With the change to Blade Twisting, I think that I would not be off base to suspect a greater number of rogues (i.e. > 0) will spec into it for raiding. I would like to know what kind of uptime the dazed effect has. I ask from a hunter perspective, because we experience a damage increase to Steady Shot when the target is dazed, and every little bit helps naturally .

Raid bosses are generally immune to daze effects. That being said, every rogue that goes that deap in the Combat will have that talent. But dont expect it to be a buff to hunter dps in any way.

I usually run an imp ea build. Helps with my threat, and I still do 3000-3200 dps on kj-brut, etc. I spec'd blade twisting a bit ago after a couple hunters asked for it, and it did up their dmg in a near insignificant way. However, the down side to me, is getting spammed with immune messages. Really aggravating, nice to know I can look forward to more of it in the future.

If the boss is immune to the debuff, the hunters aren't getting a "near insignificant" damage increase, they're getting an "exactly zero" damage increase.

Amongst all the talk of allowing bosses to be "frozen"; to compliment Frost Mage/Frost DK abilities and talents, it isn't much of a stretch for them to allow bosses to be "dazed", as well. That would open up a big can of DPS for several classes; including increased threat for tanks, as Heroic Strike deals additional damage to dazed targets.

I'm getting nearly the same number difference (within 1%) after ninjaing in the changes as well, using a 13/43/5 build.

Just a quick question. Does coldblood, fan of knives and focused attacks work together, so that each hit crits and that each hit returns 2 energy?

To be quite honest, I wonder why people are so worried about Combat Daggers being viable when we have mutilate now as a dagger spec. From the days when I played combat daggers ages ago it was one of the most boring specs ever. It was terrible for pvp as well.

Second question is regarding raid debuffs. For overall raid dps who brings more raid dps: Ret Pally vs Mut Rogue and Combat Rogue vs Arms Warrior. Taking into account the possible dps of each class being soo close together and such its something that we will have to consider in the future for our raid slots.

This question is not as relevant as you think. The more appropriate question is, what new raid buffs/debuffs does the ret paladin/Mutilate rogue/combat rogue/arms warrior bring, relative to what the raid already has, and therefore how does that contribution compare? For a 25-man raid, beyond the first 10 or so people bringing all the different raid buffs/debuffs, the "next" ret paladin/rogue/warrior/whatever you bring offers only his personal DPS and some particular class-only benefits (e.g. Tricks of the Trade, Hand of Protection/Salvation/etc.).

If SS builds are competative, I don't see why combat dagger builds wouldn't be. PotW means that backstab scales better than SS does.

Granted CD builds will not get full RS, I increasingly play with the thoughts that ignoring 3 points in RS and going for vile poisons should yield more dps for CD builds.

The only question is: Are they going to add a better glyph for backstab? If so, it's safe to assume that CD builds will be competative in damage, if not back into the pre-TBC glory of top dps spec.

PS: Even with the changes dagger builds still flow better within the combat tree: CD Build

Well, yeah - that's what I'm thinking. Backstabbing for 60 energy for a combo point vs. Mutilate for 60 Energy for up to three combo points?

Are you sure it scales better? Backstab still costs 50% more energy than (talented) SS. I'm not sure about Vile Poisons being better than Relentless Strikes, either; Combat's all about regaining energy, right? Incidentally, does anyone know what the breakdown is for yellow vs. white damage? Is hit more important than crit?

I just don't see this build being more than a distant third, to Combat Swords/Fists and Mutilate.

There is always trash, mobs not immune, etc. I should have clarified I did not mean only bosses.

Daze doesn't fall under either of those categories. Incapacitates are Sap, Gouge, Repentence, Blind and Sleep. (Wyvern Sting/Hibernate)

Cold Blood doesn't effect FoK, and FoK crits do not trigger Focused Attacks.
Note the tooltip of Focused Attacks: "Melee Crits." FoK is a short-ranged Area of Effect attack.
The Cold Blood tooltip could use an update though, something to specify "Combo Attacks and Finishing Moves."

EDIT: Included mouseover tooltips.

Well, for this last build, I logged onto the beta, and tried out Combat Daggers... and I must say with the new changes to Vitality it isn't all that dull as it was prior to the change. I used this build
( I took 2/2 Imp SS cause that way you can change your playstyle from daggers to MH fist with relative ease and lose nothing *critically* important and be able to solo stuff without worrying about positioning. )

What I'd like to know: 1point Lethality vs 1point PotW, and 1point Lethality vs 1point Killing spree.

