Curse of the Elements

[Apply Aura]: Mod Dmg % Taken (Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, Shadow)
Value: 10

CoE is applying the 10% damage debuff to nature currently on the beta which will further increase the use of poisons. Hopefully the poison changes go in with the next beta push.

Double check your OH speed, your 1.5 speed OH probably isn't 1.8 w SnD going. Maybe a typo.

Yes, sword/sword is a little better Dps than Vanirs/Vanirs..I know, I used them for a while. Get BoS and go fist/sword. The sheet still has Sword/Sword as better, but in practice, with careful cycles and paying attaention, you won't see a difference in game compared to most Sword/Sword rogues (who use ToA/S2).

Don't forget that Improved Poison now add 5 % per talent point, up from 2 % now.
And that Vile Poison is only a 3-points talents.
So for the same 5 points you put right now in Vile Poison, you will get then both the +20 % damage in poison/envenom, and +10 % poison application (just like an actual full-talented Improved Poison).
And have Instant Poison damage as a bonus.

Re: Threat drops - just as a note, the rogue is the ONLY class with a 100% threat drop that's 100% reliable (barring bugs). Hunters/Warlocks have resists, mages have to avoid damage/spellcasts for a timed duration. While FD is very very solid, any hunter can tell you about riding the edge on Aggro and having a few resists completely halt any decent chance at DPSing for 1 minute or longer. As long as the rogue chooses a good time to use their vanish, they are probably the least concerned with threat of any dpsing class.

Here's a recent Gorefiend parse for me:

Wow Web Stats

The value of Opportunity is pretty straightforward to calculate: 20% of the mutilate damage dealt would be an additional 18629 damage.

For 5% crit, we can calculate the expected increase in damage by converting 5% of attack from hits to crits using average crit and hit damage. That results in the following gains:

White damage: 9400
Mutilate Damage: 3808
Total: 13208

Now, one could argue there's a little more damage gained from increased Seal Fate procs, but it's not enough to move you to a 3 finisher cycle, so the DPS gain is going to be pretty marginal there...mostly it'll just increase the clask time of your 3-5s/5r cycle slightly. More importantly, the DPS spreadsheet comes up with the same result: Opportunity is currently about 1.5x as effective as Dagger Spec per point. It is certainly possible that WotLK changes will cause Dagger spec to pass Opp do to the presence of double IP, envenom being a standard finisher, and/or the use of the Focused attacks talent, but it's got a lot of ground to make up. As I said in my previous post, I was speculating using what we know about TBC Mut, and from the perspective 41/21/5+3 handily beats the 43/28/0 build you suggested

As of right now, it's not effective to use double deadly and envenom unless it's on trash - even less so if you have a enhancement shaman. For the future, I can't see anyone effectively using envenom in their build (pending exact damage numbers) unless they have the improved poison talents, as instant/deadly poison will raise to a 45% application rate and will stack incredibly fast. Other builds will most likely use a different finisher, say eviscerate.

I'm seeing most people settling on something like a 41/21/5 +4 build, with points in focussed attack, dagger spec, more poison talents and such. The problem with getting all the poison talents that synergise so well is the loss of things like blade flurry that are great dps additions.

First of all, I haven't had to the time to read this thread in its entirety so you'll have to excuse my probable ignorance to any topics previously discussed that I may overlap with. In terms of wrath discussion, if you haven't taken the time to take a peek at Vulajin's analysis of the new talents and abilities I would suggest you do so at the following link, some really great discussion material that could fuel some great topics here:

[Feedback] PVE/DPS - Patch 8634 (07/17/08)

So far I too have decided on settling for a 41/21/5+4 style build, but I'm struggling with the location of the last 4 points, which most likely will be going into assassination because of the great talents in tiers 7 and 8 of the tree. My spec thus far appears to be something like this:

45/21/5

I am inexperienced in terms of mutilate raiding, but I'm tempted to place the 3 points currently in find weakness into infectious poisons x2 for the synergistic effects of the lower tier poison talents and 1 point into blood splatter. I just don't know exactly how much the benefit of a 6% buff to abilities would weigh in compared to 20% increased poison damage (which will apparently be a much greater portion of our damage in wrath) and 10% increase to rupture which obviously will work well with mangle and trauma.

I felt that 3/3 turn the tables was a superior choice to maximizing find weakness because of its probable 100% uptime in a raid setting even though it does not appear to affect finishing moves, however as I previously stated my lack of experience with mutilate creates a problem with my judgment of find weakness uptime and the percentage of total abilities that generally receive its benefit (I would imagine one could simply exercise patience and use finishing moves only near full energy followed up with ability spam to maximize the benefit from the 10 second buff, but that's another strategy discussion).

My question really comes down to the exact worth of find weakness when compared to infectious poisons and blood splatter... my gut instinct is that find weakness is superior, but perhaps a more experienced mutilator/theorycrafter could provide some clarification and elaborate on the topic?

