01.28
Two questions, two answers today. I know…I know…I’m too kind.
Berserking or Mongoose? I’d like to know which enchants are best for PvP & PvE situations, given the 25% reduction in armor on Berserking. 
I personally have Mongoose on my weapons for PvE. However, for PvE Berserking is the superior DPS enchant. On my server Abyss Crystals are ridiculously expensive so I went the cheap route. If you have a best in slot weapon or just one you don’t plan to replace for a long time and can afford it, go with Berserking. Otherwise, Mongoose is a perfectly acceptable substitution.
Now, on to PvP. If the question is Berserking vs Mongoose, I’d have to go Mongoose since the loss of armor from Berserking seems less than ideal. However, if you’re looking for the best weapon enchant for PvP I would be inclined to suggest Exceptional Agility. On-proc events like Mongoose shine the longer the fight lasts and PvP has become rather bursty and a flat, constant Agility boost feels, to me, to be the stronger choice. Now, I’m not a PvP expert so take that with a grain of salt…perhaps someone in the comments can confirm or deny my assumption?
what is the best rotation for mutilate pve raiding rogue..thx for the help
Let me preface this by saying that I am not Mutilate. I have, however, done a significant amount of research on the subject (as I will likely be going Mutilate someday) and I believe I can speak knowledgeably on it.
Let me post-preface (making up words is fun) that by speaking on the concept of rotations a bit. Please remember that rotations are not set in stone (especially with Mutilate) and you should always be aware of your situation and adapt to it.
First, I like the idea of a nice little Cold Blood Macro to always make sure you’re using it whenever it is up:
/cast Mutilate
Before the fight begins get yourself 3 stacks of Hunger for Blood (HfB). Your number one priority is to make sure this never, never, never drops. Having to reply 3 fresh stacks (at the cost of 3 global cooldowns and 90 energy!) is a huge DPS loss. This is a big balancing act, you don’t want to reapply it too early because you’re wasting time on it but letting it fall off is even worse so err on the side of caution with this one. Hot Tip: Always refresh it before a stun effect like Maexxna’s Web Wrap.
Cast Tricks of the Trade on your tank and open the fight with Garrote (EDIT: Some commenters -thanks all!- mentioned that Ambush would be a better opener due to the fact that it adds 2-combo points. I had totally forgotten about his change and that’s a excellent choice.) followed by Slice and Dice (SnD). SnD is your number two priority. Luckily for you, thanks to Cut to the Chase, Envenom restores SnD to it’s a full 5 combo point stack but don’t let it fall off or you’ll have to reapply it manually. Like with HfB, try to refresh it before a stun if possible. Hot Tip: Always refresh SnD with Envenom before you have less than 2 global cooldowns (GCD) remaining (3 seconds) – particularly if you are below the expertise cap. A boss dodging your Envenom means no refreshed SnD which makes you a sad panda.
After SnD is up, Mutilate up to 4 or 5 combo points (In 2 Mutilates there is a strong chance that Seal Fate will proc and in the first rotation Cold Blood will guarantee that it does, so you will very likely have 5 combo points, but if you only have four don’t sweat it) and then Envenom to give SnD its full duration.
Mutilate again up to 4 or 5 combo points and Rupture.
At this point the rotation comes down to repeating these steps while keeping track of your top four priorities, which in order are:
- Stay Alive
- Keeping Hunger For Blood Up
- Keeping Slice and Dice Up (with Envenom)
- Keeping Rupture Up
Other Tips:
Generally you want to Envenom with 4 or 5 combo points but if SnD is about to drop go ahead and throw one with whatever amount you have.
Use Vanish whenever it is up and Garrote. The extra damage from Garrote is nice but the real purpose of this is to take full advantage of Overkill.
I say again, remember that no rotation is set in stone. Just relax, watch your timers and trust your instincts (they will get better and better with time and practice).
Have a question you’d like answered? Leave a comment or drop me a line.
Remember, follow your heart and stab your enemy in theirs.
Hey, I just started reading recently, but most all of your posts are helpful and/or entertaining. Well done on that. Thanks for the refresh before stun tips- just brilliant. My one question is: is it worth it to drop Cold blood on your envenom macro? Is the auto-crit on an ability that already crits so often important when you can be applying it to something that crits along your base crit line?
If Berserking materials are really expensive on your server, it’s probably best to go with Mongoose until you’ve got weapons of which you’ll know you’ll use them for a long time, like Webbed Death or Sinister Revenge.
Small note by the way, patch 3.0.8 lowered the armor reducing debuff from Berserking to 5%, down from 25%.
And while I’m not a PvP expert, your argument for a flat stat enchant for PvP sounds logical enough. You can’t really rely on ‘tanking’ other players at the moment with the huge DPS everyone is doing, so there’s less time you are on players, so less time for the proc enchant to go off.
As you say, it’s not really a rotation for Mutilate, more of a priority system.