So, first off, the usual comparison of talent DPS for a Combat-SS build:

Talent	DPS per Point
Malice	41
Ruthlessness	29
Blood Spatter	35
Lethality	30
Vile Poisons	63
Imp Poisons	35
Imp SS	120
DW Spec	65
Imp SnD	104
Precision	32
Aggression	29
Blade Flurry	49
Blade Twisting	48
Vitality	120
AR	66
Combat Potency	83
Surprise Attacks	101
Savage Combat	62
Prey on the Week	107
Killing Spree	145
Relentless Strikes	73
Serrated Blades	63

You'll note that I omit weapon specializations. This is done with reason - how valuable the weapon specs are depends on what weapons you happen to be using. Suffice it to say that they are generally worth it if you're using a weapon of the relevant type. More on this in a minute.

So, notes: first, the top end of combat actually does quite respectable damage (assuming reasonable PotW uptime - these calculations assume it's up 90% of the time, which is probably not at all unreasonable in a raid situation), hence my impression is that 5/51/5+10 builds are going to trump any attempt to go for poison talents pretty handily. It's also worth noting that the 8 points in Lethality + Ruthlessness work out to a total of 240 DPS, while Serrated Blades is only 190; hence, it appears that 15/51/5 beats 7/51/13.

In terms of weapon specs: it appears that Mace Spec and Sword Spec do rather comparable damage on the MH weapon, but Fist Spec does quite a bit more. It's also interesting to note that assuming weapons of equal speed, Sword Spec is the strongest of the 3 weapon specs for the OH. However, picking up both CQC and Sword Spec in addition to all other DPS talents requires 52 talent points; hence, one needs to be dropped. And it so turns out that using a sword only in the OH, Sword Spec only provides 21 DPS per point, the lowest of any talent. So to go this route, one takes 5/5 CQC, 4/5 Sword Spec, and wields fist/sword. Note that this gives you absolutely no room for filler any tree - all you're taking is DPS talents.

Note, however, that this assumes weapons of equal speed. If you can get a Fist or Dagger that's .1 faster than that sword, it turns out to be basically comparable on DPS to wield that in the OH instead. And given the fastest known daggers are .1 faster than the fastest known swords, it probably works out better to just get a fast OH dagger and go Fist/Dagger, as it does roughly equal DPS and lets you take some useful filler talents - like Improved Sprint, for instance.

The bad news in all this, of course, is that it means both Combat and Mutilate want fast daggers, and there still aren't that many of them. Hopefully they'll update itemization to give more options, or else there will be quite the waiting list for Webbed Death.

The other interesting note in all this is the combination of the SS Glyph, Prey on the Weak, Lethality, etc. means you're getting an awful lot of benefit out of critical strikes - I'm finding Agility to be the most valuable stat right now, followed closely by AP, with everything else (even hit) being a fair bit behind.

Edit: Updating value for Relentless Strikes.

I did some test as Lvl 70 with 5/51/5, warglaives T6+sunwell on test dummies to compare shiv to SS as combo builder. I ran 3s/5r/5e on shiv and 1s/5r on SS. Glyphs are S&D + Rupture:
Shiv was ahead less than 1%
but I had to let S&D drop 2/25 cycles,
1s/5r does not overlap ruptures,
way more easy to maintain, plenty of energy.

Could you be so kind to provide the actual numbers? I'd love to see them, and I'm sure that others would as well.

Stat	EP
Agi	1.98
AP	1.0
Crit	1.55
Hit	1.45
Exp	1.56
Haste	1.43
ArP	1.11

I know I said Agi was ahead of AP before - I found a few more DPS tweaks to add since then, which caused them to switch order. Point remains: they're very very close, and nothing else is.

Additional note: Oscarvil pointed out that the value of Relentless Strikes is actually lower than the value of VP in the weightings I provided, and thus inquired about the validity of a 18/51/2 or 20/51/0 build. When I tried this, I found it did less damage. Upon investigating the cause of this, it appears that the value I gave for Relentless Strikes earlier is in error - it appears to be closer to 73 DPS per point. I will update the above table accordingly.

Fun fact: I came up with similar EP weights at Naxx gear levels, and even adding arbitrary amounts of AP in increments of 1000 didn't seem to have a huge effect on those weights. AP generally stays roughly on top.

One question regarding Mutilate:
Did anyone test it in any movement-intense fight ? I have read a lot of concerns regarding Mutilate if for example Slice and Dice drops or if you have to use 2-3 point Envenoms to maintain it. So my assumption would be that combat comes out ahead of Mutilate once the fight includes a lot of movement or target changes.

Please forgive me, if I overread something. (I still have an awful fewer and only read a bit while staying in bed most of the day).

On the topic of spree and CC: at least in the last build itbroke blind and sap.

Did anyone tought about how the hitrating+combat potency+SSpec relation will end up at lvl 80? With the weakened status of CP and the new stat weights SSpec could suffer as a consequence. (and it probably does)