it is the proc of your trinket...

The PTR with 4.x is available now. It basically includes only the new game mechanics like talent trees and item stats and misses all those new shiny graphics. But as real theorycrafters we didn't really care about those anyway, now did we?

Just need that character copy to get to work.

I tested tricks today on the PTR (Not Beta). The tooltip in PTR reflects Beta but from all of my testing works exactly the same as in Wrath. I had a hunter help me out with some mobs below dalaran. I was able to use Omen.

#1. Hunter auto shot x1. Tricks, Mut + White swingx2. Hunter held the mob and there was no change in his threat after 30sec (I did however gain 300 threat after the 6 sec was up, tiny compared to his 6k though)

#2. Tricks a mob to the hunter (This mob was a spellcaster so no parries or anything). Mut + white swingx2. Same result, hunter retained the mob and all threat (he just stood there, no auto shots) and I only gained 300 after the 6 sec.

Edit: Something that might matter, my timing of 30sec was based on the Tricks CD. I may or may not have waited 36sec to see a result (if it indeed is 30sec after the 6 sec)

Well, assuming that it is actually 30 secs after initial application of tricks (and not 36), and assuming that tricks is working correctly according to the tooltip (and not applying permanent threat), this would suggest that the threat simply disappears rather than goes back to the rogue. This is good, since it would make it more useful than if it went back to the rogue.

Without doing any in-depth analysis at all: currently all stats save ArPen have EP around 2. With the removal of AP as a stat, our AP will go down quite a bit, which will lower the value of most of our rating stats. Meanwhile, Agi will be significantly boosted by the fact that it will now give 2 AP instead of 1. Hence, the value of Agi will go up, the value of (almost) all other stats will go down, and they're starting from roughly the same place; hence, it would surprise me greatly if Agi doesn't wind up being the go-to stat for rogues.

The one complication is that haste is being buffed by the energy regen change as well; hence, it's totally plausible that it will remain a viable stat. That said, cursory napkinmath indicates it won't increase nearly as much as the value of Agility, and, as such, odds are good that it's limited to, at most, our best yellow stat.

The problem with yellow stats, of course, is that with all that agi, our crit might increase enough to make the hit cap an issue. So it's possible we'll be stuck with socketing Hit to raise the cap instead.

In short: I anticipate us socketing mostly agi with a bit of hit or haste in yellow sockets. More detailed numbers will need to be run to be sure, but as 4.0 is going to be a relatively short period of noncompetitive raiding, I'm somewhat disinclined to spend too much time disecting the exact numbers.

I wouldn't bother with it in the least. We're looking at a roughly 2 week period (maybe three) where it might be applicable and most people will be struggling with new mechanics enough to negate any gem'ing/gearing advantage. I think that what you've stated there that Agility is the go-to as long as you're not crit-capping is all that's needed. And when Cataclysm hits all that gear and work would be rendered useless in just a couple days as the population levels. Formulas for crit capping are back in the spreadsheet thread for those that need to worry about it.

Since you indirectly approached one of my bullets on the list I made some time ago, I'd be interested in a slightly more detailed discussion on it. Namely. how are some stats going to keep up relative to other stats with all of these changes? Like I pointed out on the list, crit is the largest suspect here. Agi is already good and it's getting much better. Haste is already good and it's getting a bit better. Mastery is assumed to be balanced to be at least competitive, so that's not really an issue, but how does crit keep up? There's always the obvious answer of bumping up lethality until crit becomes a competitive stat for us, but what are the other solutions that don't exacerbate the problem with other stats already being "good enough"? Is there one? I can't think of any other solution off-hand that would raise the value of crit without raising something else as well (other than directly changing our crit multiplier ala lethality).

Unless I'm missing something pretty fundamental here, it seems like crit is set up from the get-go to be our junk stat.

I remember reading something regarding changes to socket colours... specifically, hit and expertise being blue stats instead of yellow.

Not sure if that change will occur retroactively, or just for cataclysm, or if they changed their minds on that, though.

Also, since Agi is increases AP, it's likely the amount of crit we get from it will be much less, so crit capping shouldn't really be a problem?

I think it's somewhat inevitable that the stats are not going to be as close in quality in Cata as they are currently for Combat (neglecting ArPen). The fact that most stats have EP values within 10% of each other is, frankly, almost unprecedented in the history of the game. If you look at other classes, for instance, it's quite common to have massive differences in quality between the best stats and the worst stats - for a while the EP value of Strength for DKs was something like 6 times that of Haste. The gap has narrowed somewhat, but it's still the case that some stats are clearly quite a bit better than others.

So in terms of any particular stat - crit in this example - yeah, it might not be as good, and from an overall balance perspective, that's probably okay. The only concern would be if there's some stylistic reason why that particular stat should be good for us - and I don't think that's true of crit. Rogues are generally defined more by hitting a lot than hitting hard, so I'm fine with crit as a stat being a little less essential.

Thus, the only problem to keep in mind is the overall scaling of the class - in general, classes with more good stats tend to scale better than classes with fewer good stats. So while it's okay to have a few mediocre stats, if you start to have too many it becomes a problem. I don't think the class as a whole is necessary in trouble in this respect yet, but its something we need to keep an eye on - particularly for Mutilate. With so much of the specs damage coming from poison, which scales poorly with crit and doesn't full utilize agility, coupled with the reduction in importance of weapon damage (and particularly OH weapon damage)...its conceivable that there's a problem there. It's just hard to say for sure at this stage.

About Mutilate (or rather poison in gerneral) having questionable potential for scaling, is it conceivable that Blizzard is under the impression that with ArP being removed from the game (at least from gear) they are expecting the scaling of Combat to be held more in check by boss armor in Cataclysm (which I believe increases the same way the miss chance will) than it was in WotLK?

Close, but not quite. Hit is blue; expertise, however, remains red. Having a decent blue stat now, though, means it might be worthwhile to gem Glinting Dreadstones (10 Agi/10 Hit) in our blue gem slots for the socket bonus.