But why would you run a Xn/Xn/Xr cycle, when Envenom is inferior to Rupture? It might have to be modeled first, but the cycle seems like a waste of energy. It's much like the old Xs/Xr/Xe Mutilate cycle or the three finisher Combat SS cycles, which all turned out inferior to the two finisher cycles.

Because you have time to do it.
Haven't been in a raid on Beta for 3 weeks now. But my testings on the dummies showed that around half of my cycles are 4n/4n/4+r. And if I get 4CPs (throu Ruth proc and a crit Muti) when it is 'rupture time' most of the time my previous Rupture still has 4-5seconds.
So its not that you are exchanging rupture uptime for more envenoms. You are simply doing more envenoms with the same rupture uptime.

Also, it's not that every cycle is becomig Xn/Xn/Xr. You actually have to make decisions based on CP generation and time left on Rupture / SnD. So you still perform some 2 finisher cycles when you are unlucky with RNG.

Having the time to do another envenom doesn't necessarily equal "better DPS". Pure 4+n spam with ruthlessness has worse DPS than 4+n/4+r with/-out ruthlessness. Thats why we want Rupture running as close to 100% as possible. So before someone actually models a Xn/Xn/Xr CttC cycle, I'm not convinced that it's better than Xn/Xr just because it can be performed.

But its not 4n spam... It is your 4+n/4+r cycle with one additional envenom thrown in there.
I dont know if you tried it in beta or not. Looks like you didn't. The thing is that most of the time when you try to strictly follow 4+n/4+r cycle with rupture glyph you are clipping it. Most of the time you even cant really let it expire because your energy will cap out. And when your previous rupture was performed under some AP buff you are basically screwed and forced to Mutilate (or something else) to not waste energy.

While I agree that the cycle must be properly modeled (or even simmed) before we make any conclusions I just fail to see how one additional envenom that costs you only some DP uptime (no rupture uptime loss; the only 'very bad' situation is when it fails to proc RS) will lower you dps compared to clipping rupture.
(And my 7 30 minute runs on the dummies actually show 30+dps gains when I'm not strictly following 4+n/4+r)

It's really nothing like the old three finisher cycles. Old three finisher cycles suffered from a number of problems:

1. Loss of Rupture uptime
2. Loss of Slice'n'Dice uptime
3. Sup par finisher scaling from <4 CP finishers

WotLK has introduced elements to Mutilate builds that addresses every one of these issues. Rupture uptime is directly combated with the Rupture glyph that increases Rupture duration. Loss of SnD uptime is directly combated with CttC, adding envenoms to your cycle actually reduces the risk of SnD loss. Sup par scaling from <4 CP Ruptures is combated with focused attacks, more energy regeneration reduces the risk that energy will be to low to mutilate to 4+ points. In addtion to all of these factors Envenoms now deal their own damage in addtion to, on average, slightly less than a full IP proc. So the opportunity cost is lower as well.

Specifically addressing your second paragraph, I've found much the same thing with my runs at the Beta. While I haven't run nearly so many extended tests as you (only 3 for 20 mins), I've found that Mutilate is a much more fluid spec in terms of rotations than ever before. While it's true we won't have to balance a 10second Weakness, we have other timers to consider -- and the new Rupture glyph really throws a wrench in maintaining a strict rotation.

I've found that occasionally a 4+n/4+r works, and that when you can manage it you should. However, Rupture clipping is a monumental problem due to its length and AP-increases, etc. When coming across such a situation (SnD with lots of time, HfB with lots of time, Rupture can't be overwritten and/or lots of time), it's easiest and best to throw in the additional, third finisher -- and using Envenom turns out to be very profitable with CttC and the great poison proc buff.

Essentially: a 2-finisher Mutilate cycles won't be easy to maintain any more, almost to the extent that we should consider revising the terminology again (as we had to do with Mut when it first arrived with the + system). There should be a way to signify that the cycle will be 4+n/4+r/(4+n)... though depending on SnD uptime you may not actually be able to always afford to wait on the 4+ on the last Envenom.

Get ready to be flexible and to think on your feet!

It most certainly reduces it compared to the old 3 finisher cycles that required SnD to last long enough for one rupture, one envenom, and a SnD refresh. In the old cycles the risk of SnD loss was non-zero, in the new cycles adding an envenom risks no SnD loss only rupture uptime. This change stems directly from CttC.

