More posts from that thread, addressing a bit about the fast dagger mutilate "problem": http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10971863142&sid=20...

Basically something they wanna revisit cause they don't wanna nerf rogue dps overall.

Changing Mutilate (or dagger itemization) to beef up slow daggers a little would be nice. The way we'd do that though would probably be to mess with poison procs, which risks being a nerf to rogue dps overall, so that's not something we're comfortable doing at this stage. We think you're still cool using a high dps slow OH dagger, so you shouldn't always be in the situation of sharding any slow daggers. Long-term it's something we'd like to revisit though.

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Well I guess we'll all be in Blade Twisting for Wrath. So I guess it makes the combat spec just a little bit more pvp "viable". (design goal was to make trees viable in pvp and pve)

Maybe there's more, the new patch notes just came up and this was all that appears to be in it. Maybe more undocumented stuff or glyph or something changed.

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More beta changes today, nothing really for dps, some pvp'ish buffs:

Combat
* Blade Twisting - Your damaging melee attacks have a 10% chance to Daze the target for 8 sec. Up from 4 sec.

Subtlety
* Enveloping Shadows - Reduces the damage taken by area of effect attacks by 10/20/30%. Up from 5/10/15%.

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Was on the same page with you saedo. Now it doesn't seem like a buff since they said months ago they want rogues to be able to sap almost anything.

I'm leaning more towards the rogue. Hunter I'd be kinda limited to PvE since they seem to not want to fix/address the arena problems they face.

Abuse sap in pvp eh....no rogues would never abuse CC and lock down classes in PvP.

I've never done it on Callide at all. . . All rogues are perfect angels

"--Many class changes. You won't like the ones made
to your own class but you'll think the changes made to the 9 other
classes are all overpowered." ~Tigole, Blizzard CM

Yeah, read that right before coming on here. Honestly, seems like they don't know what the fuck they are doing yet. Just that they want to do something. I guess thats cool.

No hunter eg Ag?

Still a promise to change Lightning Reflexes so it ain't over yet: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10539069803&postId...

LR could definitely use improvement, but no change in this build.

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New beta patch changes:

Assassination

* Focused Attacks now gives 2 energy regardless of the rank.

Combat

* Vitality increases your Energy regeneration rate by 8/16/25%. (Up from 3/6/10%)
* Blade Twisting changed to : Increases the damage dealt by Sinister Strike and Backstab by 5/10%, and your damaging melee attacks have a 10% chance to Daze the target for 4 sec.
* Aggression has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 4. Now increases the damage done by Sinister Strike, Backstab, and Eviscerate abilities by 3/6/9/12/15%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)

So Focused Attacks basically now behaves what it says, so more of a tooltip error fix.

Combat now looks a bit more interesting. More energy regen, more 15% more Sinister Strike damage total. Aggression moved down yet another tier means that replaces the "filler" that was only in that tier. So perhaps this was the Lightning Reflexes change they were talking about. Well fixes the Tier, not the talent itself.

Anyways, with these changes looks like Combat is gonna see an increase in its yellow damage. Which Blizz has indirectly said before about all classes (don't want majority white dmg).

Also, this does kill the Combat Shiv build. Initial estimates have Combat now only 1.5% behind Mutilate. So possibly quite even at the high levels of gear.

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I just liked this response from a blue in the above link in response to rogues QQ'ing about utility:

Unless you have high level alts in other classes, this new thought process may sound foreign to you. In BC, you might sit down to build a raid by saying that you need X shamans for WF and Bloodlust, 3-4 paladins for all their blessings, a Disc priest for Spirit, 2 Shadow priests for mana, a warlock for Curse of Shadows, etc.

In LK, you can get all the "needed" buffs in a relatively small number of players. After that you take who you want. If rogues were clearly the best dps in most situations, you would fill up your raid with maybe 5-6 rogues. But now what you really want to do is fill up your raid with the best *players*. That may be rogues for some guilds, but it may be mages, Ret pallies or death knights for others. Any group that leaves really good rogues out in order to bring a bunch of redundant buffs does so at its peril. Much more of the emphasis will be on gear and skill now, and less on the magic buff that earns you a raid slot.

The only time I can see this being a problem is if A) you aren't a very good player (sorry) and you were just brought along before because there was nobody else to do Kings or WF, or B) you like to pug a lot and pugs can't evaluate your skill, so they take you for your class instead.

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Yes. You won't see the OMG BIG FAT CRITS and stuff. The goal here is to:

1. Maximize Instant poison procs.
2. Maximize Focused Attack procs.
3. Maximize Mutilate damage on both hands.

Like if we wanna go into the whole formulas (skip this part if you don't wanna see):

Opportunity = 1 + (0.04 * Opportunity Rank)
Offhand Reduction = 0.5 + (0.05 * Dual Wield Specialization Rank)
Lethality = 0.06 * Lethality Rank
Poison Bonus = 1 + (0.5 if Poisoned Target)

Average Weapon Damage = (Weapon Minimum Damage + Weapon Maximum Damage) / 2
Modifier = (Attack Power / 14) * 1.7
Base Damage = Average Weapon Damage + Modifier

Mainhand Base Damage = Base Damage + Mutilate Bonus Damage
Mainhand Damage = Mainhand Base Damage * Poison Bonus * Opportunity
Mainhand Critical Damage = Mainhand Damage * (2 + Lethality)

Offhand Base Damage = (Base Damage * Offhand Reduction) + ( Mutilate Bonus Damage * (1 + (.1 * Dual Wield Specialization Rank))
Offhand Damage = Offhand Base Damage * Poison Bonus * Opportunity
Offhand Critical Damage = Offhand Damage * (2 + Lethality)

Minimum Mutilate Damage = Mainhand Damage + Offhand Damage
Maximum Mutilate Damage = Mainhand Critical Damage + Offhand Critical Damage

So let's assume fully talented stuff, and let's use [Crux of the Apocalypse] and [Fang of Kalecgos] as the daggers, with let's go with 3000 AP, and 35% crit rate.