Unless I'm mistaken, mutilate needs the mob to be poisoned. But nowhere does it state that YOU have to poison it. (forgive me, I havn't played mut in ages) But if this is the case, if another rogue has their poisons on, your mutilate shouldn't suffer, right? So unless both rogues envenom at the exact same time, it should be viable as far as the "not effecting the mutilate ability" aspect goes.

The impression I got was that in TBC, envenom dropping the stack of deadly lowered dps because of the time it takes to ramp back up to full. With WotLK if you can fit 5/5 improved poisons, it might change.

Envenom's viability isn't tied to any one particular mechanic - it's how much damage it does that matters. If it hit for 10k damage right now, no one would be arguing that it isn't useful and generally effective.

Further, as mako points out, bosses in raid situations are basically always poisoned by *someone*, so this mechanical change would make very little difference to actual damage done, I suspect. So while it might help for PvP or solo situations to have something like that, in PvE it's going to come down to the exact damage numbers more than anything else.

Has anyone given any thought to 19/0/52?

Dagger BS with an average 2.4 ambushes per minute.

Granted the huge nerf to Honor Among Thieves hurts this build, but I am still wondering where it is going to fit in in relation to Combat swords and Mutilate.

Honor Among Thieves is going to give this build some extra combo points. BS and Ambush are going to cost less. Serrated Blades adds ArP, and Deadliness and Sinister Calling will add a sizable chunk of AP. Its going to have the added survivability from Cheat Death added to the mobility bonus of ShS. Those 2 dont directly increase DPS, but it has been argued extensively that they do passively increase DPS.

I dont think it is going to be up there, but I am wondering how close it is actually going to be.

Okay, first off? Would people please stop posting random speculative builds? Let me give you the global answer right now to all manner of "how good is build X going to be in WotLK" questions: we have no idea. Without knowing the gear, character stats, conversions, buffs, etc. in a *lot* more detail than we currently do, we have no reasonable way of assessing them. Consider this your warning at that point - I'm not going to exhibit much patience with these from now on. If you have quantifiable analysis of the build, that's one thing; but if you're just floating a random idea, you're probably going to get an infraction.

Secondly, with regards to 19/0/52 in particular: well, the deep sub talents are pretty nifty, but you give up a lot of powerful stuff in combination and/or assassination to get it. Is that tradeoff worth it? I don't know, why don't we wait until we know the gear, buffs, etc. in more detail so we can do some estimates?

Maybe it's because our trees haven't really got anything overly interesting and some of the talents are pretty lackluster right now and we don't get any new PvE ability from 70->80?

There really isn't much to discuss, with what we currently have.

So, let me be clear: if people have quantitative analysis of new talents and builds - that's great, and I'd love to see it. But when it comes to "what do you think of this spec" posts - 1) we have no ability to do damage estimates for your pet build, and 2) we have no ability to do damage estimates on the "good" builds. So there's really no way for us to look at your talent spec and talk about it in any but the most general of terms. And frankly, I think we long ago exhausted the topics of conversation at that level of generality. I'd love to discuss things in more detail, but we *just don't know enough*. There are some very very important questions around raid buffs and mechanics that we have no answers to, so we just can't make any intelligent comments on the situation.

Yes, other classes have been discussing somewhat more - but they also have more detailed talents and abilities, and, more to the point, stuff that changes. They gave us our talents, we figured out everything there is to know within a week, and they haven't changed in meaningful ways. So tell me, exactly what are we supposed to be talking about?

Just an interesting tidbit from beta that I'd think you'll all be interested to know: as of build 8681 (the new one today), energy regenerates once depleted in ticks of 1 energy at a rate of 10 ticks per second.

Well that just made kicking easy, also added some minor dynamic to focused attacks.

Fokus Magic (Focus Magic - New Mage Arcane Tier 3 talent - increases magic damage taken by the target by 150, lasts 1 min or 50 charges. 1000 Mana the new Arkan 11er Talent) looks like a buff to poison damage. We don't know the new ranks but this also scales really well and instant poison looks like the ability gaining the biggest percentage increase by Fokus Magic. I imagine this to give rogues 150 or more additional DPS as it scales with haste and hit and expertise and crit rating.

It sounds like a good change overall, but it'll be harder to store energy for Find Weakness purposes, or after a stun/gouge. Still nothing on the new poisons?

One more change -- although admittedly a bigger deal in PVP, it's still pertinent in PVE as well.

Why does it make energy storing harder? It makes it more precise. Now you can wait till 80-85 energy and then use your energy, you can exactly plan for how long to wait in case of a combat potency proc.

Personally i like that change a lot, especially as you are far less going to see those 39 energy situations where you have to wait another 2 seconds for a tick to be able to Sinister Strike.

I believe poisons are nature damage, and as such, this will not apply to them.

Magic damage != Arcane damage. Magic refers to all elements. Arcane is one of them.

Presumably, Focus Magic increases magic (that is, non-physical) damage. As such, it should increase Nature, Fire, Frost, Arcane, and Shadow damage, and should affect poisons.

Seriously, most Mages are more concerned that the buff won't last long enough if everything eats charges.