I'm thinking about going with something like this: http://www.wowdb.com/talent.aspx?id=4#f2e8bfef2efefe2f2e2fef2ef2ef34

Ruthlessness is throwing me off. Thats worthless with mutilate if you have atleast 25% crit right? (On a purely odds based solution) Would 2/2 quick recovery and +1 in imp poison be better?

Well, I went Mutilate! How many noticed? lol

Parses: http://wowwebstats.com/jc4f4salf4611?m

Spec: http://www.wowdb.com/talent.aspx?id=4#be2fe2fefe5f2efefe2f5e2f3ef4ef6ef22

Overall, yea it does seem lower dps. But the burst damage is reallllly nice. lol I remember seeing the double crits, 2600 in one hand 2100 in the other. BAM! Sweet jesus big rolling yellow numbers for the ADD kid in ya. lol

But you can really feel the lack of Expertise in this build. Noticed more dodged yellows than I was used to. And def miss the CDs combat provides. CB is just weak for the 3 mins.

It's def a build that requires more on the fly thought. Have to manage SnD, FW, and Rupture timers while keeping track of combo points.

So boss by boss self analysis.

Naj'entus: Well I died to a spine in the middle of it. Oh well, so 1424 dps still. Probably around 100ish less than usual.

Supremus: Not a rogue fight. I get cruddy dps times cause I wanted to live. lol

Akama: Burst is very good here. I noticed can easily pull ahead on adds. Though wish there was Blade Flurry to help. lol

Teron: Heh damn, this week was stacked against the experiment. For the first time I got the ghost and it was not near the end of the fight. Ah well, 1582 dps, guess that's 100-200 dps behind normal.

Gurtogg: Hm, 1468 dps. This I kind of find peculiar. Checking back, for non-fel raged kills I was in, this is about 100-200 dps higher than normal. Hmm somehow burst was better but can't think of why atm. Though, if I do get Fel Rage it's def better for swords since no positional requirements for the primary attack.

Anyways, it was very interesting to play. DPS is pretty decent with the gear and know how of it. I certainly wasn't geared specifically for mutilate, and probably took a bit to get used to the rhythm of the "cycles". Anyways, the experiment is over, back to swordies now.

Also, the pressure on healers (imo) comes at least as much from group role ratios as anything else.  In 5 mans, its 3:1 dps:healers.  In 10-25 man raids, its generally 5:3 or 14:7ish.  Makes it harder for the other good healers to cover up for a bad healer.  It's easier to squeek by as a low dpser with more people to pick up the slack.  However, you do see cases where the DPS as a whole gets ragged (just like healers do) for not keeping up the pace.  "We really need more dps on X" is a common call in raid.  Everytime you hit an enrage timer, it's often the fault of dps not for pewpewing enough.

There are role mechanics affecting it as well, just reminding people not to get too focused in on a single aspect of the issue, e.g.; trying to claim that its 100% skill based or that one role is more important or something.

(Try to kill Moroes with 5 tanks and 5 healers without hitting the enrage timer)

Again, Garreth, I will make the same wager here that I did in another thread -

Roll an endgame dps class and experience some raid content!  Prove your generalizations wrong (or right)!

Get Pulse to 70 and come to Karazhan with me or something.  :P

Ok A) No one would ever spec like that, and if you see someone that would please me know

 B)I can still defend that as someone who utilizes the effects of expose armor, probably using daggers to backstab alot. He's good for helping with crowd control due to improved stealth and Dirty tricks, poisons won't be resisted as much. Has a chance of getting combo points and energy after every finisher, Cool downs come back faster. They may not do alot of damage, but with the improved exposed armor being the main focus they help all other physical dps greatly, as a 5 combo point improved exposed armor reduces armor even more than 5 sunders.

I said anyone that specced and understood how would be viable, I never said how.

Not "any" spec is viable for raid.

A 20,20,21-specced hunter would be worthless, regardless of his skill.  Granted, this is an extreme example, but spec DOES matter, and anyone that says otherwise is fooling themselves.

For example, would this spec allow a skilled rogue to be competitive on ANY damage meter:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=frrrRMhZuxxbrZxrt0Gz

Well EJ only does have a handful of people that delve deep into the theorycrafting to get useful info out of. Yea lots of useless posts/questions still, but just prefer it casue it's moderated so no trolls are making retarded remarks.

