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The details below are courtesy of http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t54257-3_3_rogue_faq_if_youre_new_ish_here_read_before_posting_updated_12_6_09_a/

Also see http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t39136-combat_mutilate_spreadsheets_updated_3_3_a/ for the latest spreadsheets.

3.3 Rogue FAQ (If you're new-ish here, read this before posting) - Updated 12/6/09
I figured I'd perform a service for the community and compile an list of the most common questions that people seem to be having regarding the patch. Also because I'm tired of reading the same stupid stuff over and over.

Note that, because the answers are now compiled in an easily-found location, anyone who asks a question answered herein will now get an extra infraction point for being stupid. And, if you're so foolish as to do so during patch week, I'm going to add 2 more for wasting my time. So yes, asking anything explicitly answered here during patch week is 4 points. You have been warned.

I'm generally not going to provide the full reasoning behind these answers, either; if you wish to know the reasons, rest assured that the discussions are out there, and, as such, you should search for them rather than asking. I'm not going to have a lot of patience for that, either. Also, as a global caveat, the answer is to most of these questions can be summarized as "use the spreadsheet(s)". If, however, you can't or won't use the spreadsheet, these are some rough guidelines to get you pointed in the correct direction.

So, without further ado, the 3.3 Rogue FAQ:

Mutilate

Q: What's the highest-DPS Mutilate spec?
A: In general, some close variant of 51/18/2. The only points that are really negotiable are the ones in Fleet Footed.

Q: Why Fleet Footed, then?
A: Run speed is handy. And since the preferred cycle is Envenom-only, you don't need Blood Spatter, so there really isn't anything in the way of DPS talents to take. The main reason I'd consider doing otherwise is if you mostly run 10 mans and below where you don't have anyone to keep up bleeds for you for purposes of HFB. In this case, I can see sticking with Blood Spatter.

Q: Why Glyph of Tricks of the Trade?
A: Similar logic. Save the circumstances dictated above, we don't need Glyph of Rupture anymore, and there really aren't any other glyphs that boost single-target DPS. The other notable option would be Glyph of FoK.

Q: Fast weapons or slow weapons?
A: Fast OH. Totally irrelevant in the MH, as near as I can tell.

Q: Which stats are good for Mutilate?
A: AP, Hit, and Haste are the big 3; ArPen is generally to be avoided. As a general rule, your goal is to socket and enchant AP/Haste; however, Mutilate tends to have a *lot* of trouble with the white crit cap, so it's very common to need to stack Hit - sometimes quite severely - in order to raise your crit cap. It also tends to be quite important to make the spell hit cap (as close to half of your DPS is from poisons these days), so at the very least you probably want to socket for that. Socketing Expertise up to the cap is also generally advisable.

Q: What's the recommended cycle for Mutilate?
A: 4+ Envenom seems generally strongest. Keep HFB up, SnD at the beginning of the fight, go nuts with Envenom.

Combat

Q: What's the highest DPS Combat spec?
A: Typically, 20/51/0.

Q: What's the deal with 4/5 Improved and 1/5 Vile?
A: That's what usually comes out on top in existing modeling. Feel free to check a spreadsheet to verify that that's correct for you.

Q: Which glyph should I drop if I want GoFoK or GoTotT?
A: Eviscerate. Sinister Strike and Killing Spree are both huge DPS increases - Eviscerate is relatively minor by comparison.

Q: Which weapon spec is best?
A: As a general rule, Hack and Slash. Mace spec appears to still be lacking in viable OHs, and CQC tends to have trouble with the crit cap. This is not to say that you can't put together a viable weapon setup with Maces or Fist/Dagger; it's simply that it's harder.

Q: What should I look for in weapons?
A: For a MH, you want something slow (2.5-2.7) and as high-DPS as possible - DPS matters more than speed. For an OH, you want something as fast as possible - 1.4 is best, and failing that 1.5. Since two-weapon specs are basically dead, you thus want two weapons of the same specialization that satisfy this as well as possible - until you get to the point where MH Maces just take over. For more information, see your local friendly spreadsheet.

