NYD EP) every two minutes to deal some fire damage. This could be used while waiting for energy or during movement phases.
Orc	Expertise with Axes and Fist Weapons increased by 1%(up to 826.2 EP)*. They can also activate Blood Fury(564 EP) to increase their attack power by 4514 for 15 seconds every two minutes.
Pandaren	Gain 100% more stats from bufffood. This is an additional 300 agility(822 EP) for the highest food currently available. Can also use a short CC with Quaking Palm every 2 minutes.
Troll	They receive a 10% increase to health regeneration and 10% of their health regeneration is also passively active in combat. They deal 5% more damage to beasts, suffer 15% less duration from movement-impairing effects and can also activate Berserking(NYD EP), increasing their attack speed by 20% for 10 seconds on a 3 minuten cooldown.
Undead	They can break Charm, Fear and Sleep effects every 2 minutes with Will of the Forsaken and also restore up to 45% of their health within 10 seconds by Cannibalizing humanoid or undead corpses. Their Touch of the Grave(NYD EP) passive has a chance to proc shadow damage dealing lifesteals and they also take 1% less shadow damage.

*As expertise loses some of it's worth once you can cap easily, this racials effective EP might change to the value of haste or even mastery(less likely with current gear available).
Full value using two axes/fist weapons: 826.2 EP
Full value using a MH axe/fist weapon: 625.6 EP
Haste-tuned value using two axes/fist weapons: 510 EP
Haste-tuned value using a MH axe/fist weapon: 309.4 EP

[top]Professions

Profession	Benefit	Average stat bonus	EP
Alchemy	The Mixology passive grants an additional 320 Agility to Flask of Spring Blossoms. Allows for the use of [Alchemist's Flask] if no flask is present.	+320 Agi	876.8
Blacksmithing	You get two extra sockets via Socket Gloves and Socket Bracer which can be used for two [Quick Sun's Radiance].	+640 Haste	960.0
Enchanting	You can enchant both of your rings with Greater Agility for 160 agi per ring.	+320 Agi	876.8
Engineering	In addition to your gloves enchant you can also apply Synapse Springs to them for 1920 agility for 10 seconds as an on-use effect every minute. Can be delayed for use with AR/SB/KS.	+320 Agi	876.8
Herbalism	With the use of Lifeblood you receive a minor heal and also 2880 haste rating for 20 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.	+480 Haste	720.0
Inscription	Allows the use of [Secret Tiger Claw Inscription] as your shoulder enchant for an additional 320 agi.	+320 Agi	876.8
Jewelcrafting	Allows the use of two [Delicate Serpent's Eye]. Note that unlike normal gems [Quick Serpent's Eye] is only viable if 1 haste rating is worth 0.75 agi instead of 0.5 agi.	+320 Agi	876.8
Leatherworking	You can enchant your bracers with Agility for 500 agi instead of 180.	+320 Agi	876.8
Mining	Adds 480 stamina from Toughness.	+480 Sta	0.0
Skinning	Adds 480 critical strike rating from Master of Anatomy.	+480 Crit	489.6
Tailoring	Allows to enchant your cloak with Swordguard Embroidery instead of 180 hit or crit to sometimes proc 4000 AP for 15 seconds on a 60s(?) ICD. Loss of the hit/crit enchant is not taken into account for the EP value.	+1000 AP	1000.0

[top]Encounter Tips

In this section i will give some hints on talents, glyphs and poisons that might be useful. Choosing between talents also often depends on your raid composition and/or personal performance/preference, so spec accordingly. (Glyphed) Feint in general is really useful in many fights to help out your healers. Elusiveness is more useful on fights with heavy burst damage and leeching poison is more useful on fights with low/mid sustained damage.
Please refer to Mists of Pandaria 5.0.x Raid Mechanics for even more information.

[top]Tier 14

Mogu'shan Vaults:

The Stone Guard
- Elusiveness for unmitigated overloads.

Feng the Accursed
- Elusiveness for epicenter, draw flame, and arcane velocity.

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder
- Glyph of Deadly Momentum for the adds.
- Elusiveness for when you are targeted by voodoo dolls.

The Spirit Kings
- Glyph of Kick if your raid lacks interrupts.
- Combat Readiness for massive attacks.
- Shadowstep to move through flanking orders(can target allies as well).

Elegon
- Shadowstep/Burst of Speed to alternate with sprint when resetting stacks.
- Versatily for target swaps.

Will of the Emperor
- Prey on the Weak when stunning the small adds.
- Nerve Strike when stunning the small adds.
- Shuriken Toss or Versatility if you swap/move often.
- Shadowstep or Burst of Speed if you move a lot.
- Elusiveness for devastating arc if can't always dodge it.
- Crippling poison (+ shiv) is recommended for this fight.