About rotations, if you're talking about mutilate, then yea it's pretty open. For other specs, just have to know a true "rotation" only exists in a tank and spank no movement type fight that's averaged out over an infinite time. Which, doesn't exist. But it still provides an efficient energy usage over some set time intervals. Just have to know how to adapt to changes while moving, procs, health, GCD usage, etc.

Well with poison talents, actually at EJ some people are writing up a poison simulator to model deadly poison, and the effects Vile Poisons and Improved Poisons have. Findings so far indicate that the first point in Improved Poison is more valuable than the last point. Vile Poison basically gives 4% more damage per point, first point in Improved Poison gives 4.3%, while last point gives 2.1%. Again this can only simulate a no movement sustained fight. Improved Poisons become more valuable with movement. But this is only a 2-3 dps difference either way.

I figured as much.  I was modeling a tree, that put 3 points in each of the poison trees.  While i was on EJ, one post said only put in 1 point in imp sd and have your cycle just be  4/sd 4/r and dont worry about the envenom/evic rotations.  I think that may actually be a benifit in dps just playing 41/20 like combat daggers, the only downside being you dont get the combat potency proc.  we'll see

And I would lay down my life to birth a new generation of a righteous culture. To a people I could proudly love and cherish.

IMO, I wouldn't trust the actual WoW forums as far as i could throw them, seeing how they seem to breed some of the most rascist and ignorant crap ever produced in this world.  I'll wait till EJ makes some 2.4 posts.  One poster from there can produce 10 times the amount of intelligent thought than a full 100 page post on the WoW forums.

And I would lay down my life to birth a new generation of a righteous culture. To a people I could proudly love and cherish.

Heres the main debating thread from the WoW rogues forums. It basically argues what I said but mathmatically and by trial and error.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4822424356&sid=1 

Ewiges - Absorbing the stupidity of the world for over 20 years.

If mutilate in 2.4 can compete with combat in overall damage, then I'm OK with it.

However, Ewiges went from another "meh" rogue on dps to "holy shit" in about 4 weeks and a respec to combat. That pretty much proved it to me that, yes, spec does matter.

Not trying to be an ass, but you know where I stand on raid approach: Why come if you're not going to maximize? ;)  Now, I see that you're basing this off of 2.4 changes.  Will 2.4 make mutilate as viable as combat? 

Today backstab damage is like:
60% white damage
30% goes to backstab
5% to rupture
5% to poisons

Getting back to Mutilate ( 41/20/0 ) you would:
- lose some white damage ( dagger specialization, Weapon Specialization )
- Swap from Backstab to Mutilate ( increasing damage )
- Generate almost 3X more combo points.
- Generate "less" energy because of the loss of combat potency.
- Swap Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush with Cold Blood and +10Energy.

In other words, your damage output would be something like
50% white damage
30% mutilate
10% Rupture
5% poisons
5% Envenon ( or 7%poisons and 3% Eviscerate ).

Now some comments:
- Mutilate > Backstab, yes, for sure, but Combat potency enables you to Hit more Backstabs then Mutilates.
- 3X More Combo points is not that great, basically i could always
keep Slice and Dice, Rupture 5CB (and find weakness) up and always had
a chance to use a 3-4CB Envenon.
- AR is a great cooldown, but while Mutilate i really missed Blade
Flurry, helping on "AOE" is always a great buff on a raid environment.
Earning Cold Blood is nice, but its really worse then the other two.
And Mutilate spec is a very bad spec when you have to switch targets a
lot, mostly because of the poison requirement and the amount of CB you
lost.
- And your white damage fill fall a lot on damage, and since its your
main type of damage, its were it hurts this build a lot ( even with
dual wield specialization ).
- +10 Energy on vigor is almost a waste of a 31 talent, needless to compare it will AR
- and besides Hydross, Void Reaver and maybe Vashjs adds, poison imune mobs are really a pain in the ass.

About gear:
- Combat build need a lot of hit rating, the more you have, the more combat potency will help you, and more damage you can do.
- Assassination builds requires a lot of crit rating, but you cant get
dagger specialization ( i will kill who prefers this instead of dual
wield ), but your mutilates will benefit better from a higher crit than
it would be with backstab. There are some rumors of good geared
mutilate PVE rogues that sacrified some hit hating to get more crit
rating and noticed some increase on the damage output.
- A Mutilate build generates a lot of CBs, the more CBs you have, the
more damage you do, the more CB you get back (ruthlessness ), the more
energy you get (Relentless Strikes ).

in all.......combat daggers > mutilate in a raid situation.