Read the thread - every 20 or so posts is a discussion of optimal combat builds up to the date with each beta patch.

Is unfair advantage + increased dodge not a significant damage increase then? That is why the lightning reflex points were there.

Unfair Advantage is more of a soloing or PvP talent in terms of the benefit it provides. In a raid environment, given that rogues rarely if ever dodge attacks (absent a reintroduction of the dreaded 360 degree cleaves prevalent at the beginning of BC), rogues will not spec into that talent.

Also, if you're dodging stuff in a raid setting, it frequently means you've pulled aggro; and if you've pulled aggro, the last thing you want to do is get extra attacks on the mob, as that will make it harder for the tank to get it off you. So Unfair Advantage is not only useless in raids, it's to some extent a liability.

Now, that said: it is of course a fantastic talent for leveling; the ability to take Riposte and Unfair Advantage will be a nontrivial damage boost, such that even if Mutilate winds up being the dominant raid spec, it's seems plausible if not likely that combat will still be faster for leveling.

With the positional requirement removed from Mutilate, it should be very competitive with combat for levelling purposes - obviously you're missing BF + AR for when you have adds, but my guildmates who spec'd mutilate for the 60-70 grind were saying they'd regularly kill things before their stealth timer was back up - and I know I wasn't doing that regularly as combat - though we'll see how Unfair Advantage works out. I think any tree will be reasonably viable for levelling, though Sub will be more appealing to people in lower gear.

If 60-70 is any indication, mutilate should be a bit faster than combat for leveling. It was only a little bit slower from 60-70, and then because of the limitations of the KS cooldown, needing to start stealthed, and not being able to take adds well. At around 66 (when I got the dagger from Ring of Blood to go with my GM dagger), I was able to kill most mobs within Cheap Shot -> Mutilate -> Kidney Shot -> Mutilate -> Mutilate -> Eviscerate, with gouge saved for when I absolutly needed it. I used wound poison to give me the debuff so I could gouge if necesary, and it was almost as fast as combat, just requiring more micromanagement.

With the removal of the positioning requirement as well as the increased overall damage, leveling as mutilate should be just as fast, if not faster than combat. Finally, you could even spec 41/20 and get BF at level 71 if you really thought that it was that helpful. However, I'm pretty sure that the points 42-51 in assassination are more valuable than 6-21 in combat, making 51/5/5 the spec to start with. I'd say that while leveling, the next 2 points go into opportunity, and then finish with 5 in precision and 3 in CQC, for a final spec of 51/13/7 at 80.

Yes.

I'm not arguing that Mutilate will be *bad*, by any means - and it will definitely lend itself to a fast and furious trash pace, keeping SnD up from mob to mob by finishing each one off with an Envenom. My point is merely this:

Let us posit, for the moment, that combat and mutilate are more or less comparable in terms of raid-style DPS. One of them might be a couple percent ahead, but it's close. This may not be true right now, but I think it's reasonable to assume that it will be by launch.

Let us further posit that they both benefit more or less equally from the various raid buffs, such that they're still reasonably close in raw damage output unbuffed. This is a little iffier, but as there isn't any obvious bias towards one or the other at this stage, lets go with it.

Thus, in terms of raw, target-dummy DPS, they are presumably pretty close. Now, in addition to that, a Combat build gets an extra 11% avoidance, reducing damage taken and thus downtime; and, moreover, it gets a free extra attack for something like 1/3 of incoming attacks. Assuming mobs attack once every, say, second and a half, this is a full extra attack every 4 seconds between Riposte and Unfair Advantage. It seems like this should be a nontrivial damage advantage, and, hence, a nontrivial increase in farming speed. Hence, it seems reasonable to believe that Combat will be stronger relative to Mutilate in farming situations than it is in raw raid DPS.

This is, of course, all theoretical and we'll have to see how it works out in practice; but it does seem to me to be a reasonable hypothesis.

Well for farming/leveling there really is no way to theorycraft it, as it is a very personal playstyle, and very unsustained. I would probably argue that Fleet-Footed and vigor offer unique advantages to the Mutilate farmer/leveler.