Thanks, I’m glad you like the site!
As far as dropping your Cold Blood on your Envenom, I would say no. My reasoning would be that every now and then you’ll be envenoming with with one or two combo points and that I feel could be a waste of cold blood. Plus, an Envenom crit won’t trigger Seal Fate.
Hey Zaltu, great site, one of the few wow sites I can access from work!
Anyway I tried the 51/13/7 mutilate build last night in OS, and I have to say I love it! Its not easy keeping up the rotation of HfB, and evis or evenome every time but it makes the fights more interesting.
I probably did an average of 3-400 more dps as mutilate then I was with my SoLo HaT build. Only thing I dont think deep mut is built for pvp as Its going to be impossible to keep HfB up while trying to kill or get away from players.
Assassination that deep doesn’t mesh with PvP for a number of reasons. Not just that fact, but you give up a lot of our survival and utility talents. If you wanna mut pvp it’s more like a 41/5/25 and get some of the cool downs up quicker, while still haveing the burst damage of a mut rogue.
HfB is very handy when facing warriors, it removes the bleed. Going 51 points for it though? Meh. Maybe if you PvP in your PvE build.
Question about your opener statement: Is there a reason you suggest going for Garrote over Ambush? I’m dwing 2 LPC, and even with the relatively low weapon damage, a crit ambush (I have a Cold Blood/Ambush macro) hits for a few hundred more than all the ticks from garrote will. The other key is that ambush awards 2 points, while garrote only gives you one.
Enjoy the site, keep up the good work!
Thanks SOO much for the tip on vanishing whenever it is up to get the Overkill bonus. I NEVER really thought about it but it does save/conserve a lot of energy.
In addition to the extra combo point from an ambush opener, I tend to like the fact that I’m giving the tank a ton of up-front threat, which is when they need it the most. Garrote does its damage over an awfully long time, which lowers the immediate value of your tricks of the trade. That’s why I tend to go ambush over garrote, anyway.
Great guide, thanks. A few random comments:
* In case anybody was wondering, since I don’t think it was ever mentioned explicitly: for a raiding mutilate spec you’ll be using Instant Poison and Deadly Poison, with IP on whichever weapon is faster. If possible, you want to use the IP weapon in the main hand (so it can get extra proc chances from finishing moves) – even if it’s faster, the poison procs will make up for the slightly softer mutilates.
* PvP enchants: I think berserking is strongest overall, especially now the armor reduction has been toned down. If you’re making arguments for non-proc enchants, I’d prefer 65 AP. I’d also strongly recommend a titanium weapon chain (+28 hit and disarm length redux) for one of your weapons, which has the added benefit of being extremely cheap!
* Where possible (ruthlessness proc and crit mutilate) it is better DPS to have a single mutilate between finishers. The finisher will only be 4cp of course – it’s still better.
* Don’t be afraid to envenom with less than a full stack of Deadly Poison. The poison proc buff will always make it worth using over eviscerate. Avoid overlapping your envenom buffs. Immediately after envenoming, be careful not to mutilate an un-poisoned target!
* In a mutilate cycle, don’t underestimate the benefits of pooling. Once you’ve mutilated to 4/5 combo points, there’s no need to envenom straight away unless your slice is about to run out. If you have a few seconds, sit on the combo points. That means that when you do envenom you’ll have energy for mutilating immediately, which means it will fall within the duration of your envenom poison proc buff (in TBC rogues would do a similar thing with the Find Weakness talent).
* A (5pt) cold blood envenom is a slight dps increase over a cold blood mutilate, but I find cold blood is much more useful for “fixing” your cycle. If you get in a spot where you don’t have much time left on your slice (say, 6 seconds) and you’ve just performed a finisher and had a ruthlessness proc – you can use CB mut here to guarantee you’ll have four points to envenom again. It seems to be a stronger use than just the minimal damage increase.
* Because of the things you mention about dodged envenoms screwing with your cycle (and requiring you to envenom 2 GCDs before slice _just in case_) expertise is actually a slightly stronger stat than it looks on paper (or on a spreadsheet). This is hard to model exactly.
* If you’re vanishing for overkill, make sure you pool energy before to take full advantage of it. And definitely make sure your vanish macro has a /startattack macro in it because otherwise the white damage you lose prevents it from being worthwhile.
* Using an opener from stealth (either ambush or garotte) is only worth it if you can start right next to the boss. If you have to walk even for a few seconds (in stealth, sloooowly) the DPS loss from that will negate any benefits. Note that either way it is a miniscule component of your overall DPS so certainly don’t obsess about it.
* Don’t concern yourself with 100% rupture uptime – of course aim as high as possible, but it’s not a big deal if it drops. However, if slice or hunger drop you are doing something wrong.
