Although the tooltip on this Talent Calculator doesn't specifically have daggers in the tooltip, I doubt that this will remain for the live version.

But oh what fun it would be if it did.... The QQ from the locks alone would almost be worth losing it eventually.

It would help if you provided some basis for thinking they might have - I haven't heard anything that makes me think they have, but if you have we'd love to hear it.

Edit: And I don't think 3rd-party sites count as 'evidence' - they could have just made a mistake. If the in-game tooltip no longer says it requires daggers, that would be some evidence - but ultimately, we just need someone to try it out in-game and see what happens.

This may or may not be the reasoning behind the adjustment to the warrior portion and it would certainly be in keeping with blizzard's consistant policy of balancing everything around arenas no matter how badly it fucks up PvE.

However, there is another possible explination for the internal cooldown. Presently OH hits proc MH swings which is, primarily, why sword spec is so much better than the other weapon specs. If OH hits proced OH swings the 5% extra attacks would be much closer to the gains from 5% crit on fist/dagger spec. It is concieveable that the internal cooldown is a lazy way of addressing this issue.

The talent calculator just doesn't list it, the in-game tooltip for WotLK Alpha build 8471 reads the following:

Mutilate (Rank #)
60 Energy
Melee Range
Instant
Requires Daggers
Instantly attacks with both weapons for an additional ### with each weapon. Damage is increased by 50% against Poisoned targets. Must be behind the target. Awards 2 combo points.

but why would or should they do that? why make combat daggeres less attractive why should combat be only suited for swords, maces or fists? For some ppl, assassination is too fast, and subtelty too complex, combat is ideal for htem but they hate how their toon wields swords but love them in daggers, why can't combat daggers be equally viable?

There are arguements for and against having combat-daggers be viable. On the one hand you already have one and a half trees dedicated to daggers in WLK, possibly two depending on what else they can do to deep subtlety, whereas the other weapon types restrict your spec choice more. On the other hand, daggers are more thematically rogue-ish to the point of them being on the class icon, so there is justification that they be more viable. Personally I think the sneakiness associated with daggers clashes with the direct thugish approach of combat, but that's something I'm willing to put aside for the sake of better game design, and daggers do need some sort of love currently (especially considering how damn many of them there are).

It seems to me that Blizzard is trying to have a viable talent spec for every primary CPG. 41/20/0 + 10 (i.e. 51/20/0, 44/22/5, 41/25/5, etc.) are solid Mutilate builds, deep combat (20/51/0 and thereabouts) is at least supposed to be good for SS, 11/39/21 is a solid Hemo build, and it's clearly at least the intent that deep-sub will be good for Backstab builds. Now, how successful they are in all of these remains to be seen - we'll have to wait to see what itemization and such looks like down the road. But it's at least plausible to me that all 4 builds may end up somewhat plausible in the long run.

The point is simply this: while it does make since that they allow specs around each CPG, that doesn't mean they need to support every CPG in every tree. "Combat daggers" became popular because it was the best spec available at the time. I don't see any particular reason why "Combat daggers" per se needs to continue to exist just because it's been around for a while. What I *do* think wants to exist is a "Backstab" build, so as long as deep sub is made a reasonably competitive option, I don't really see a need to have "combat daggers" continue to exist.

Now, in terms of the reality of the situation: it looks to me like Hemo and Mutilate builds will probably be relatively stronger given the alpha talent trees, so I do think Backstab (and SS) builds could use some love. So the problem is not that "combat daggers" is weak, per se, but simply that there's no good backstab build at the moment - which I agree should be fixed.

As a final note: the natural extension of this approach would be the advent of viable shiv builds as well... I don't know if that's at all feasible, but it would be interesting if it could be made to happen. On the other hand, the fact that we're already talking about having 4 viable main attack moves puts us ahead of a number of other classes already, so maybe that's asking too much.

