This is what I came up with for a possible cata mutilate PVE build.

54/14/8

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I don't see any path to dagger specialization without spending too much on pvp talent points.

And then this is what I was messing around with for a possible cata combat spec

22/54/0

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I had a hard time getting down to KS without looking at spending points on Recuperate or Reinforced Leather.

I just wanted to point out that there is no longer a Master of Deception talent, which could have some serious pvp implications. Furthermore, Heightened Senses no longer includes stealth detection in the talent. Though I do understand this is a first pass at the new talent trees and it's still too early to tell, I wonder what direction blizzard is heading with stealth levels and stealth detection.

Stealth is largely what separates a rogue from any other class.

The issue I see with a pure backstab build, assuming they don't buff it quite a bit over what we have currently on live, is that it'll underperform the mutilate/backstab execute builds when you're not in the execute phase (target below 35% health
). Even if we assume that both backstab and mutilate have equivalent damage per energy, by switching entirely to backstab you're giving up combo point generation (1cp for 50 energy vs. 2 cp for 55 energy (assuming we still have the Mutilate glyph)), poison damage, and if I remember correctly, energy regen from Focused Attacks. You're also losing the ability to attack bosses from the front in situations where we're forced to do that, such as Kologarn, which means we'd be stuck hitting Sinister Strike for that entire fight.

While it's really tempting to say "ooh, Blade Flurry with Mutilate must be amazing," you have to consider what you'd give up to get that one last point in Combat. Specifically, Opportunity (30% Mutilate and Backstab damage) and Relentless Strikes. Considering that you'd have to pick up 2 filler points in Combat instead, I'm just not sure Blade Flurry is that worthwhile.

Admittedly, it's very powerful. But is it that good? I guess only time (and testing, and balancing) will tell.

I can easily imagine a scenario where early in Cat where we aren't swimming in mastery we don't use Rupture because the proc is quite weak but later on we do use Rupture because Assassination poisons become buffed to the gills.

Dare I point out that increasing the value of poison damage also buffs Envenom by a significant amount? There certainly may be differences in scaling, but it seems vastly premature to try to speculate on which way the scaling will trend.

This seems conflicting though, later on when our poisons are buffed via mastery, we're going to be giving up Envenom uptime (poison damage) to Rupture (that includes some poison damage with Venomous Wounds).

What I'm hoping is that Rupture will do enough damage to warrant a desired 100% uptime, so that when energy permits, you weave in as many envenoms as possible, without a DPS loss. It will probably be hard to get used to if that's the case, because limiting envenom uptime or clipping is so frowned upon currently.

The other problem with this though, is that as poison damage increases, the value of haste for increasing poison procs increases.

I'm not sure we can rely on LR until we know how much our white damage is being reduced since Cataclysm is moving away from too much "passive damage." Whether IP procs from DP applications count as passive damage too may further reduce the value of LR. I'm not even sure if the DP change we got a while back was permament or just a band-aid fix to weapon swapping and if it will still be here come Cataclysm.

Assasination Spec Discussion

I had originally been considering that idea of taking Hemo and using it as a cp generator instead of Mutilate, but it just can't compare.

That being said, I like this spec for level 85 for Assasination, based on the following assumptions.
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1) Venomous Wounds doesn't suck (and, by extension neither does Rupture)
2) You don't have an Arms warrior or feral that loves to mangle
3) CC is kind of a big deal in the expansion.

You have 2 early filler in Assasination, which I've put into Blackjack because I think that will be incredibly powerful for accidental CC brekage. Also since the other option is the terrible Improved Eviscerate...really it's no contest.

As an aside, it's pretty clear that Improved Eviscerate is there for early leveling talent choices as well as giving combat a way to get to Lethality. I do agree that it doesn't fit well into Assasination with its envenom focus, but I don't see it going away.

The other floater point I put into Vigor, but it's probably better served in Turn the Tables. Blizz has said they want us to be using CP generators for more of our damage, so more crit on those will probably be good. On the other hand, I can see a real argument for one point in Deadly Brew, depending on how encounters are designed.

The rest is pretty much cookie cutter for the tree (really, it has too many dps talents).

Combat has the 10 direct dps increases

Subtlety already has 8 amazing dps talents, picking up two filler points to improve our CC ability (and make it less likely that we'll die trying to get into position to Sap) isn't terrible, and that gets us to Hemo.

I'm envisioning the following rotation:
Above 35% boss health:
Open with Garrote, Mutilate is the primary finishing move.
4+ CPs for Envenom (as now)
5cp for Rupture
Using Hemo to stabilize the rotation

Open with Garrote (1cp)
Mutilate (+2-3 cp = 3-4cp)
If 3cp, then Cold Blooded (for the energy and auto crit on Hemo)
Hemo (+112 cp = 4-6cp)
Rupture

After that you follow a standard 4+ envenom cycle excepting that you use Hemo to either move from 3 cps to 4-5 for an evenom, or to move from 4 to 5 cps to keep rupture up.

Sub 35% health on the boss:
Backstab
Envenom or rupture
Backstab some more
Hemo to keep the debuff up

Of course this all depends entirely on Rupture and Venomous Wounds being good enough to bring into a rotation whose mastery bonus favors Envenom spam.

Backstab sub 35%

• More GCDs required per CP == less Envenoms and Envenom Buff uptime
• Less Envenom buff uptime == less poison damage
• Less poison damage goes against the mastery for Assassination
• 15% more bonus damage to Backstab over Mutilate fully talented

Mutilate sub 35%

• More efficient CP generation
• Envenom and Envenom buff uptime will be easier == increased poison damage, synergy with Mastery for Assassination
• Only boosted 30% by Opportunity, whereas BS can be up to +15% more than Mutilate

It just seems odd to use BS to do less of one type of damage for another, a conflict of synergy. Plus, haste benefits poison damage, doesn't really change BS (aside from increased FA procs for regen for more BS's)

Um... no? The limitation of getting Envenoms off has never been GCDs, it's always the amount of energy required to get the combo points. So the fact that Backstab takes more GCDs to get the same number of combo points is, frankly, irrelevant - you have the free GCDs to use. And Backstab actually generates *more* combo points per energy, hence you get *more* Envenoms in, not fewer.

So: it does more damage per energy inherently, and more combo points per energy - hence more Envenoms per time - as well. So where is the drawback, exactly?