Some Needle-Encrusted Scorpion data from autoattacking a level 80 training dummy with two 1.10 speed daggers

Paperdoll crit : 43.87%
Fight duration: 4553 seconds
Procs: 72
Uptime: 15.88%
Shortest time between procs: 50 seconds

8277 attacks
3792 hits
3715 crits (45.8%)
454 glancing
193 miss
123 dodge

Haste and crit ratings remained same throughout the test, there were no buffs, debuffs or procs affecting them.

Tested [Whispering Fanged Skull] with Death's Verdict on a dummy. They sync up with the very first proc and consistently proc together having the same proc rate and icd.

To continue discussion about this trinket, I picked it up tonight and tested it on Saurfang: the uptime was right around 35%, which is exactly the same as Death's Verdict/Choice--I THINK this puts the AEP value of the trinket at around the mid-to-high ~500s. Someone better at math than me can, I'm sure, give a more accurate calculation, but it seems to me as though this trinket is quite good.

For cross-purpose gearing, my two justifications for gemming to favor Mutilate (AP and haste) were this:

First, on fights where dps is going to be really competitive and where I'm going to be min/maxing as much as possible, I'll probably be playing mutilate.

Second, the dps loss you'll see with combat by gemming AP and haste is probably smaller than the dps loss you'll see with Mutilate by gemming agility and hit. In fact, with a 20/51 build and very low levels of armor penetration (I.E. mutilate type gear), I've seen AP and haste come out as the best or extremely close to the best individual stats, and gotten dps estimates that were quite close to an armor pen. heavy combat build.

The major advantage of Skull relative to Verdict is that it's easier to accomodate in terms of the crit cap; having 3% crit on the item and no crit proc is a lot easier to manage than a 6.7% crit proc like H:DV - you can get by with gemming a lot less hit. Disregarding that consideration, H:Skull outpaces H:Verdict only marginally (about as much as you'd expect for a 264 trinket versus a 258). But when you consider the net effect on your gear, it's fairly clearly superior.

Additionally, it's worth keeping in mind that one needs two trinkets, and there are times when Herkuml just ain't gonna cut it; Marrowgar, for instance, strongly favors 45sec ICD proc trinkets over just about any other kind. As such, there are situations in which one can conceive of wanting to double up on Verdict and Skull - whether such is worthwhile in general is, of course, largely a function of the nature of the harder fights in Icecrown.

So, that said: of the trinkets where we have a reasonable understanding of proc mechanics, H:Skull is probably the strongest - it's at worst a sidegrade to Herkuml on sustained fights, and of significantly more general utility, and as we've discussed it has structural advantages relative to Verdict. However, it's also worth keeping in mind that there are as yet 2 trinkets where we have only limited information; while it's probably safe to assume that Deathbringer's Will is mediocre for Mutilate, it may or may not turn out to be a strong option for Combat. Tiny Abomination in a Jar, on the other hand, we know absolutely nothing about - any attempt to assess it is pure speculation at this point.

So: Skull (and H:Skull) are good. At worst they're a strong option until you can get various H25 trinkets; and it's not at all unreasonable to think that H:Skull may prove to be best in slot. But we can't really assert more than that with any certainty at this stage.

There might be a chance that [Cudgel of Furious Justice] won't be obtainable by rogues. At least the comments on WoWHead suggest that the quest to choose the mace from shows up only if your class cannot wield a sword.

I came across something extremely odd while using the spreadsheet tonight. At the moment the only yellow sockets available in my gear are [Treads of the Icewalker] and [Planestalker Signet]. I am currently gemming full ArPen with a passive 768 ArPen with Hack n Slash (I am using a ArPen Proc trinket for softcap). For some reason, when I ignore the socket bonus and insert a 20 ArPen gem into both of those sockets, my EP value for ArPen drops from roughly 2 to 1.45

However, when I choose to hit the bonus with a 20 AP - 10 Haste gem, my ArPen value remains steady. I'm fairly confident this is a mistake but if not could someone please enlighten me as to why this is happening? Thank you

EDIT: After further inspection, it seems as though with certain gem combinations, the ArPen value seems to go up and down. Going as far as 1.98 -> 1.45 from changing 1 gem from AP to ArPen.

Yes I don't quite understand it myself, as for the Needle-Encrusted Scorpion, I just substituted it for Mjolnir Runestone as the stats and proc are almost identical, only a few stats off.

Also, by replacing the ArPen proc trinket with the intent of hardcapping, the ArPen EP values remain steady. Thank you for the clarification.

Furthermore, has anyone tested the DPS differences of Hardcap ArPen gemming (Maces/HnS/CQC) vs. AP/Haste (Maces/HnS/CQC) gemming with the items available in the new content?

I picked it up on a 10-man during the day and wore it on the 25 at night which was logged here:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

The buff is called "Icy Rage". Just from inspecting it myself it looks like a clockwork 15 seconds up, 30 seconds down so 33% uptime on the proc.

Hey guys, I've just got my hands on these new spreadsheets and it's working awesome. Though I have a few questions, I just ran the new HC and got the arp trinket. [Needle-Encrusted Scorpion]. Though in the spreadsheet I cannot find this trinket, so I can't decide which to swap of my current trinkets.

Im currently running with only +245 gear and mutilatespecced with AP and ap/haste gem and a ruptureless cycle. I'm hitcapped with alot also.

The trinkets I have atm is -

[Banner of Victory]
[Pyrite Infuser]


cheers

Just use Mjolnir runestone instead, change softcap to 722 while considering your crit cap also.