Heart of Fear:

Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
- Glyph of Cloak of Shadows for Force and Verve.
- Elusiveness for Force and Verve.
- Burst of Speed for movement speed when switching platforms.
- Glyph of Sprint for movement speed when switching platforms.

Blade Lord Ta'yak
- Combat Readiness for unseen strike.
- Glyph of Cloak of Shadows for unseen strike.
- Elusiveness for unseen strike, wind step and phase two if you're energy capped while moving.
- Burst of Speed/Shadowstep for phase 2.
- Glyph of Sprint for phase 2.

Garalon
- Elusiveness for crush(and for furious swipe if you have to "tank" the boss).
- Glyph of Cloak of Shadows for crush.

Wind Lord Mel'jarak
- Glyph of Sap for add control.
- Elusiveness for whirling blade and rain of blades.
- Glyph of Cloak of Shadows for whirling blade and rain of blades.
- Mind-numbing poison (+shiv) for the healer adds.
- Glyph of Kick for the healer adds, though probably highly unnecessary.
- Avoid using additional stuns/blind/gouge as this might cause the boss to dispel all cc's from the adds.

Amber-Shaper Un'sok
- Versatility for target swaps.
- Shadowstep after massive stomp.
- Preparation to remove another Parasitic Growth debuff via Cloak of Shadows.

Grand Empress Shek'zeer
- Glyph of Evasion if you have to tank an add.
- Elusiveness for several encounter mechanics and/or if you have to tank an add.
- Combat Readiness if you have to tank an add.


Terrace of Endless Springs:

Not added.

[top]Macros

This is a useful macro for target swapping, especially when you have enabled the "Stop Auto Attack" option in your combat settings. You can also replace Sinister Strike by any other skill like Revealing Strike or Fan of Knives.

#showtooltip

/startattack

/cast Sinister Strike

The following macros will help using TotT without clicking around in your raid interface.

Uses TotT on your focus target.

#showtooltip

/cast [@focus] Tricks of the Trade

Uses TotT on your mouseover target.

#showtooltip

/cast [@mouseover] Tricks of the Trade

Uses TotT on the player whos name you entered, e.g. "/cast [@Kirtar] Tricks of the Trade".

#showtooltip

/cast [@"player name">] Tricks of the Trade

Uses TotT on your focus target if it exists, otherwise it will target your target's target. If you have a friendly target selected, it will ignore the conditions and use TotT on that target instead.

#showtooltip

/cast [help] [target=focus, help] [target=targettarget, help] Tricks of the Trade

This uses your offensive cooldowns together. You can also add on-use trinkets, items and/or racials.

#showtooltip

/startattack

/cast Adrenaline Rush

/cast Shadow Blades

The following macro can be used for the Wind Lord Mel'jarak encounter in Heart of Fear. It will throw the impaling spear on your focus target, which should be your designated stun target and will re-target your main dps target immediately afterwards.

/target focus

/click ExtraActionButton1

/targetlasttarget

[top]Addons

Bandits Guile Helper - Provides information about insight level and bandit's guile stacks.

SliceAdmiral - Highly configurable box for buff/debuff timers, CP, energy, sound warnings and more.

[top]Tools

Not added.

[top]Thread Change Log

[Nov 11, 2012] Fixes: Single rotation and BiS list.
[Nov 5, 2012] Minor fixes. More macros.
[Nov 3, 2012] Minor fixes. Added reforging and macros. Reworked the talents section.
[Nov 2, 2012] Initial Post.

I was curious about this as well. I"m capped in my MH with Orc racial, but not offhand which has traditionally been the way to go. However, with the increase in raw melee damage, poison damage, Killing Spree offhand, and Shadow Blades offhand, I can't help but wonder if the 400 Haste I can gain would be quickly overshadowed by one or all of these factors.

In Cata it was generally the case that the value of expertise was split about 50/50 between hands. I can't guarantee that that's still true in Mists, but I don't know of any reason why it would have changed drastically. So at a guess, I'd expect 1-handed expertise to still be a decent stat, but likely inferior to haste.

You could load your character with 7.50%+ expertise with either the main- or offhand into simC and let it calculate your expertise weight using positive deltas only. This should give you a clue.
I just tried it with my rogue, switching my fist to a dagger of the same ilvl, so i had exactly 7.50%/6.50% expertise and according to simC my expertise value dropped from 2.93 to 0.33.
When swapping around to 6.50%/7.50% i got 0.68 for expertise, so the exact values are definitively inaccurate, but 0.68 vs 0.33 might give a clue of the relation of mainhand expertise compared to offhand expertise.

My advice is to keep it 7.50%/6.50% for the first case, but push it to 7.50%/8.50% for the latter case as mainhand expertise is way to important.

