Hey guys,

I have some questions about rogues. I have a rogue that has some epic gear and I'm only doing about 1500-1800 dps overall (depending on the instance or raid). My main concern is about the trash mobs dps (I do about 1.8k-2.5k on bosses). I saw here that most people spam FoK. Up to now I was doing mostly SS and Eviscerate. Is it really better to spam FoK (I assume equipping daggers is better in that case?).

Also, what are the best poisons for combat swords spec (I'm currently using a sword in MH and dagger in OH). I'm currently using two WP but I'm wondering if WP/DP would be better.

The informations in this thread are really helpful, BTW. Thanks in advance for the answers!

You should really consider equiping two Libram Paper Cutters and learning the Mutilate cycle. It will outperform combat by alot.

FOK is probably the best thing to use if there are 3 or more mobs. Daggers do more damage but any weapons will do.

Your DPS would go up if you gemmed/enchanted your gear.

What would be the best HaT spec for a level 70 (PreWrath)

I recently got two very good daggers from Naxxramas : Anarchy and Omen of Ruin. Would they make good daggers for Mutilate (better than the ones you talked about?)?

I need some advice on weapons...

I'm trying to learn how to work the spreadsheets but I find it hard to trust what it tells me. :P

I've only recently started doing Naxx 25 so I haven't had that many chances on the weapons yet.

So far i have been using MH Greed and OH LPC

I got Omen yesterday and though I'd finally got an upgrade, but it keeps telling me to use LPC.

Should I keep that combination or am I missing something? The weapons I have to choose from so far are;

[Greed] [Grasscutter] [Torment of the Banished] [The Fleshshaper] and [Omen of Ruin]

If I am to stay combat with either CqC or CqC + Sword spec, I've never tried mutilate.

Greed+LPC (A fast offhand currently provides more Combat Potency procs as well as more wound poison procs).

Post-Patch it's hard to say, but you might be better off with Greed/Omen of Ruin.

However as always, I suggest you use the spreadsheet since it is quite reliable and trustworthy.

Garrote uses 7% of your AP at the time of application, along with multipliers based on what talents you have.

Unless you are raiding at 70, which I doubt at this point, I would highly advice not using a HaT spec.

I currently use OoR/Anarchy with my Mutilate spec. Omen is MH, Anarchy OH, with IP/DP. You should note, however, that Anarchy was a very minor upgrade over LPC. This may vary for you depending on your gear, and you should use a spreadsheet to determine the best setup for you.

When 3.1 comes out (next week?), you'll want to move Anarchy to your MH because of the change to poison mechanics.

Let me preface this by saying I love my rogue. He is my alt (or was), but I decided to bring him up to 80 before my warrior. I've taken my time getting to 80, and did several instances along the way (all of them except Oculus, most several times). In most cases, my DPS would outperform everyone in my instance group, except maybe the odd DK here and there.

So, fast forward a bit. I hit 80, equipped 2 Librarian's Paper Cutters I had picked up cheap on the AH, and re-spec'd Mutilate. I jumped in my first Heroic last night (HoL)... and was underwhelmed.

My overall DPS was 3rd (above the healer and DK tank). Around 1050-1100. Boss DPS was around 1150-1200. Overall damage done, I was last, by a significant margin (I forget the total).

I realize a few things. First, I have a total of 3 gems, and really no enchants. I wasn't planning to spend money on that until I get some decent Heroic ups. Second, I have never touched Mutilate before last night, so I need to get used to that cycle. I leveled using CQC, 15/51/5. Let me just say, I'm not loving Mutilate. Not only do I have to keep track of SnD (which is shorter thanks to no Improved SnD) and Rupture, but also HfB and poison stacks. It's like a cooldown mangement mini-game.

I guess my question is... Is the DPS I described typical for where I stand gear-wise? I was putting out ~1500 as combat (granted, in non-Heroics).

Here is my Armory link:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Itemization is very important for Rogues, I would first look at proper enchants on your gear. All of your gear is missing enchants besides your gloves, which are mis-enchanted. That should help your stats a little more, however if you do not like the Mutilate rotations then you might as well stay combat at this point. The two specs are very close in terms of DPS once 3.1 deploys, each having their own advantages in different situations.

Mutilate IMO requires more attention than combat, some people like this type of play-style, while others like the more forgiving combat spec. Its really personal preference once 3.1 is out, which should be soon.

Take a good look on the pocket guide for help with your enchants and rotations.

Any big AoE pull we do with my guild, I usually manage to top DPS by a decent lead. Granted I'm Mute spec so I use daggers, weapon difference shouldnt make a huge difference. For Naxx-25 I can break 35k DPS when we pull the entire Grand-Widow room (5 encounters). With TotT up the tanks never loose a mob, then its just fun to watch the healers get stressed. Most of the trash fights in spider I average 15-20k dps... FoK spam is the way go if there are more than 3 mobs up. So have fun FoKing

Another thing to note is that currently, Mutilate seems to perform poorly in low-gear situations.

There seems to be a breakpoint in gearing where maintaining a smooth cycle becomes much easier. At a guess, once you've achieve about 30% crit, you'll find that your cycle becomes much easier to maintain, as you're spending less energy Mutilating and more energy on finishers. If I recall correctly, Mutilate also has trouble performing well when you first jump into 5-man content...the extra buffs you get in 10 or 25-man raiding help out with some of the gear deficiencies.

Additionally, if you haven't played Mutilate at all, it does take some adjustment. If you let HfB drop, you lose a big chunk of damage. If you are forced to switch targets a lot (trash) or spend time off the boss and need to restart SnD, you'll lose some more damage.