Going Slow MH and Fast OH:

Opportunity = 1 + 0.2
Offhand Reduction = 0.5 + (0.05 * 5) = 0.75
Lethality = 0.06 * 5 = 0.3
Poison Bonus = 1 + (0.5 if Poisoned Target) = 1.5

Base Damage = (164 + 247)/2 + (3000/14)*1.7 = 569
Mainhand Damage = (569 + 101) * 1.5 * 1.2 = 1207
Mainhand Critical Damage = 1207 * (2 + 0.3) = 2776

Offhand Base Damage = (526 * 0.75) + ( 101 * (1 + (.1 * 5)) = 546
Offhand Damage = 546 * 1.5 * 1.2 = 982
Offhand Critical Damage = 982 * (2 + 0.3) = 2258

Minimum Mutilate Damage = 1207 + 982 = 2189
Maximum Mutilate Damage = 2776 + 2258 = 5034
Average Mutilate Damage = 2189*0.65 + 5034*0.35 = 3184

Fast MH and Slow OH:

Base Damage = (113 + 211)/2 + (3000/14)*1.7 = 526
Mainhand Damage = (526 + 101) * 1.5 * 1.2 = 1128
Mainhand Critical Damage = 1128 * (2 + 0.3) = 2594

Offhand Base Damage = (569 * 0.75) + ( 101 * (1 + (.1 * 5)) = 598
Offhand Damage = 598 * 1.5 * 1.2 = 1076
Offhand Critical Damage = 1076 * (2 + 0.3) = 2474

Minimum Mutilate Damage = 1128 + 1076 = 2204
Maximum Mutilate Damage = 2594 + 2474 = 5068
Average Mutilate Damage = 2204*0.65 + 5068*0.35 = 3206

In this case, the Fast MH combo already wins out with a difference of 3206 - 3184 = 22 damage.

So there isn't a huge world of difference if you go fast main hand or slow main hand if you're thinking of overall averages. Sure, you exchange that 2.8K crit for a 2.5K crit bursty damage, but overall average works around the same.

With more attacks on the main hand to proc focused attacks, and instant poison, this pushes it in more favor of a fast Main Hand.

One more thing I haven't mentioned before that might not even exist when expansion comes live is the Shiv spec.

That's right, you heard me, Shiv. This only works with the Shiv Glyph (reduces energy cost by 5). But the idea is pretty much keep the same BC Combat build, but instead of going into new Combat Talents, you go pick up poison talents and switch to Shiv as your main attack.

Again, due to OP poisons, you wanna maximize poison procs with this. Currently this surpasses the "traditional" combat route in dps.

However, part the community of course thinks this won't go live. Another thing that goes against the normal convention and probably wasn't intended by Blizzard. So speculation is a nerf to Shiv or more buffs to SInister Strikes.

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New changes in latest patch:

Assassination
* Focused Attacks changed to : Your melee critical strikes have a 33/66/100% chance to give you 2 energy. (2 energy in beta, 1 energy in notes, so one of them is wrong, and old is 3 energy)
* Find Weakness damage increased reduced to 2/4/6%. (Old - 3/6/9%)

Combat
* Killing Spree cannot hit invisible or stealthed targets anymore.
* Undocumented - Can no longer use damaging specials during Killing Spree

Subtlety
* Opportunity now works all the time. (Old - Only increased the damage of attacks from behind)

So what does this all mean? Mostly nerfs to Mutilate.

The Focus Attacks nerf (along with previous Deadly Brew nerf) basically means the reign of 2 fast daggers for Mutilate is over now. So all those that heard me say it, can forget it! lol Well some also heard me say they'd do something to normalize it too.

Anyways, yes previously, 2 fast daggers was the way to go for sustained raid dps (not pvp burst omg high yellow crits damage).

But, speed is still good. The criteria now (instead of speed is king) is:
- Higher dps daggers are better
- If 2 daggers are of equal dps, the faster one is better
- If you have 1 slow dagger, 1 fast dagger, you main hand the fast dagger and off hand the slow one.

What? Did that last one throw you in a loop again? lol As it turns out, the more swings you do, the better chance FA has to proc the more energy you can get back. So putting it on the main hand is the thing to do to get the most out of it (kinda mirrors Combat Potency).

Well things could change again.

On killing spree, it's a nerf, but not really a PvE nerf. You get the same stuff done in the 2.5 damage, just can't Sinister Strike or something during it. So as long as you don't cap 25 energy.

PvP wise, it is a nerf. It basically cuts back on that crazy burst you can do using SS in that time. Like -3K burst dmg or whatever SS hits for.

Anyways, Blizz has also acknowledged Combat is behind Mutilate and will be working to up Combat some more.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10043282488&pageNo...

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