Here we go:
After rebalancing my settings i got the following values:
MH + OH expertise: 2.94
MH only expertise: 2.00
OH only expertise: 1.00

This of course specifically counts for my gearset, but here is how you can do it for yourself:
Open simC, import your character, set iterations to 10000+, use positive deltas only, analyze expertise rating and make sure to set the delta for expertise to less than your missing rating to the cap(<340, i used 200) by adding the "scale_expertise_rating=200" command line to your simulation profile.
For general purposes you might just use the MH:OH ratio from my results which is about 2:1.

Looks like MH expertise is 3/4 and OH 1/4 as a rough rule of thumb

I remember seeing that for combat spec the 4 set shadow blades increases its duration by six sec for combat and 12 for sub and assassination. I think it shows when you switch between spec while looking at the set bonuses.

Regarding the quoted section and choice of finisher:
I think it's worth taking the bug with X Anticipation charges generating 2X combo points when using Crimson Tempest into account. To be clear, the bug I'm referring to is the one where a Crimson Tempest cast with X Anticipation charges (ac) will yield 2X combo points, hence making a Crimson Tempest cast with 5cp+2ac yield 4cp and effectively making the cost of the finisher 3cp. Admittedly, I can't say whether it's productive to start a discussion on this topic given that its based on a bug. However, here's a bit of napkin math with say an arbitrary 32k attack power:

Crimson Tempest: (32000*0,1375+(((297+889)/2)+593*5))*1,3 = 10345 or 3448dmg/cp on one target
Eviscerate: ((370+((980 * 5) + 32000 * 0,8)*1)+(1108+((980 * 5) + 32000 * 0,8)*1))/2 = 31239. Reduced by boss armor that comes out to some 31239*(1- (0,88*24835/(0,88*24835 + 4037,5*90 - 317117,5))) = 21242 or 4248dmg/cp on one target.

However, Blade Flurry does not dublicate Crimson Tempest on a secondary target as it does Eviscerate. Hence, Eviscerate remains favorable on 2 targets. Once 3 targets are in range, however, Crimson tempest comes out ahead by a decent margin assuming you take advantage of the Anticipation bug. Moreover, outside of raid encounters it's unlikely Weakened Armor will be up on much more than your main target, which will further favor Crimson Tempest.

Bonuses are non-tier gloves + tier legs = 60agi and 60haste
non-tier legs + tier gloves = 120agi
So even with bonuses non-tier gloves + tier legs should be beter option.

Keep in mind that the non-tier legs are an Elite item, and as such are half a tier above other items. The item level difference likely makes up for the less than optimal stats.

A couple points to note:

1: Elusiveness is extended to 7 seconds if you glyph feint. The talent extends the feint functionality--it does not create its own buff. The in-game tooltip reflects a 7 second elusiveness duration if feint is glyphed. I have not tested to confirm that the tooltip coincides with actual behavior.

2: Prey on the weak is a raid dps gain on stunnable mobs, but it is generally not a personal dps gain. The damage you gain from prey on the weak is less than the damage of the eviscerate or rupture that kidney shot replaced (or the ambush that cheap shot replaced).

Using the simulationcraft T14H Combat BiS profile to pull numbers from, the DPE of eviscerate is 120,681. Divide that over 8 seconds and you'd need a bonus 15k dps from prey on the weak, meaning you'd have to be doing 150k dps for prey on the weak to actually be a gain. This rogue simulation is at just over 114k dps. With cooldowns prey on the weak might be a gain, but without cooldowns, it is certainly a personal dps loss compared to someone else performing the stun. Prey on the weak is definitely a raid dps gain so it's worth using when needed, regardless. If a stunnable mob needs to be stunned and killed, A rogue of any spec (and a combat rogue in particular if the target lives longer than 6 seconds) should probably be the one to stun.

I will concede your point. Let's refine the prey on the weak estimate.

I'm going to make some ad hoc best-case assumptions here.

The assumption is that you cast kidney shot at no insight, immediately before advancing bandit's guile to shallow insight on the next global. The reason I choose no insight to shallow insight is that the marginal damage gain is highest with this BG advancement (10% gain over previous, moderate to deep is only an 8.3% gain).

First some preamble. Based on the insight uptimes, the BG cycle is 39.2 seconds and it takes 8.2 seconds to advance through shallow insight, meaning that without adrenaline rush, you will not advance to moderate insight during the stun. Correcting the DPE of eviscerate for the average 17.6% damage coming from BG, the no-insight eviscerate would have been 102k damage. This means the dps gained from prey on the weak would only need to be 12.8k, or 128k baseline dps. The dps at no insight corrects to 97k and shallow insight brings it up to 106.7k.

Conclusion is that it's still not a personal dps gain given the opportunity cost of a finisher even if you advance BG during the stun without cooldowns (based on present modeling, of course). If someone would like to estimate the effect of shadow blades/adrenaline rush, feel free. My intuition tells me that using SB/AR during a stun from prey on the weak WILL be a personal gain in damage over the finisher that the stun replaced.