Maintaining SnD shouldn't really be a problem, since Cut to the Chase keeps it up, assuming your cycle doesn't get totally wrecked.

This sounds encouraging, if not exactly great news. I know my cylce was definitely not as smooth as in Combat. Mutilate should be more efficient (2 combo points for 60 energy vs. 1 for 40 with Imp. SS), but there were many times where I'd end up with 4 CPs quickly. Then it's like... well, might as well pop a finisher intead of wasting a point. Plus the CP generation wasn't as smooth.

There was also a good bit of time off target, in which Mutilate seems to suffer more than Combat. FoK was equally underwhelming. Granted, there weren't many LARGE trash pulls. Most groups are 3-4. It almost seemed like a wash betweej FoK spam and just going with Mutilate/finishers.

Based on what I'm seeing maybe I'll go back to Combat until I gear up a bit. Then again, by then Combat may be wirth sticking with anyway, in 3.1.

Okay, not too simple a question, but I have seven weapons and no idea which to use and what spec to go, I don't like Mutilate a lot, so I'd like to try and avoid that, here are the weapons I have:

Silent Crusader,
Sinister Revenge,
Angry Dread,
Hand of Nerub,
Hatestrike,
Rolfsen's Ripper,
Torment of the Banished

Yeah, I'm the only rogue in my guild, so I seem to gorge myself on weapons. So basically my options are HaT or a variant of Combat specs, which two do I choose? I've heard that Silent Crusader is the best MH sword ingame, but I've also heard that Sinister Revenge is one of the best daggers only second to Webbed Death.

If I do go combat with the two weapons, do I go for CQC or Sword Spec? Of course this depends on which ones I use, but there's a lot of debate as to which is more worth it.

And my second question, I have the crossbow Drake-Mounted Crossbow, I've looked up other ranged weapons but as far as I can see, the improvement on any of them is so minor it's not worth spending my EPGPs on them, which is the distribution system my guild uses. Should I bother going for any other ranged weapon? Or take something more rogue-worthy, suchas a thrown weapon?

Thanks :]
Syn

P.S. My armory hasn't updated if anyone's thinking of checking it, I have several new pieces of gear so it should be discluded at this point. I am currently HaT specced and using Silent Crusader/Sinister Revenge

Quick question on HAT, what are the classes/specs that will benefit me the most in my group? I am trying to figure out if I can put together a group do this well. I know that classes with pets are good because of the crits from pets pets help as well, but is a Survival Hunter better than Marksman? Is an Affliction lock better than a Destro? I apologize if this has been answered before. .

Also, is there a certain crit rate I should look for as a baseline?

If anyone even has a link to where this has been answered it would be very appreciated

I sort of agree, in that I don't think the usual IP/DP/envenom raid spec works very well when undergeared. But there are other specs that work better in those low gear situations.

When I first hit 80 I was not trying to run the usual Mutilate raid spec, it always underwhelmed me at that gear level. Instead I levelled to 80 and did heroics for a while using an eviscerate spec with dual wound poison. This always felt like it worked a lot better. In late november I started hitting heroics in quest blues, I think I started out at around 1700-1800 dps on heroic bosses and went up from there, and was pretty much always top dps in any group at that time. But trying a IP/DP/envenom spec always felt horrible comparatively until I started reaching about 2200-2300 dps on heroic boss fights. It was around then that the usual raid spec finally started to feel that it was working better.

So, Kanan, I might recommend to you that you try fiddling with your mutilate spec to support eviscerate/WP/WP for a while until you gear up more from heroics. Instead of putting points in improved poisons, put them into improved eviscerate and get the evis glyph. Also, at this point you don't need to go all out for dps. Make sure you stick 1 or even 2 points into Improved SnD, it just makes it a whole lot easier to keep SnD up while you're getting used to the spec.

Well, I don't have Wrath, so I'm doing a lot of dungeons and raids to get some gear. I decided upon 7-0-54. Anyone have opinions on this build? It's as creative as I'd like to get, since I've always been 0-0-61. Well, it's also mostly for doing PVP, as well...

I'm sure it's been asked to death, but with the changes to 3.1 Assassination, which of these weapon sets would be better for PvE DPS?

[Librarian's Paper Cutter] x2
or
[Anarchy][Knife of Incision]

Or in general: Will Slow/Slow, Slow/Fast, or Fast/Fast be the end-all-be-all for Mutilate in the future?

Speccing combat after weeks of mutilate, I'm not sure if I'm getting the rotation right. Granted my experiences have all been on test dummies, so in a raid situation I'm sure CP generation will be faster, but I'm having a hard time keeping up rupture. Is there more downtime of rupture for combat than the near 100% uptime for mutilate?

I've tried 3s/5r/5e and had a substantial downtime of rupture, a little bit less of the downtime running 2s/5r/4e.

Edit: Zelkiiro - just a while ago on the PTR running cookie mutilate with master poisoner, over 3.5 million damage for each I got 3116 dps with WD/WD and 3200 dps with Anarchy/WD. So my evidence supports slow/fast and the idea that with PPM poisons slow MH will be better.

Try eliminating Eviscerate/Envenom from the cycle... or using it only when SnD has +12 ticks left, and Rupture has +6 ticks...

I won't lie -- and this may betray the fact that I am a crappy newb, but I often times get Rupture up with 1 to 3 CPs... just as long as its active... ya know?

Good luck!

So has there been any real determination on whether 51/13/7 or 51/18/2 will be better for mutilate come tommorrow? The later would probably help smooth out the rotation, but the energy gain from RS makes me hesitant to believe it. I'm not too confident in the spreadsheets ATM because they don't always take into account how smoothing out rotations improves DPS and I'm wondering if anyone here has tested this on the PTR?