Okay, there seem to be some misconceptions about the 4r4n4n cycle elements, so let me see if I can clear this up:

1) 4+n/4+r is not sustainable. You will either a) overlap ruptures or b) end up spamming Mutilate to soak up excess energy, at which point you're no longer doing 4+n/4+r, you're doing 2Mn/2Mr (that's 2 Mutilates, as opposed to 4 combo points). And 2M cycles have been shown to be inferior to 4+ cycles, so this just seems like a bad idea all around.

2) The reason old 3-finisher cycles didn't fly is because a small 3rd finisher (3e, or whatever) doesn't actually increase DPS that much over not doing the move, and it proved to be more efficient to just compress the cycle to get more DPS that way. Neither of those factors are in play right now; compressing the cycle isn't an option, so even if we were just adding a mini-finisher it could still be worthwhile, as we don't have anything better to do; and, moreover, we're not adding a mini-finisher. We're adding another full-size finisher, which is every bit as worthwhile as any other one in the cycle.

3) Envenoming does not cost you poison damage. Envenoming gains you poison damage. You do lose a bit of DP uptime, but you gain it back with the extra IP procs. If you're envenoming so often you can't get DP stacked up in time - okay, sure, that's a problem. But even straight 4+n spam is pretty close to sustainable, so 4+n4+n4+r elements definitely should be.

4) Squeezing in extra 4+n elements does in fact provide a safety net against SnD dropping. Why? Well, in a 2-finisher cycle, your cycle length needs to be longer than a rupture (20 seconds) but shorter than the SnD length (24 seconds). And with the high variance on Mutilate cycles, it turns out that having a cycle that's consistantly over 20 seconds but never over 24 is actually a bit tricky - you can usually do it, but you simply don't have a large enough energy reserve to cover the variation with queuing - sooner or later, you're going to have a problem. Meanwhile, if you squeeze in an extra envenom, you no longer have to worry about SnD dropping - if you're late getting back to the rupture, it's because you just got an extra SnD refresh, so even if you go 25 seconds between ruptures, nothing drops. In a 3 finisher cycle, the overall cycle length needs to be over 20 seconds, but the SnD restriction is just that you must be able to do 2 finishers - not all 3 - within 24 seconds consistently; hence the SnD constraint is that the whole cycle must be less than 36 seconds. And finding a cycle that falls consistently between 20 and 36 seconds is a lot easier to manage than one that stays between 20 and 24.

So, in conclusion: yes, squeezing in extra 4+ envenoms increases damage. I've modeled it and found it to be so. It reduces chance of SnD dropping, it generates more damage than just mashing Mutilate, and there's no 2-finisher cycle that's as good. Hopefully this clears things up.

There is a ton of information here about mutilate builds for 3.0 and it looks like everyone is moving to daggers for that. Personally I really like combat swords and it has served me well for quite some time, as such I would like to keep with this build.

However I do not posses the theorycrafting skills to figure out a good build for combat swords. 5/51/5 at 70 looks very appealing but 11/43/5 may actually be more practical.

Or is mutilate daggers just that godly that there is just no viability left for combat swords?

Overwriting the end of your Rupture isn't as simple as you make it sound. As far as I've been able to determine, you can't overwrite Rupture, regardless of how much time it has left on the target, if the damage from the new Rupture is less than the old one. I ran into this issue a lot when I had the tier 4 set. I've even posted a couple times on Blizzard's forum to suggest that they allow it to be overwritten based on duration, but my posts were basically ignored.

However, I do agree with you that if you're lucky enough to have the energy and combo pts for a 2nd finisher within the 21 second duration of Rupture, that you should just Envenom and be glad. I suspect that doing so will actually increase your dps over overwriting the end of a Rupture.

I think people are simply more excited about the new possibilities with the changes to mutilate and the new talents in the assassination tree. Combat swords should still do fine if that's what you're most comfortable with.

Your second spec there has at least 3 wasted points in Vigor and Unfair Advantage, so it's clearly not a better spec.

Personally, I have no particular intention of switching to Mutilate at 70. While at level 80 it may hold the edge, at level 70 it's damage benefit seems to be relatively small in theory, and given the practical considerations of fights like M'uru, I feel that I will be better off as Combat (Blade Flurry is great on doors, Killing Spree and AR are nice for Entropius, etc.). Personally I'm currently planning 5/51/5, but I may of course change my mind as we get better models of the talents going.

It's true. But you don't need to overwrite all of them - with energy queuing, you only need to overwrite some of them, and I don't really forsee major issue with so doing. And really, it doen't change the fundamental point I was making, which was that it's distinctly misleading to say that the rupture glyph should be avoided, as that's just simply not true.

