Given the new that Icecrown Posting Guidelines don't explicitly lock out encounter discussion, it seems appropriate to me to try to make a thread specifically dor the discussion of Rogue specific concerns, optimizations, and techniques in the new tier of content. In the past, various notes on whether to go Combat or Mutilate for a particular bossfight, or whether Feint reduces the damage of a particular ability, or whether Fan of Knives will hit Mim's head in Phase 3, etc. etc. have been scattered across half a dozen unrelated threads in this forum, much to the detriment of any raiding rogue seeking some of the more specific information that might be relevant.

Suggested topics of discussion to keep reigned in here include specific talent variations for various encounters (Deadly Brew for Saurfang, dropping poison talents for Deathwhisper?), optimal cooldown usage on various fights, or questions pertaining to those or similar subjects. Lets try to get all of that stuff out of the Simple Questions and various gear threads, because really, it's just clutter in those and belongs here. As always, the rules apply with regards to discussion of new content. Have some kind of basis for anything you propose, don't just post a link to your combat log parse of a Saurfang kill where you did 12,000 DPS as Mutilate.

On that note, I'll open the discussion with a note regarding ICC trash for those who are looking to farm it for rep, or just clear it more efficiently, who may not have noticed it: Along the corridor leading up to Lord Marrowgar, there are Spirit Alarms, visible to rogues at Medium-short range via Detect Traps. These alarms, when triggered (by proximity), will cause Deathbound Wards to activate - pulling one of these while fighting one of the larger trash packs can be troublesome - they hit hard, they cleave, and they interrupt casters. Aggroing two when you've just engaged a large pack of mobs is a recipe for a wipe for many runs.

So what to do? Well, you can Disarm them if you're not concerned with gaining reputation and just want a quick clear, or, if you want the (substantial) Ashen Verdict rep, you can toss a Smoke Flare on the trap from range, to warn your raid, and particularly your tanks, to stay away from the Alarm until other mobs are clear - using a flare does not break stealth, so you can sneak in and mark traps as your raid is dealing with the first set of mobs and just getting started with each room. Be advised that sometimes the traps spawn late, or do not spawn until others have been either activated or disarmed.

We just did the first three bosses of ICC 25 tonight, and it's pretty trivial.

Off the top of my head though:
1) Standing inside the hitbox of Marrowgar seems to prevent you getting hit by the flames during his normal phase. I believe you can still be targeted but you won't take any damage.
2) On Deathwhisper, we'd just tricks the add tanks before each spawn and throw out some FoKs on the adds to help round them up faster before blowing up the Adherents.
3) The Deathwhisper adds can be Dismantled and stunned, which can help with some of the damage and avoiding cleaves if they get spun around.

One thing worth mentioning regarding the traps is that they reactivate 1 hour after being disarmed.

Do they do that even after Marrowgar is dead, ie his thrash in general doesn't respawn anymore?

Depending on your raid composition you can easily have 2-3 people fulltime on Deathwhisper on normal mode, and that position is ideal for a mutilate rogue.

Also ToTT'ing the 2nd person (Warrior in our case for the sunders) allows them to run out safely before you break the shield which prevents accidental deaths and gives the tank a decent threat lead.

- Marrowgar's bone spike cannot be removed with KS/Vanish or Shadowmeld.
- Melee will "go down with the ship" on the gunboat battle unless they jump back over.
- Deathwhisper's adds are also susceptible to blind. We tend to put two rogues on the adherents spawning on the right for CCs while melee chew up any adherent on the left or the possible stair-spawn.

I'll edit this post when I next get a chance to run ICC but in the meantime can someone find out whether or not the spawns on Sarufang can be slowed using an application of crippling poison?

They can be. I specced Deadly Brew for our first kill, since I was running Mutilate anyway and didn't exactly need Fleet Footed for the fight. When the adds were about to spawn, I'd pool energy, Tricks the hunter that was running in to drop Frost Traps, Envenom (for application rate), and spam FoK a few times, with Thistle Tea/Overkill to get an extra FoK out. It worked pretty well, but on the whole, we found that, for normal mode, the extra slowing wasn't exactly needed.

I should be clear, I wasn't FoKing the adds until they died - it was 1-2 FoK's under the envenom buff, and back to single target, to get a quick AE Cripple up.

Yea i got that, sorry if i made some confusion. What i meant was that that 55-110 energy is better off in dps on the boss.

On the Marrowgar encounter, we had the healers and melee all stack on the rear of his hitbox. Anytime a healer or melee was impaled all the melee had to do was throw in a couple AOE's and the spike(s) would be dead. This allowed for melee to never break target on Marrowgar and killed spikes quite quickly. Whenever there was one spike the rogues could completely ignore it, and when there was two in range a FoK or two would do it.

Honestly, it seems a little silly to put a mutilate rogue on any of the physical damage adds. The majority of mutilate's damage is poison based, so it would make more sense to just have mutilate rogues on adds immune to phsyical damage. But the entire premise of this seems a little absurd, if you're a rogue and on adds it make much more sense to go combat in the first place. Keeping HfB and SnD running is quite a task when the adds drop at the rate they do, so you're losing a lot of damage just by trying to keep those up. Given the high single-target damage output of a mutilate rogue, it just doesn't make any sense to me why you would put a mutilate rogue on adds.