Q: Which stats are good for combat?
A: Combat doesn't really have any notably strong or weak stats. At high gear levels ArPen stacking towards the hardcap tends to be strong, but that doesn't appear to be true for everyone. As the crit cap tends to be an issue for combat, Hit is fairly useful and crit/agi a bit weaker than was historically true. In the absence of crit-cap issues, the best yellow stat is generally Haste.

Q: What's the recommended cycle for combat?
A: SnD if it's about to drop, 5pt Eviscerates otherwise.

Other specs

Q: Is combat daggers viable?
A: No.

Q: Really? But my friend told me it's good, and...
A: Still no.

Q: Okay, what about HAT?
A: Nope.

Q: But what about the 4/5 T10? Doesn't that make it viable again?
A: Nope.

Q: You're no fun.
A: That's not a question. But, sorry.

General
Q: Okay, which of those specs does the most damage?
A: Mutilate. Mutilate, mutilate, mutilate, mutilate, mutilate. It's, frankly, kinda stupidly good right now - current estimates put it as much as 15-20% ahead of Combat at the same gear level. If there's a fight where you absolutely need the cooldowns from Combat, it's not totally ridiculous to do so - Combat *did* get buffed since 3.2, meaning it's likely to continue to stack up very well against other classes. It's just that Mutilate is really, really, really good right now. One might reasonably expect it to get nerfed at some point.

Q: How good are the T9 set bonuses?
A: Given that we're dropping rupture from all our cycles, the 2/5 pretty much sucks. And the 4/5 ain't great either - it's not totally useless, but it's certainly much weaker than the T7 or T8 4/5 bonus.

Q: How good are the T10 set bonuses?
A: The 2/5 is *awesome*. It's certainly the strongest 2-piece we've had since at least T6, if not ever. Whatever else happens gearwise, there is no question that you want the 2-piece bonus, regardless of spec. The 4-piece is pretty weak as combat, and sort of middling as Mutilate; whether it's worth bothering with is going to be largely a function of what other options are out there.

Q: But I tested on a target dummy and got different answers! WTF!?
A: Was the target dummy fully raid debuffed, and you fully raid buffed? Did you perform multiple trials totaling at least an hour to reduce variance? I didn't think so. That's why you got different answers.

Q: Which poisons should I use?
A: MH Instant, OH Deadly. Period. End of discussion.

Q: What's this crit cap thing you keep talking about?
A: Based on your current miss and dodged rates, there is a limit on how much your white attacks can theoretically crit. With the low amount of hit on 3.3 pieces, it turns out that this become an issue for us - particularly if you're using a trinket that gives a boost to your crit rate (Death's Verdict/Choice, Dark Matter, Darkmoon Card). The exact mechanics are complicated, but, as a general rule, if you're crit capped, the solution is to try to trade out crit and agility for hit on gear. I highly recommend consulting a spreadsheet in this case - there really *isn't* an easy way to tell whether this is an issue for you or not just by looking.

Q: Are the Onyxia weapons any good?
A: In a word? No. They're roughly comparable to more conventional stated-weapons about one tier lower. So if you have, say, an ilvl 245 weapon from ToC, and a 245 weapon from Ony, the one from ToC will be quite a bit better.

If you have comments/questions/corrections/things to add/whatever, feel free to let me know. But if you're wrong or obviously stupid, I will make fun of you, so please try to make sure you know what you're talking about before making such suggestions.

6/2/09: Combat answers adjusted to reflect the implementation of an ArPen cap.
6/20/09: Mutilate spec recommendation adjusted based on updated theorycraft.
8/20/09: Miscellaneous updates.
12/06/09: Updated for 3.3.

ppl will allways have theyr own vision on things and am gonne stick with mine i guess after reading this

Example - Muti does not 'need' a fast offhand weapon, muti hits with both weps and as long as u have the 50% more dmg skill in the first tier of combat this does not realy matter seeing muti is our main damaging move..

