a few questions for the minds out there i've had, and nobody can really give me a solid answer with any kind of support behind it, so i bring it to you all.

mutilate spec, for pvp i know you want 2 slow weps for burst damage, do you want the same for pve, or do you go with 2 fast for better FA procs, or slow mh fast oh? 51 point talent worth taking or is it to inefficient? given the "cut to the chase" talent, would i be better off taking improved evis and just using it over rupture? given the current restaints to 61 talent points, if i do take cut to the chase, where should i drop the 1 point i'd be missing? duel weild spec, oppertunity, or RS?

and is combat dagger still shunned? is a 13/41/7 (3/5 lethality, 5/5 rs, 2/2 oppertunity) worth even considering taking to raid or for combat is sword/fist still the only considerable build?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
was the build, thought tweaked with your input, that i was thinking about. however to get the 51 point talent i'd need to drop 2 points elsewhere which is where the what to drop question came from.

given the changes to mutilate, i was considering leveling as assassination, just so i can relearn it, currently i'm the old sword/fist combat build tweaked to 5/51/5, but i never liked it, so i see mutilate as a viable option finally and want to try it out.

gear wise i dont have any daggers at all at the moment, i was asking as to the preferred speeds so i know what i need to pick up, be it either pvp daggers for now, or what to drop dkp on for daggers

Anyone, please feel free to link to or fix this as appropriate. Please.

PvE Mutilate, fast and flawed advice
Daggers of nearly the same DPS? Use the faster ones.
Two good daggers of different speeds? Faster in the Mainhand.
Mainhand Instant Poison, Offhand Deadly Poison.

Rotation:
* Before combat, get 3 stacks of Hunger for Blood up.
* Start up Slice and Dice however you please, really.

1. Mutilate to 4+ Combo Points
2. Make sure Hunger for Blood isn't going to drop soon. Refresh it if it will.
3. Is Rupture up? If yes, Envenom. Go to step 1.
4. Does Slice and Dice have >12 seconds left? If no, Envenom. Go to Step 1.
5. Rupture. Go to Step 1.

PvE Combat, fast and flawed advice
Mainhand a sword or fist weapon of generally slow speed.
Offhand a sword, dagger or fist weapon of generally fast speed.
Spec appropriately, 4/5 sword spec is fine if you take Close Quarters Combat.
Mainhand Deadly Poison, Offhand Wound Poison.

Rotation:
* Start up Slice and Dice however you please, really.

1. Sinister Strike to 5 Combo Points.
2. Slice and Dice.
3. Sinister Strike to 5 Combo Points.
4. Rupture.
5. Sinister Strike to 5 Combo Points.
6. Does Slice and Dice have >12 seconds left? If yes, Envenom. If no, Go to Step 2.
7. Go to Step 1.

And no, it's not perfect or ideal. If you want real numbers that mean more to you it means you're going to have to put your gear/gems/enchants/spec into one of the readily available spreadsheets and find out for yourself. This however will keep you from embarrassing yourself until you do.

I've tried HaT a bit and it's pretty fun. But like you said in the first couple lines Mav, it's mostly because raiding right now is moot that we haven't discussed it intensely. These numbers are coming with top tier gear at the end of progression. Maybe at 80 when things are more settled, there might be discussion about a conversion point from standard specs into HaT ones. It would be awesome if there'd be three viable specs in this fashion at 80 but who knows until we get there.

Aside from BM hunters, a DPS feral druid works well.

Tin I might be wrong but you probably want to start with a one point SnD before you build up a 5 point one at the start of your combat rotation.

Well, this is my first post. (Be nice )

I have been using HaT since it came out. Although I am stuck mostly in Heroics and T4 (been playing for a month), I find that I am able to out DPS other spec rogues by up to 50% (even higher teir rogues). On Heroics, I find that I get a fairly steady bonus of 2 combo points per 5 secs. On 10-mans, I find that on boss fights I am constantly at 5 combo points with little to no energy to spend it on (after 5s/5r then either 5e or 5ev depending on DP stack). On 25-mans, I always had 5 combo points.

Example:
This last week my brother managed to get me into Mags as a deal for him to MT. Over vent I was told that if I did anything stupid I would get insta-kicked. I managed to place 3rd in overall damage and less than 5k damage away from first. I was then invited to Gruul's, where I place 2nd and only 1k damage behind 1st.

I really would like to know how I could export info from a fight into a log(?), any suggestions? I like recount because I can get a visual look at the info, but with no way to export numbers, I find that it can't be used to track my progress at developing a better cycle.