Another mutilate archetype we haven't discussed is the 41+/*/23+ prep-mutilate build. This is certainly going to figure in the pvp top builds list, but I wonder if it's viable as a pve build. Something like this: War Pirate :: Rogue WotLK Alpha Talent Tree
- Picks up both +rupture talents
- Dirty deeds for sub-35 damage uplift
- Prep for utility/2xCB in that sub 35 range

There were long discussions in the mutilate thread about the lvl 70 version of this, mostly around the fact that a cycles were tight but feasible without imp SnD (4-5s,4-5r iirc) and that the other dps talents in the mix were close to a wash. I'm going to guess that that this remains sub-optimal, but situationally appealing (ie. bosses with a critical <35% phase).

I think that it is important to remember that the strength of a particular build is somewhat dependent upon what gear is available in the next expansion. It may be a bit short-sighted to accept a certain talent configuration as "best" without knowing which weapons one has access to and at what stage of the game. It's certainly possible that early-expansion itemization may contain stellar swords, for example, while decent daggers don't show up until the first full raid instance. I think that one of the most useful things that we can do, currently, is continue to provide clear, objective analysis backed by numbers so that blatant problems can be corrected in the developmental stages of WotLK.

I have a lot of questions here, but I've been saving them for a long time (except the first one) so forgive me!

I have a question concerning the DPS spreadsheet and some data it's spouting out. I currently have the t4 helm equipped so I can keep the 2pt4 set bonus. Last night in ZA I received the grimgrin faceguard, which appeared to be a considerable upgrade. After plugging it into the spreadsheet, I'm finding it's an 18 DPS decrease (which was kind of shocking). Does the spreadsheet give a "DPS value" to the 2pt4 set bonus, which is why I'm seeing the ~18 DPS loss if I equip the helm and gem it properly, or is the loss from the meta gem being so strong.

I'm not understanding this, because I'm gaining double digits in every stat upon comparison, as well as two sockets. All I lose is the 2pt4 bonus and the meta gem.

Also, I have a question involving rotations: when beginning a boss encounter I usually start with a garrote, followed by a rupture, then SnD, then every trinket/cooldown I have (AR/BF/drums), and finally work my way into my 1s/5r cycle. Is it better to use slice n dice or rupture following my garrote, or does it not matter?

Further, I've noticed that when using AR I occasionally run into instances where I've got 5 combo points, as well as a handful of ticks on my rupture/snd, and 3 seconds or so of AR being up. What's the proper course of action here? I'm always tempted to use eviscerate and sacrifice 1-3 seconds of rupture uptime.

Finally: in the event a 5 combo point rupture finishes before I have regained another five combo points (low energy regen proc, etc.), is it worthwhile to use however many points I have on another rupture, or let it drop until I have five points in it again? I guess a side question would be is it worth it to immediately refresh an inferior rupture with a superior rupture if given the chance, or try to conserve the energy?

Thank you for all of your help!

I think it's a bit unlikely that we'll see an across-the-board shortage of a weapon type - historically, Blizzard's done pretty well at providing roughly equal numbers of swords and daggers (and if anything, more daggers) - which has been rather annoying for the duration of TBC while daggers have been useless (at least, useless save for the ones that find use as Hunter stat sticks). But the point about needing to know what itemization looks like at 80 is nevertheless valid. It seems to me, based on what we've seen so far, that the distribution of our damage from different sources will be changing a fair amount - not all builds are going to be 65% white, 30% yellow at 5% finishers anymore. And until we get the new items, conversions, skills, and so forth, we really don't have a good estimate as to what the new breakdown is.

That said, I think it is worth making some estimates as to which talents are good and not (so we can lobby for the bad ones to be changed), and to some extent which specs are good and not - so we can figure out what problems exist in the realm of inter-spec balance, and can have those addressed (by tweaking talent power and/or rearranging abilities) before things get finalized. But I think the biggest thing we need to work on right now is figuring out how to model all the new abilities, such that one we have all the information about the problem, we can more quickly and easily find a solution.