Ive been using 1.80 on both my weps and in the last encounter at ICC if u have looked at the DPS meter u will know what i mean

This is also from EJ:-

The other interesting thing to note that I want to mention is the effect on weapon speed that these changes have. Basically, the changes make a fast OH a *lot* more important - slow OHs are no longer even remotely viable. The reasons for this are reasonably obvious. What's perhaps less obvious is that it also increases the advantage of a fast MH. Let's take a moment to think about why this is.

Weapon speed has always been a balance between Mutilate damage and Focused Attacks regen. Historically, the balance on this has been tipped slightly in favor of a slow MH - that is, you gained slightly more damage to your Mutilates from a slow weapon than you lose from having less FA procs. However, with the poison change, we're less reliant on the direct damage from the Mutilates, and significantly more reliant on the number of Envenoms we get off - which is coupled to the number of Focused Attacks proc we get. Hence, fast weapons become relatively more advantageous.

The net effect of this, as near as I can tell, is that weapon speed is almost completely irrelevant for MH weapons - weapon quality is now primarily a game of DPS and stats for the MH. And, quite frankly, even the weapon damage isn't as important as you might think - I've found gear sets where Heroic Twin Spike outperforms Rib Spreader, due to having a more advantageous stat distribution for purposes of not getting hosed by the crit cap. Higher ilvl weapons are of course still generally good due to having more stats on them in addition to more DPS, but I suspect we'll be paying a lot more attention to stat distribution on MH weapons than we historically have.


I see a lot of the top guys using two 1.4 speed weapons - the two Steel Bladebreakers for example - the thing with the EJ mob, or so they tell us, is they have spent thousands of hours testing, thoerycrafting etc - so I'll defo be trying MUT out next week, will try slow MH and fast OH then two fast weapons just to see. I've just seen they have nerfed HfB a little now as well......I'm no expert Styles but why don't you sign up to EJ and ask a question or two yourself - I have in the past and they are pretty good. Check post 1849 for the Mut spreadsheet.

Cheers

True mate, am no expert either, its jst the experiences ive had with this spec and weapons, ive been in Assassination for as long as i can remember and am only using the things i know / have experienced to optimise my build and dps output.
Then again i dont have access to the range of weps and gear they can use probably for theyr theorycrafting so thats not a bad idea from you mate, ill sign up there and try and compare my theory's to theyrs and see what he has to say about it

But still mate, there is an old saying wich comes in use for this discussion; "There are more ways that lead to rome" yours, His and my theory might not all be the same, but that doesent mean one is wrong or right i do agree with u they probably have spent allot more time then one of us on theyr theory's so it would be wise to chek it out! So am gonne take ur tip srsly and sign up there and see what comes out!

Ty

"There are more ways that lead to rome"

Trufax and I agreed with you totally - I always like to try shizzle out myself and get confused by some of the changes etc - I guess its all about enjoying the fights rather than obsessing about dps, gear upgrades, gemming, regeming, making a mistake when regeming and having to regem again only to find you don't have the gems

Anyway - I'm off to.......yes.......re gem

Scubadiver wrote: I guess its all about enjoying the fights rather than obsessing about dps, gear upgrades

Yes!

And Gl with ur re-gemming (have u finally woken up and gone muti? )

Stylesz wrote:

Scubadiver wrote: I guess its all about enjoying the fights rather than obsessing about dps, gear upgrades

Yes!

And Gl with ur re-gemming (have u finally woken up and gone muti? )

yes off spec atm - we have paradar so don't need me

Yes we do need you and YEEEEEY am not the only muti anymore

Awesome, wiht all the combat rogues gone i got dips on slow weapons

"There are more ways that lead to rome"

yeh, theres the silly way, and theres the right way ^^

Fivedollah wrote:

"There are more ways that lead to rome"

yeh, theres the silly way, and theres the right way ^^

Still both get u in Rome though :>