Imp Eviscerate: The real problem is that it is mitigated by armor and thus the damage is low for the amount of combo points spent when compared to abilities that bypass armor (not the energy spent).

Imp Expose Armor: Certainly I'd like to see it changed as well; but for what I'd want there's no easy way to do that without rewriting the whole ability. As it is, you can talent and Glyph to make it trivial to keep up in a 4+a/4+e rotation (or something similar) and if you're keeping it up because there is no warrior present it's a real DPS increase to not performing it. As long as you know before the raid that it's you're responsibility to keep up it's ok and there are plenty of other buffs and debuffs that require the same forethought.

Ruthlessness: The Assassination tree already drowns in combo points sometimes (that's why the recent talk of 3 finisher cycles). While the move to 5/5 100% would be a buff, it's certainly not needed.

Murder: There are already a multitude of talents in all trees at all levels that directly affect dagger damage (Puncturing Wounds, Close Quarters Combat, Opportunity, etc). Adding yet another would be... icky. Not all talents should work in all situations and that's fine.

Since I don't PvP on my rogue, I've respec'd a total of once in the last year plus; it's mind boggling. Respec'ing into or out of murder as I progress through raid levels because the possibility that T7 is humanoid heavy, and T8 is undead heavy doesn't bother me at all. Hell, respec'ing between Mutilate and Combat on a regular basis could be fun.

The point in Vigor, the +10 to max energy is too trivial? or is it that there are simply better places to allocate that point?

Vigor's value diminishes with the duration of any fight. It's never been considered a staple for raiding. There are much better talents, if your goal is a pve raiding dps spec.

I've been reading in different discussion threads - including this one - about how the changes in talents will affect our +Hit requirements but I'm a little unclear about how that impacts different builds. I'm a little overboard on hit at the moment because I've been putting off re-geming pending the update.

I've read that AP>Agi>hit, is this the case for all builds? How much +Hit is being forecast as a min viable raiding requirement for Combat Swords?

I'm planning on remaining Combat Swords until better weapons become available. Looking at the 5/51/5 build it doesn't seem like there's any real room for customization that wouldn't significantly impact damage output. So it's looking like goodbye Imp Kick and Sprint...(?)

A larger energy base only has two benefits that I can think of:

1) Allows you to do more moves from opener to energy drain. This is typically only meaningful in PvP scenarios where you want to hit the target with as much as possible before a stun wears off.

2) Gives you an extra second or two of wiggle room to pool energy. While this is certainly not a bad thing, I don't see any dps gain from it.

Both Lethality and Prey on the Weak would be superior talents to spend that point on.

Edit:

It occurs to me that for the build in question Prey on the Weak is not available without wasting points in Unfair Advantage, so all three extra points should go to Lethality.

There was never really a min viable raiding requirement for hit. It's a stat that has a worth and it was usually worth more than AP and agi. With the 3.0 changes, hit loses some value for AP and Agi.

And there's only 4 filler points to move around.

I believe the wiggle room will definitely lead to real world gains beyond what you can easily model in a spreadsheet or simulator. What I don't know is whether the wiggle room is worth the cost of a point in Ruthlessness or Lethality, which feel like the most appropriate places to take it from.

Been lurking here for a while, making my first post now. One of the things I've been unable to find through searching, and through keeping up on this thread for the last twenty or so pages, is information about gemming. When I tried a spreadsheet for 3.0 level 70 dps, the "standard" gems it put into all available sockets, was 10 agility ones.

Is this to say that +10 agility gems will outdo +10 hit gems at most/all gear levels?

I'm pretty sure that it does that because "agility" comes before "hit" alphabetically.

(I'm just joking.)

I disagree. In fact I'd go so far as to say that you would notice no dps difference between two rogues of equal gear/skill/spec if somehow one had an energy base of 110 and another had a base of 90. The wiggle room would be more forgiving for a lazier player, but you should work on your laziness rather than picking up Vigor if that applied to you.

I don't think there's any question that in a Mutilate build there will be no room for Vigor. We don't have enough points as it is to get everything that would make it an ideal build.

The build in question was actually a combat build for a level 70 with 3.0 talents. There aren't many other talents available for that build, but I think Lethality and Prey on the Weak are clearly superior.

Probably have to adjust based on gear level. That's what the spreadsheet is for. Agi and AP are supposed to be very close in value though.

Thanks, really impressed with the knowledge base so far in this forum, definitely lurking here for any tweaks in WotLK.