1) Meta sockets are powerful. Like, really really powerful. As such, T4 and Grimgrin are actually pretty comparable even neglecting the socket bonus; with the addition of the socket bonus, it is not at all surprising to me that T4 comes out ahead.

2) In general getting SnD up is vastly, vastly, *vastly* more important than getting Rupture up. So I'd probably recommend Garrote -> SnD rather than Garrote -> Rupture. Particularly since a 1-point rupture is a horribly energy-inefficient maneuver that you should never do, ever.

3) It's advisable to wait a few seconds before popping cooldowns on fight, partly for aggro and partly to let other people get debuffs up. You'll do a lot more damage once the tank gets his 5 sunders on, the druid gets FF up, the enhancement shaman gets Unleashed Rage up, and so forth. So unless you're putting up a debuff yourself (i.e. Imp EA) or you know that the fight is just barely long enough to fit in 2 cooldowns, I'd recommend waiting about 10-15 sec before popping everything.

4) During AR, one typically pops an Eviscerate. It's better to do an Eviscerate that trim 2 ticks off a Rupture; if you're only trimming one tick it might be okay, but in general it's safer to just eviscerate.

5) If your SnD is up, your rupture is still running, and you're back up to 5 CPs, you should let your energy tick up to 60 or 70 while you have the time. If you *still* have uptime on both, I believe it's optimal to just throw an extra SS and waste the combo point, though I'd need to double check the numbers to be sure. Though if this is happening consistently, you might think about stretching your cycle to 2s5r to reduce overlap.

Well, basically you're giving up 5% hit, 16% white/Mut damage, and 2% crit (or 1% crit + blade flurry) for 50% more rupture damage, some armor pen, an extra cold blood every 10 minutes, and 14% Mut/Rupture damage (dirty deeds averaged over the fight).

I'm not sure what the exact armor pen benefit is, but the 5% hit/16% white damage is huge...as it stands Rupture is about 7% of my overall damage, so 16% of my white damage easily exceeds a 50% boost to Rupture.

The 43/0/18 build being near-viable had in major part Opportunity compensating for the lack of DW-spec. Since combat-sub-spec builds no longer lack that, the subtlety sub-spec has much less of a comparative advantage. Cold Blood and Dirty Deeds being in range may help but I doubt they're comparable to the 20% mutilate advantage that opportunity used to bring.

True, though on the other hand you're not losing quite as much either - you have the opportunity to pick up Imp SnD or a couple points in Precision (or both, depending on the exact nature of your spec). For instance, 41/12/18 gets 7 out of the 8 points in the two abilities. That said, it seems likely that losing DW spec hurts you more than Serrated Blades helps you, and it's certainly the case that going to 41/7/23 to get Prep and Dirty Deeds at the expense of points in Precision and Imp SnD isn't worth it. So while it's an interesting idea, I don't see it eclipsing 41/25/5 or the other options.

Hello, this is my first time posting on these forums but just wanted to say I'm a big fan of what this community has done for Wow players. Now, on to the show...

Unless there's glancing blow changes incoming for Wotlk that i'm not aware of, Prey on the Weak seems like a tease of a talent. If it is applied to special attacks rather than just normal melee attacks, then it would peak my interest in Combat builds next expansion. That could also help with itemization as well. (I'm sure we were all stuck with Skulker's Greaves for a long time)

Couple that with 1 point in Stay of Execution (When below 35% health, blah blah and you are treated as if you're at full health), that could provide a little bit of insurance that Prey on the Weak will be activated.

Well based on the preliminary info they have given out, we can assume a few rather important things about gear in general.

Since they clearly stated that Stamina wont have the same boost it had in BC we have an interesting situation. Stamina is a very important stat on armor, its points will have to go somewhere due to the itemlevel raise.

