Does spellpower increase the damage done by poisons? If so, the new Fish Feast coming out may be our best possible buff food.

I don't believe so. Been changed to scale with AP. And fish feast gives 80 AP regardless.

Quick test on the dummies in IF suggests spellpower has no effect on poison damage. I only tested spellpower food though, and only over ~100 poison procs, so it's not conclusive. I *did* see a difference from using AP food though. Guess I could go buy a set of spellpower greens and give it a proper test if people think it's worth it.

I know Combat/Backstab is not the optimal build at the moment. Nevertheless, I was hoping to get some info on how best to fill out the talents, considering that a Backstab build can't really get all that it would want.

This is as far as I can get and still feel confident:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The primary remaining candidates are:
Ruthlessness
Vile Poisons
Prey on the Weak
Relentless Strikes
Killing Spree

Point for point, how would those talents be ranked for a Backstab build? My feeling is that due to the lower frequency of Finishing Moves, Relentless Strikes and Ruthlessness would not be worth as much as for other builds. Also, the high amount of poison damage we get these days makes Vile Poisons seem very appealing.

Another related question: would there be an particular benefit or drawback to using a fist offhand rather than a dagger offhand?

Edit:

Everything I've read indicates that Rogues are just like DKs in that all of our abilities scale only with Attack Power, despite the fact that some abilities use the spell hit cap in their result calculation.

Off the top of my head, I'd say that 13/51/7 probably would be the best DPS for a CD build. You without a doubt want Prey on the Weak, since the majority of your Backstabs will crit. Relentless Strikes, point for point, is still probably one of the best choices, and I'd think 5/5 in that and 3/5 Lethality is better than 5/5 Lethality and 3/5 RS.

Something like: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'm not sure Blood Splatter would even be that great for the build, because you are most likely going to have a pretty low Rupture uptime, as it will take maybe ~20s to get to 5 CPs, which means cycle-wise you're probably looking at something like a 40-50% uptime. However there really aren't any other good choices, and as you said Ruthlessness may be questionable given how infrequently you would be doing finishers.

A fellow rogue told me that some new information has been released stating that slow MH is now > fast MH for mut PVE dps. Is this true? Or should I still aim for 2 webbed?

Well, as far as weapon speed goes, a fast MH is > a slow MH, given equal DPS/stats/etc. If the choice was between, say, Twilight Mist and Webbed Death, Webbed Death would be the clear winner.

Sinister Revenge versus Webbed Death is rather tricky, as Sinister Revenge is a whole tier ahead of Webbed Death (13 itemlevels); a consensus wasn't reached yet, but at this point, my money is on Webbed Death.

Ok well atm I am MH Sinister Death and OH LPC, but hoping for a Webbed drop tonight. Or even murder.. But if webbed dropped then its better in the OH than running a MH Webbed OH Sinister right?

First, I'm pretty sure an OH LPC is better than an OH Murder.

As for your second question, absolutely you want your faster dagger in the OH, with Instant Poison on it. This is to take advantage of the 2x OH poison proc chance you get when you Mutilate.

As for MH SR vs MH WD, to be honest I'd recommend picking up an SR if it drops anyways, because it's not like any other class would really want to use it (other than wasting it on a Hunter). Even if a WD MH is better, I have a hard time believing it's any more than a ~20 DPS difference @ 5k+ DPS (contrary to the ~40-50 DPS IIRC from Aldriana's sheet), and MH SR is inargubaly better for solo/PvP etc, compared to a MH WD.

This is from a specifically PVE perspective as I already have a Sinister Revent / Twilight Mist for PVP.

Hypothetically, let's say I just got a webbed death. Would I be better running SR/WD or WD/SR?

I ask because SPanther says that

MH:
1. WD
2. SR

OH:
1. WD
2. Murder
3. DG Shiv
4. LPC

And what in this list suggest you to put SR into offhand? Of course SR/WD is best combo (at least until 226 ilvl fast dagger is introduced, with decent stats on it). And even if WD/WD might be slighty better on bosses - take a look at previous page discussion about dealing with trash - slower daggers are preferred in the area of burst damage and FoK.

I currently face a problem where I actually have too much energy from time to time because of the Rupture "bug" while raiding as mutilate. Even though this is pretty situational, it still tends to happen quite often so it has started to bug me off a bit. Scenario is roughly as follows:

Rupture is up and running with plenty of ticks left, I have also refreshed HoB and SnD recently. I've gotten a Ruthlessness proc from the last Envenom and good Mutilate after it so I'm back at 4 combos again. Now I have plenty of time at this point to pool energy. Problem comes when the energy bar is getting full. Usually at this point my Rupture has 4-6 seconds left so I would consider refreshing it BUT if my last one has been either 5cp or done with temporarily increased AP, it's not possible use Rupture again before the old one has ran out.

I know using Shiv is baaaad but is there any point in this rare occasion to use it anyway or is waiting for the Rupture to run out a reasonable option? I'm guessing Envenom is probably the way to go but it might probably drop off my Rupture soon after but the extra poison procs and refreshed SnD from Envenom should cover the few lost Rupture ticks?

first off, these moments are a perfect time to use Tricks of the Trade.

Second, the optimal solution is to envenom - there is no 'rule' that you should only envenom when slice and dice is running down. You should envenom as often as possible in between ruptures.

Well, it depends on how much time left you have on Rupture, how much energy you have, and how much energy you expect to gain in the meantime. Sometimes, it might be better to refresh your HfB even if it has 7~ seconds left, other times, you'd rather Envenom. There are no rules set in stone for Mutilate, and as far as I can say, the worst choice would be letting your energy cap.

Though, using 2-3 Envenoms in one Rupture cycle is very possible and will happen, and as you get used to the spec, you will definitely "feel" when you want to Envenom, refresh HfB or just wait for Rupture to expire.

I'd say that as long as you have about 5 seconds of rupture left and you have just refreshed both SnD and HfB, you may just re-Mutilate, even if it means CP waste. It seems better to waste CP than energy and to have clear rotation maintained, but I haven't done any testing on this, because such situations, although happen, are too unpredictable for me to test.

What's the problem with letting Rupture drop for some seconds? You will never be able to sustain a 100% Rupture uptime.

In your scenario I'd rather just throw in another Envenom. If you are energy capped or close to being so, this will bring you to ~80-90 energy. Now you can easily mutilate once or twice - depending on wether Ruthlessness procs or not - during the next 5 seconds and reapply a 4 or 5 CP Rupture.

I think it just means scroll buffs will just be inactive if a superior buff is present. I assume people were complaining that a 30 minute scroll buff was getting overwritten by a 2 minute raid buff.

They already do stack with MotW just not with the singlestat buffs.

As songster has shown in the newest release of the 3.0.8 patch notes, mutilate will no longer have a double chance to proc the OH poison. This means that we will once again be putting the fast dagger in our MH with IP (finishers count as a MH attack and have a chance to proc MH poison) and the slower dagger in the OH with DP.

What about deadly and envenom then?

Deadly will go on the OH and you can envenom as normal. There shouldn't be any change to dps with this.

Then why do it?

The DPS potential is slightly higher when having your fastest weapon in the mainhand with IP and offhanding whatever else you have with DP, this is done to ensure the highest amount of instant poison applications as the mainhand is used for finishers and that too has a chance too proc instant poison.