I guess what we can hope is that they'll be approximately equal and that, like Isin said, it'll come down to personal preference or what weapons you have acess to. I can almost certainly say that, unless mutilate is truly way superior, I'll probably have to stick with combat for a while, as the only weapons I have right now are the season 1 swords, and ced's carver / season 1 offhand dagger. However, if I get a chance to get better weapons (anything non-raid and non s3/s4 pretty much), then mutilate will be better.

Hopefully they'll both be equal under most conditions, giving us something we haven't had in a long time-- a truly meaningful choice between two equal dps specs with different gear requirements and different playstyles.

Also add Imp Kidney shot to that list - it's a great levelling talent for Assassination builds.

When considering mutilate levelling talents, don't forget that little gem Remorseless Attacks. Not only does it almost guarantee a crit mutilate on opening, it is a great pacing mechanism.

The problem I start to see for mutilate leveling is actually too many good talents. Right now, a raid mutilate spec has barely enough points to cover all the necesary dps talents. If things like Fleet Footed, imp. KS, Quick Recovery (for bandages, which is actually kind of awesome because your bandages become god-like, at least for a while), and Remorsless Attacks are needed for leveling, the question becomes what dps talents do we sacrifice for leveling/utilty talents?

EDIT: This is another point in favor of combat. Also, as I just realized, Mutilate has almost 0 filler points to get to the 51 point level for a raid dps spec, therefore any utility or leveling talents come at the price of dps. Combat, on the other hand, has a bunch of filler points which could easily be put into things that speed up leveling: Deflection, Riposte, Lightning Reflexes, etc. Also, imp. Slice and Dice isn't really useful when mobs die quickly anyway, unless it makes the duration such that a low-point SnD is long enough to kill 2 mobs, which I doubt.

While combat mitigates a large amount of damage while leveling from the extra dodge and parry, note that Mutilate can get Kidney Shot off a lot easier, which is also good damage reduction. Depending on your leveling style, the cooldown reductions of combat lets you be more careless or try more difficult pulls with less risk.

If you have TBC raiding gear, it probably isn't a bad idea to drop Imp Kidney Shot. Granted, I'm not 80 yet, but I have found that, especially with Remorseless Attacks (which is, in my opinion, absolutely crucial for Mutilate leveling), most mobs are dying in a Cheap Shot > wait for poison proc > Mutilate > Eviscerate.

While Combat has a lot of talents that increase longevity and gives you the possibility of AoE grinding and expected on-par DPS, Mutilate damage is a lot more "bursty" and more often than not you will be shredding through quest mobs like hot knife on butter.

With that said, the leveling spec that I picked was this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. I'm quite happy with it thus far, and the reason I do not pick Cut to the Chase is because it was simply an annoyance (I have no Imp SnD or SnD glyph, which you might have, but probably not the second the expansion hits).

In TBC Mutilate was the best DPE (damage per energy) build, I dont see any talents in combat to pull him off the throne, only the Slaughter from the Shadows in sub. tree is a talent what rises the build towards it. But as we account Overkill, it tears the gap even bigger. From avoidance pov muti might be even better, when we look at single target play, having a 10 sec stun on the mob could be counted as perk for avoidance and usually mobs do die during that time. And during finding next mob, the energy tends to fill up, be it combat or muti build.

Yes, combat has advantages, when fighting multiple targets at a time, but after doing that, one has to sit down and start to eat or use bandages. All in all it takes the same ammount of time as with muti, when you peeled the mobs off separately and killed them with 100% left on your HP pool.

In TBC I was also leveling with muti, tried combat for a while when the fists from consortium guys were attainable (around 66 level i guess) but the consumable loss kind of threw me over. I had to "heal" myself more often, or should I say, I didnt have to "heal" myself when playing muti.

I think one of the most important points will be run speed and mobility when leveling. I thought of a combination of ShS and Fleet Footed. The combination of Remorseless Attacks, Master of Subtlety, Shadow Step and Dirty Deeds should give a close to permanent damage increase active. Fleet Footed, Camouflage and ShS give very high mobility.

