The definition of the term "combo move" given in Vulajin's Wowhead comment is incorrect.

The term "combo move" only shows up in two places -- Lethality and Turn the Tables. (If there is another location where it is used that I missed, feel free to point it out.) Since both of these talents deal with crits, the only relevant opener is Ambush. Therefore, the question is: is Ambush affected by either of these talents? Testing whether Ambush is affected by Turn the Tables would take a very large sample size and would be difficult and time consuming, so I'm instead going to test Ambush's interaction with Lethality.

On beta my character has a Savage Gladiator's Shanker (damage range 187-281) with 2156 AP. I unequipped my helm (since it has a meta gem affecting the crit modifier) and cleared my talents. I then tested the damage dealt by Ambush on Deeprun Rats.

With no talents modifying it, we expect Ambush rank 10 to deal between 2.75*(187+2156/14*1.7)+908 damage and 2.75*(281+2156/14*1.7)+908 damage. This works out to between 2142 and 2401. If Ambush is affected by Lethality, we would expect a crit modifier of 2.3, which would yield damage between 4927 and 5522. If it isn't affected by Lethality, a 2.0 crit modifier would yield damage between 4284 and 4802. This makes the test incredibly simple because the damage ranges do not overlap.

With no points in Lethality, I tested Ambush on the rats and observed crits of 4437, 4382, 4648, 4692, and 4718. This seems to fit the expected data range. After speccing 5 points into Lethality, I obtained crits of 5089, 5423, 4992, 5011, and 5148, all inside the expected range if Ambush is affected by Lethality, and clearly higher than the crits I received before. All of the hits I observed also fell into my expected range for hits, so I do not believe I made a mistake in calculating my expected damage ranges.

Therefore, Ambush is affected by Lethality, which implies that Ambush must be considered a combo move.

The weapon damage modifier is higher than the 275% on the tooltip. I don't recall the exact amount, but it was proven that it was actually higher and the tooltip was wrong. Furthermore did you not test Ambushing without Lethality and see what damage range you got then?

Ambush was taken off of Lethality a long time ago (I think maybe original closed beta, or maybe it was after that?) because it was too much burst. It's not coming back sadly.

I did also test Ambush without Lethality, and the damage was in the non-Lethality range. Without Lethality I observed crits of 4437, 4382, 4648, 4692, and 4718.

I also see absolutely no evidence to corroborate your claim that Ambush doesn't do the damage it states in the tooltip. All of the expected damage ranges matched perfectly with my observed damage, including hits, crits without Lethality, and crits with Lethality.

Does Dual wielding normalize the delay of both weapons or do they remain independent.
In other words does using a 1.8 and a 1.4 get treated like using two 1.6s?

Ah, it was upped to 275% from 250%. Ok, so that part is correct. I'm still not convinced however that Lethality does affect Ambush. I'm not sure what's causing the discrepancy however, as it would be pretty bizzare if they made Ambush affected by Lethality once more.

What???

What you're saying doesn't make sense.

Taken from these here. If something they've done since then reverted that change, it would be a very interesting bug. Has anyone else done such tests?

Well, what's the bizzare part is the tooltip was changed, it was tested by multiple people and confirmed that Lethality did not affect Ambush. So if it was changed such that Lethality does affect Ambush, it was certainly after the "combo moves" tooltip change initially went in.

Just to clarify: Yes, before patch 3.0, Ambush was not included in Lethality. This is a new change in 3.0.

Do you have a link to this testing? It's possible that it was simply not implemented yet when the testing was done.

I was a little surprised to find so many people here not knowing about this change, because I thought it was common knowledge. Even Ming of "World of Ming" fame mentioned it on his blog back on the 17th of this month.

Does anyone have a working model of ghostly strike with glyph? I am interested to know if its a larger dps boost than killing spree on single mobs, for a 7/50/14 spec as opposed to 7/51/13.