For us this will mean that we will have more Agility/AP/Crit/Hit/Expertise. Exp and Hit does have a cap and it will be considered when designing gear, we can assume that blizz will dump the rest in our other offensive stats. (unless they come up with a new stat to stack that we dont know about yet)

That means that compared to BC we probably end up with more offensive stats per item level in WotLK, as we did with BC item levels due to the Sta change.

This will affect our talents too as our stat boosting talents could become more important.

Stamina received the increase it did precisely because its cost was reduced. The reason we won't see the same stamina jump is because the cost of stamina is constant this expansion. Hit/expertise cost will be increased due to player level increasing.

I don't see any more dps increases this expansion than last expansion. Of course stamina won't increase by as much.

I was wondering if using two fast daggers in a Mutilate build with Focused Attacks could generate more dps than a slow mainhand and a fast offhand.

The idea has been postulated in the Mutilate thread, but no one has come to any firm conclusions about it. My best guess is that it's not worth it to intentionally do so, but if you don't have a good slow dagger a fast one is a more viable alternative than it is for combat builds. Simply put: Focused Attacks really isn't that large a damage source, and since the damage done by Mutilate depends somewhat more heavily on the MH than it does the OH, it seems unlikely to me that a fast OH will entirely catch up. But, again, this is one of those questions that requires us to wait for additional information about the new skill ranks and equipment before we can answer it definitively.

I have a combat log of swinging at a Servant of Razelikh for roughly an hour with Windfury Totem, using [Inuuro's Blade] in the main hand with no off hand weapon and Slice and Dice with T6 2pc to bring the swing speed to about 1.04. I have a raid to attend, so I'll be back afterwards to post the full thing with a breakdown of the details, but I can promise that the following conclusions can already be made based on what I've seen in inspecting the combat log:

- A single main hand attack can simultaneously proc both Windfury Attack and Sword Specialization.
- Windfury Attack procs can proc additional Windfury Attack procs (there is an instance of Windfury > Windfury).
- Windfury Attack procs can proc Sword Specialization.
- Sword Specialization procs can proc Windfury Attack.
- Extra attack chains can go longer than 2 (there is an instance of Sword Spec > Windfury > Sword Spec).

My first guess is that it might not be that bad. For the OH, a fast dagger with good stats often beats a slow dagger with mediocre stats and the same DPS, due to poison and stats.
In the main hand, we have no poison advantage, and the damage scales 33% better (75% vs. 100%).

Let's make some rough estimates at BT/SW gear:
For 120 energy, you get 2 Mutis (3k each average) and 1 Rupture for 2k. 8k damage for 120 energy, 200 damage for 3 energy.
Let's take a 1.3s and a 1.9s dagger MH, with SnD they are 1.0s and 1.46s. Hit cap and 40% crit raid buffed (might be a bit high), 10% armour reduction with debuffs and APen gear, the dagger is 100 DPS.

With 30% chance on crit for 3 energy, we get 1/1.0*30%*40% = 0.36 energy/sec for the 1.3 dagger, and 1/1.46*30%*40% = 0.2466 energy/sec for the 1.3 dagger.
A difference of 0.1135 energy/second.

The difference in mutilate damage (1.9-1.3)*100*1.5*(1+1.3*0.45)*0.9 (speed diff, DPS, 1.5 poisoned muti, crit multiplier, 0.9 armour) = 128 damage.
With Hunger for Blood and Focused Attacks, we do around 1 Mutilate every 7 seconds.


So, what does it look like in the end?
With the fast dagger, we lose 128 damage every 7s from Mutilates, that's 18 DPS.
We gain an additional 0.11 energy every second that translates to around 7.5 additional.

It looks like using a fast MH dagger over a slow one won't be worth it. The energy gains make up for maybe half the mutilate loss.
However, a faster dagger with better stats may be worth it, because the impact of weapon speed is nearly halvesdue to focused attacks.

Numbers are estimates, but shouldn't be too far off. I gladly accept corrections