I ran the numbers a few page back, actually: Cataclysm Rogue Changes

With (completely unrealistic) perfect luck concerning Relentless Strikes, Seal Fate, and Ruthlessness procs, you still have around a 3% chance of failing to proc 3/5 CttC over the entire length of a talented Slice and Dice on a Patchwerk-style fight. Given that result, anything less than 4/5 means you have a very good chance of failing to proc CttC during SnD's duration, and at that point, you might as well put all five points in. These 2/5 and 3/5 builds are going to have severe issues with Slice and Dice dropping.

When reviewing the combat tree, am I to assume we are stuck with eviscerate as our only finisher?
I don't see a way to grab any rupture buffs ie.. blood splatter, and given the poor nature of rupture, I can't see ever using it over eviscerate without this additional 30% buff.

Combat seems rather mundane now compared to revamps the other two trees are getting and with no discernible rotation difference (sinister strike to 5cps, eviscerate) . Does anybody see any real change here? With the filler point requirements, we get one extra point to place in assasination tree. Restless Blades (as noted by Adrianna) seems a rather lackluster tradeoff.

If you don't have a warrior, feral druid, or a mutilate rogue specced into Imp. EA, then combat is probably your raid's best source for expose armor, so that'd be two finishers. But really, as it is current set up, combat is basically the cooldown tree.

um Slice and Dice?

Besides I thought they were putting the 30% into rupture's base. If not they may just tune it so that its worth it to use rupture and remember that you use eviscerate over rupture now cause you can stack armor penetration. When combat loses arpen on gear and they reduce the effects of expose/sunder armor rupture might jump ahead from ignoring armor alone.

But it does seem that the only thing they are adding to combat's rotation is the ability to use cooldowns more often.

I did not hear anything about them bumping up faerie fire to the 12% expose armor is going to be, where did you see that?

More specifically, as stated in this post, the datamined version of Faerie Fire and Faerie Fire (Feral) prior to Blizzard clamping down on the stuff that MMO Champion had from the alpha was as follows:


Faerie Fire (Feral)
30 yd range
6 sec cooldown
Instant cast
Requires Dire Bear Form, Bear Form, Cat Form
Decrease the armor of the target by 3 to 4% for 5 min. While affected, the target cannot stealth or turn invisible. Stacks up to 3 times. Deals AP*0.15+1 damage and additional threat when used in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.

Basically identical to the new description of Sunder as having three stacks, and with the new version of Feral Aggression present in the Cataclysm feral talent tree, feral tanks should be able to get it up in three GCDs. Much more efficient than having a rogue handle it.

The fact is I don't think such a test would be really reliable, because most stats (especially crit and haste) have degressive renders. It seems obvious that a lvl85 character with full 277 stuff may generate much less energy than a full 277 lvl 80 as well as first tier lvl85 gear may grant way less energy generation than what we currently deal with.

In fact at the beginning of Cata, there are many chances we go back to a poor energy generation, which means less finisher moves and then more chances to let SnD drop without 5/5 CttC.

PS : Sorry for my poor english, it ain't my mother language.

You are absolutely correct Saweni, but don't forget that haste will now also boost base energy regen. So although by current mechanics our bonus energy regen will go down, it will be boosted at least somewhat by this change. It's not possible to know what energy regen will be like until people hit 85 and get some raid gear, frankly, so the math regarding <5 cttc is not going to be very reliable.

My 'best' build so far after playing around with the calculator a little:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
55/10/8

Contentious Talent Rationale

Assassination
Vigour: With 5/5RS and 3/3 Murderous Intent, I'm anticipating I may risk energy capping if im not paying attention, this is in my opinion the point most likely to be redeployed elsewhere.
Blackjack: AoE is Dead, Long live CC.
Venemous Wounds: Blizzard obviously wants us to rupture in our rotation, I am assuming that this will be a good talent as opposed to assuming it will be bad, I'm hoping that the extra damage on proc will be modified by AP and will be modified by talents like vile poisons for a little more oomph.

Combat
No Agression: I have left 3 points spare which could be used here (4 if you drop vigour), however I'm currently feeling more inclined to use these for added utility or survivability for some reason this just doesn't appeal to me as a talent if it increased Mutilate damage also I would take it in a heartbeat though.
No Lightning reflexes/Blade Flurry: I don't see haste being as big a deal for Mutilate as it is for combat, I seem to recall reading somewhere that haste will no longer increase attack speed, only energy regen, this means as mutilate we would be losing the extra poison damage from haste and would not be getting the increased benefit of focused attacks through haste - modelling may well prove me to be incorrect as the raw extra energy regen may be enough to ensure that haste is still the top stat for Mutilate.

Subtlety
Nothing contraversial here.

My current instinct is to move the 3 floating points into the sub tree for added utility, most likely 2/2 dirty tricks and then drop a point into endurance for the reduced sprint and evasion cooldown and a bit more stam for survivability.

Glyph wise I'm thinking Backstab, Mutilate and Tott/Rupture/FoK/Vendetta??

This is absolutely not true. Haste would be absolutely pointless. They will no doubt tinker with the rating conversion and haste may not be as powerful as it is today because adding increased energy regen would send its value through the roof. But don't forget that haste is so valuable for mut today because we're in 277 gear; as mut gear went up, white/poison damage became the majority of its damage source and haste had its day in the spotlight, but earlier in content it was only as valuable as crit or hit.

That's not entirely true. While haste did see some improvement in value due to gear scaling, a bit part of the reason why it's better than it was at the start of the expansion is the Deadly Poison change, which will (presumably) be persisting.

Also note that agility is going to be worth well over 2 EP per point (given that it now gives 2 AP per point) so it would not be totally unreasonable if the rating stats were similarly more valuable than AP than the are now.

So far as I know (and by all means correct me if I'm wrong), energy regen from haste is *in addition to* the current attack speed increase, and not a replacement for it. That is: haste will do everything it does now, plus some extra stuff as well.