I don't know if there were any empirical posts to lay out all the testing when the "combo moves" change first happened, but I know a couple of people tested it (including Vulajin). If it did change, it wouldn't be that surprising that it went under the radar, given that a.) this is a far more PvE focused group/thread and b.) most people are still likely PvPing with a Hemo/Shadowstep variant.

They remain independent. The faster weapon will swing more often than the slower weapon.

If you could repeat your tests using a low damage range weapon like [Dirk], that'd be fantastic. Otherwise, I'll get around to it as soon as I have time.

I last tested Ambush in a beta build not long after the Lethality wording change and found that it was not affected by Lethality. Things certainly could have changed, but I'd like to see more conclusive proof of it.

When we say normalize in reference to wow, we are referring to the way that the attack power bonus is calculated. This has no effect on the swing time of the weapons. What it does mean is that a normalized weapon speed is used to calculate your attack power bonus when performing special attacks (never auto attacks). This normalized speed is 1.7 for daggers and 2.4 for all other 1 hand weapons.

Afaik, dual wielding only has one noteworthy effect: your base chance to miss rises significantly. Otherwise, you are treated as if single wielding the weapons separately, ie they swing and deal damage independently.

EDIT:

This reminds me of a question I had a long time ago. Has anyone ever tested to see what a rogue's hit chance is when a weapon is equipped in the mainhand but not in the offhand? I'd be curious to know if the higher miss chance still applies.

Comparing SS with GS is quite complex. I'll point out what we know though:

A fully talented Sinister Strike deals 135% normalized weapon damage plus 243 damage, costs 40 energy talented, has a chance to proc an extra combo point with the glyph, and if it is dodged you are refunded 80% of its energy cost.

A glyphed Ghostly Strike deals 175% unnormalized weapon damage, costs 40 energy, and does not refund any energy when dodged, and can only be used every 30 seconds.

I want to emphasize the bold portions since I think these two details are often forgotten.

If you remove your off-hand weapon and only use a main hand weapon, the dual wield white attack miss penalty goes away.

Fair enough. I've repeated the same tests, this time with [Dirk] and 2024 attack power.

Hits: 1587, 1586, 1586, 1589, 1588
Crits (0/5 Lethality): 3179, 3180, 3172, 3179, 3172
Crits (5/5 Lethality): 3659, 3655, 3652, 3651, 3652

(Tests done on current beta build 9138.)

Or just use a fishing pole, depending on what you're testing. Yes.

Thanks, that would be the conclusive proof I was looking for. I'll update my Wowhead comments.

That post was a couple pages ago but, me personally, if I've ever gotten to the point of 4 CP, i always did a shiv to get that 5th point, if my SnD isn't close to going off, if it is, i pop a 4pt Envenom, but more often than not i still have quite a big chunk of time left on it, would anyone see any reason -not- to use shiv to get that last 5th CP? The testing that I've done with it, on dummies and such, my DPS doesn't seem to vary at all when i do.

Interesting, thanks for running the tests.

No, they changed this a long time ago. If you unequip your off-hand and just attack with only a main hand, you won't take any swings with your fist.

Given that in Mutilate, your off-hand is going to have Deadly Poison on it, and the fact that you won't have any of the factors that made Combat Shiv attractive in play, I can't imagine performing a Shiv would be efficient DPE. You can also do more finishers if you just perform your finishers at 4 CP.

The same reason nobody uses Shiv to generate combo points? Because it's an awful use of energy. It's been pretty conclusively shown that energy as a resource is quite a bit more valuable than combo points, therefore using a very poor DPE move like Shiv (especially with a dagger ...) just for a combo point is wasteful of that energy. If the value of a combo point were raised - that is, the damage contribution of finishers were even further buffed, then mut cycles might need to consider going with strict 5 cycles instead of 4+ ones. But this problem has been looked at, and the 4+ solution has been deemed to be the best.

Mut's DPE is so high, that using it again on 4CP and wasting 1 or 2 CPs is almost always going to be better than using Shiv.