I levelled from 60-70 using Mutilate and the limiting factors throughout the entire process were Stealth and KS CD.
I had very little downtime due to being low on life at all.

I had a far bigger problem with the positional requirement of Mutilate, if I got extra mobs I was energy starved and KS usually on CD. Vanish and CS would get you control back of course.
Now the positional requirement of Mutilate is gone and slow weapons will still be an advantage for the burst damage you get from them.

What I missed was Blade Flurry more than anything else. The ability to hack 2 mobs apart at the same time really would have made things easier. It is very tempting to spec 41/20 and pick BF at level 71 for that reason alone.

What I didn't miss was extra avoidance, the fact that most mobs were being locked down meant I was hardly being hit. I don't see that changing much from 70 to 80.

Speccing 51/x/y for levelling may not really be optimal.

Yes, things like Deadly Brew are going to be useful but Turn the Tables will not be, the same with Cut to the Chase. The need to keep SnD up is not really a priority on normal mobs and as you will be locking mobs down as often as possible you aren't going to get much out of Turn the Tables.

However the availability of Hunger for Blood right from the start is going to be useful all the time.

While 51/x/y may not be the best for solo levelling you won't always be doing that, grouping to level and instance runs are where you get the best out such a spec.
It is also going to be good practice, keeping Hunger for Blood up instinctively is something we will have to learn. Forcing the pace to keep SnD up through Cut to the Chase will also be a challenge, again it will be good practice.

In answer to jdpowers19: I never really noticed a problem with mobs becoming harder to kill as I progressed until I reached 70 and started the more challenging quests in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley. That problem was solved by grinding the appropriate rep for gear, enchants and running instances for upgrades.
That Mutilate was at a disadvantage at this level was partly down to how much better Combat Swords was as well having access to a decent MH sword from Aldor Exalted and a decent OH sword from Black Morass normal. Suitable Mutilate weapons were about but not as easy to get nor were they of the same quality.

In WotLK I am going to be keeping my options open. I will start levelling with a 51/x/y Mutilate build but am not going to stay married to it.

I levelled from 60-70 using 2x HWL daggers as mutilate, and while they did start to feel pretty weak the closer to 70 I got, I always thought the main setback was the positional requirement. For any elite that had any hp tp speak of after the initial stun it always seemed like a gamble. Normal mobs died withing the KS, or right after, but elites were tricky with the positional requirement.

With combat you can pretty much kill anything using BF+AR+Evasion, which made certain quests much easier(and closer to the ease of questing with the other classes I've gotten to 70). As I have good weapons now I'll go combat to begin with, but with the removal of the positional requirement I won't hesitate to go back to mutilate when the opportunity presents itself.

While you do make a point and your argument is reasonable, there is a problem that will pop up.

People minmax on rogues more than any other class, that is what blizzard fails to understand. We are the class who goes and farms out 150 badges just to be able to replace a ranged slot item with a hunter weapon.

If Combat and Mutilate will be "almost up to par" Raidleaders/Classleaders will ask their rogues to use the spec for the most possible damage. It doesnt really matter if its 5% behind or 1% behind, DPS is what our job is and we will be pigeonholed into the "Best DPS Spec in WotLK".

Well, it does matter, since you won't always have the best in-slot gear, but will often have to do with second bests, or even sub-par items since the thing you're after just won't drop. This causes small emphasizes on different stats, which means that for your specific stats & gear one build may be better than the other, but at the same time, that getting a new item may pull the other build ahead again. It's a bit far-fetched to expect even from a DPS-only rogue to review and change spec after every single drop, get used to playing a new style, which might theoretically be a neglectable notch better, but practically be behind for other reasons.
DPS as you like, but while needed, control over a fight is more important than the DPS, even for a rogue.

... unless said RL needs the Savage Combat raid buff because a Combat Rogue DPS loss vs best DPS spec is less than an Arms warrior.

Blizzard has put the raid buff high in the trees to make sure that as long as the DPS differences between spec is not too large, several spec will be played in raids just for the buffs they provide.