I would suggest a slightly different build from what Demi9OD posted. If you are raiding, then the points in Dirty Tricks, Ghostly Strikes, and Hemo are wasted. You will not need much of a combo builder, if at all. (Although if you stop getting combo points from HaT then there is a problem raid-wide anyway.) My Suggestion Although I might be worth it to drop the point in Lethality and put it in Hemo for any non-raid uses.

I really feel that HaT has been over-looked.

Please, any constructive criticism is welcome. I am still new but with over 10 years in PC gaming I can figure out some tricks.

Edit: Dirty Tricks, not Dirty Deeds sorry.

Hey there, this is also my first post but after looking at the spec that you posed I felt like the points put in setup could have been better utilized else where, as those are mostly pvp talents. Furthermore, where you only needed three talent points to proceed to the next tier you used three, so easily you could have put one of those in hemo, still had two in setup (if that is where you desire to put them) and maintain that individual point in Lethality.

Dirty Deeds carries with it +20% damage for 35% of the fight (probably a little less with executes and other talents that will increase raid dps during execute). You either need to spec for Hemo or backstab, but backstab requires more points because of opportunity and puncturing wounds. There is trash to clear, and other situations that call for a CP gen outside of HaT, that you would probably rather not do with a 45 energy sinister strike or non talented backstab.

Ultimately the trouble with deep Subtlety is directly coupled to HaT. While the mechanic is something different for rogues, and as such welcome, it's balance in the Subtlety tree is poorly implemented. I summarize this in two points:

1) HaT comprises far too much of Subtlety's maximum theoretical DPS.

coupled with

2) HaT is completely dependent upon the other 24 members of the raid.

When these two things are grafted atop each other you end up with a build that shines under optimal conditions, dare I say even much stronger than traditional PvE specs, but is equally skewed to the other side of the spectrum, to the level of near-obsolete in challenging situations. In short, the problem is variability.

In a fight of trivial content, with a raid geared to maximum or near-maximum capabilities, HaT receives excellent contribution from his party's crit rate. Due to the overcompensation of HaT into Subtlety's DPS it provides a constant stream of combo points to such extent that all the rogue does is spam finishers. Well that sounds great (and is in that circumstance), but what happens in progression?

In any circumstance where the raid is not optimally geared, there is a encounter design that splits up on-target time among players (running around doing different tasks or spamming CC), difficult encounters where a few raid-members can reasonably expect to die, or (worse) a combination of any of those factors, HaT begins to significantly decline. Since the tree has to be somewhat balanced assuming optimal contribution from HaT not making the rogue overpowered, that means essentially that there is direct proportionality to the difficulty of the fight making the rogue weaker. This is a horrible catch 22. Instead of the rogue being the last DPS standing & bursting all his damage to down the boss' last 1% (old Gruul fights?), if a HaT rogue ever gets to that point his damage has decreased to such an extent that the tank (under wrath mechanics) is probably doing just as much damage.

HaT needs a significant nerf (in proc rate I suspect) in order to reduce it's variability in output. However, that means the rest of Subtlety will need a significant buff in terms of more consistent damage sources in order to be reliable and on par with more traditional PvE specs.

So in conclusion: Deep Subtlety (HaT) is beautiful for fun fighting in content you've already got on farm, but is far and away the worse PvE choice for challenging content and/or progression.

I was under the impression that using Evis instead of Envenom would be better in a standard combat build, so please correct me if I'm wrong also, I would rather get SnD up asap(in other words 1 or 2 SS then SnD) and then build to 5 combo points to get a full snd off.

It was really just supposed to be a quick guild to the rotation that the spreadsheets usually spit out (ie, quick, dirty and flawed advice). But since I guess I wasn't clear on that, I'll edit appropriately.

Scriv, you are not alone on your stance when it comes to HaT, however I can see both sides of the story.

#1 It's terrible for leveling and WotLK is 24 hours away (do not spec HaT for leveling purposes).
#2 As stated above it relies completely on a optimum raid setup.

I am very excited to see endgame performance with HaT as my rogue counterpart and I have had the most fun in months in BT the last couple weeks with this build. Blowing the charts up is an understatement.

As for WotLK I'll be pushing out a nice combat build for leveling purposes with sights set on an optimistic endgame mutilate build and a prayer that HaT may be viable in endgame content. Especially considering we will have dual-spec on the horizon.