Since they removed weapon specs from combat we will probably end with 1.3-1.4 dagger in offhand which will give us more combat potency procs if it (combat potency) remains unchanged.

With FA now somewhat merged with another talent do you think they're pigeonholing mutilate rogues back into a dual 1.80 dagger setup again since crit and haste won't be returning us the energy anymore?

Maybe, but IP and DP still prefer fast daggers. Fast daggers will certainly lose some value because of the FA change but as with my crit and haste stat question, I don't know how much their value might drop.

I might be wrong but i dont think so, with the change of deadly poison + the fact that whole assassination tree (materies) are poison oriented I would say that we will stick with fast oh, still its a bit early to say that, we might want to wait for final changes.

My post is aimed purely at how we fill in our 31 point trees, not at what we can grab from the other trees with the remaining 10 talent points. The combat tree is a good example of how assassination and subtlety should work. In combat you get to spend 18 talent points on dps talents before you are forced to take a filler talent for the first time. By the time you get to this point you can choose between 6 different filler talents. After you pick the talent you want you open up the new tier and get acces to new dps talents and the last filler talent in tree. At this point you still have 2 points to spare to decide which of the remaining filler talents you want to take before finishing up the tree with only dps talents.

I have to say I agree that the first tier in Assasination needs to be revisited since at this point I feel comfortable saying that 31/3/7 will be "the" spec for Assasination.

And that the filler is non-optional. You get four points, but two are wasted in the first tier, so you really only have two points to play with. In my mind, barring some very fight specific mechanics, that means you are choosing between Quickening (which is amazing) or possibly Improved Expose Armor if you happen to be stuck on EA duty. The other filler, while interesting, does not offer a direct dps gain the way those two do.

Which means that if you have a warrior in your guild, then you really only take Quickening. And just like that we have a cookie cutter Assasination spec. Now how it plays will be interesting, since the addition of backstab as a valid CP generator sub-35% and adding in rupture as a real finisher again, but as far as "hard choices" there are none.

Which makes those first two points even more aggravating.


Now to the question of making rogue dps more interesting/fun. Shadow priests and paladins currently have the ability to gain "power ups" in the form of shadow orbs and holy power, which they can unleash with their current abilities. Warlocks can use soul shards to power up abilities as well. Honestly I think rogue dps would be much more interesting if we had some sort of resource available to us that we could choose to apply to abilities for enhanced results.

For instance. Let's say RvS, instead of being a flat bonus to the next finisher created a stack of a buff on the rogue that the rogue would have the option to unleash in the future. That way we can tailor which ability we use depending on the situation. In an add based fight with limited time on the boss, you could use RvS on the adds in order to build power for the short time you have on the boss. Likewise for a fight like Dream, you could use RvS to build power on the small adds to save up for a better burst on the blazing skeleton (critical add).

This would allow us to view it as a valuable cp generator in its own right, but still need to make a concious choice about when to use it and when to stick with SS.

I'm going to agree with Brotherbear here.

Deadly Momentum's biggest problem can be easily seen: if this wasn't on Tier1 of Assassination, no one would ever consider taking it.

The problem currently with the Assassination spec is that you don't get to really choose your filler. You'll take Quickening, and then you'll take either Deadly Momentum or Imp Evis. Which of those you take really doesn't matter. This is tragic, too, because Assassination has some of the best utility options in any of the rogue trees. Blackjack, Imp EA, and Deadly Brew are all phenomenal talents!

But no one will take them, because they'd give up Quickening, and ... yeah.

If Deadly Momentum is someone's love child, and it absolutely has to stay in the tree, then it could simply move down to Tier 2. Switching its position with Ruthlessness solves MANY problems. Then we'd see just how great a talent DM is. We'll allow people the choice to take it, instead of forcing those first two talent points to be, essentially, wasted. And there's little as frustrating as wasted points, especially now that they're becoming a more limited resource.

Even after the buff to DM (where it refreshes both Recup and SnD), it's still too lackluster. And that is only partially because it still clashes with CttC, which has become a critical part of the Assassination tree's playstyle.

A change that could be made to the Tier 1 talents is adding a +% damage to Envenom to Improved Eviscerate. Adding the entire +30% for three points might be unbalancing, but a lower percent, like say +15% might be more manageable and would make people want to use IE without feeling like you're just wasting two points.

Don't be too hard on Deadly Momentum, when leveling or grinding out dailies it is amazing. You litterally become a mini-god of death; it may even be OP for leveling (which isn't actually OP).

Now in PvP or raiding it's more-or-less useless but keeping it in the first tier of one of the trees to help leveling does make a lot of sense. Maybe we could trade Imp Evisc with something in Combat or Sub?

Taking away or moving Ruthlessness to Tier 1 could fix some of the problems in Assassination. I think it's wierd that it's still there to be fair, cause it's not really a fun factor to raiding as the whole point of the combopoint system is to unload fully charged and lethal finishers, not wet noudles with 4 combopoints only. Only place I would miss the talent would be in PvP. Swapping Imp Eviscerate and Precision wouldn't be a bad move either.

Only 1 of 4 mutilate hits needs to crit to reach 5 combopoints between each finisher.