I don’t know how that ended up so long :\
My beautiful paragraphs got squished up :<
/soothe
Helpful comments though, worth the effort of reading through it even though the paragraphs are messed up
In the world of fast/fast or fast/slow mutilate builds using CB on mutilate is a total waste. CB Envemom averages for me near the 10k mark while CB Mutilate around 5-7k depending of how much armor is stripped, 3k damage is nothing to go by. You may use it to fix the cycle but it’s not the optimal use of CB.
For pvp, expose armor, CB 5cp (talented) Evis beats CB Mutilate even with slow daggers.
Pretty decently stated, I’ve been running mutilate for a while now. My biggest suggestions to everyone, is to practice on target dumbies for a while, just working on keeping HFB up… I know it sounds easy, but it really can be trouble some at times, I will sit on combo pnts, to ensure that my rotation doesnt get screwed, I try to keep the timers for HFB, and Slice in Dice about 5-6 seconds apart, giving me plenty of time to renew both.
Get the Addon called “Class Timers”, make sure you get the HFB extended version.
As far as people using Ambush? I think they are crazy… With the glyph of garrote, and using garrote, you are going to do more than ambush, and garrote is a pretty solid number of dps ambush isnt a set “what your going to ambush for”. Who cares if ambush gives you an extra combo pnt? Your first slice n dice should be started with as few combo pnts as possible, seeing how its gonig to refresh to its max time on your first Envenom. Notice people if your mutilate spec, you shouldn’t be using eviserate, unless the boss is immune to deadly posion. I run ip on main hand and deadly on off hand. I haven’t confirmed it yet in my trying, but the folks at elitest jerks seem to think running WP instead of IP, should increase your dps, because of the chance for it to hit is much higher on WP, but again I havent tested that yet. Also using vanish to fix your messed up rotation, HFB drop of? Best way to fix that rotation is to just vanish, and stack your HFBx3 real quick, and start the rotation over.
And all this crying about when to use cold blood? You know that annoying kid on vent that wont shut up? Prolly plays a warlock and is always qq’in yea him… Cast Cold Blood, Tricks of the Trade to him, and then Fan of Knives 3 times in a bunch of mobs…
Best way eva to use Cold Blood :p
WP over IP will increase your DPS *only* if you do not have any points in Improved Poisons. If you do, IP is better.
@ZeJunkie – one cold blood mut or envenom is an extremely small amount of dps either way. In your example, if your normal envenom is 5k and your crit is 10k, assuming your raid buffed crit rate is around 40% (which is conservative) your average envenom will be around 7000. You’re talking about changing a 7000 to a guaranteed 10000 once every 180 seconds. That’s around a 16.7 dps increase, which gets worse as your crit rate increases (Loatheb?)
If you can use it to refresh slice when it would otherwise fall off, that is *much* more than 17 dps. That’s what I mean by “fixing” my cycle. You can argue that with perfect play it should never happen but (aside from the fact that I do not play perfectly!) there are many situations where it can occur in practice – KT void zones / frost tombs, Maexxna web wrap, Grobbulus mutagen, etc.
(I do agree that the fast dagger trend – and higher mutilate crit rates due to Puncturing Wounds – means the actual mutilate damage increase will be low. It’s still a few dps, but very marginal)
Another quick fix to SnD is a quick Shiv if the timer is mismanaged and yer down to a few seconds with no deadly’s on target. Its starting to happen more frequently for me on a 1.5 dly. I keep a quick Shiv on standby incase that does happen.
i like your rotation suggestion but with your spec of 15-51-5 it is impossible . we dont have hunger for blood or even cut to the chase with your current spec.so a good rotation for your current spec would be helpful.
Another advantage to garotte over ambush: the possibility of getting rupture on the target while still in the overkill window. I’ve posted a fuller discussion of the issue here: http://prideofstgeorge.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88:assassination-pve-garrote-or-ambush&catid=45:classes-a-roles&Itemid=72
I love the guide. I currently play a Combat Rogue (haven’t had any good 80 Daggers drop but I’ve gotten the swords), but I’ve been hearing such great things about this build and rotation. I am still undecided as to weather or not I want to switch to Mutilate or stick with my Combat spec. I have a feeling this guide (and any others like it that I can find) will help me decide.
Thank you.
Rafzekyle, I was in the same situation like you a few weeks ago. Finally i decide to go mutilate and sell my swords after i got a couple of decent daggers. I cannot be happier now. Give it a try… you can only loose a few gold…
zaltu you mention 3 stacks of hfb ya can only activate this spell when a bleed effect is on so are you saying using a garrote instead ov a ambush to get it up or wait untill ya hit a rupture?
Or you (Rafzekyle) can pay 1k to duel talent and switch back and forth between Combat and Mut specs when the situation arises.
Wouldnt it be better to have DP on ur main hand rather than IP?
garrote, snd, hungerforblood, mut, env, (if 1cp) rupture (tier 9 clearcasting), mut, mut, coldblood, env
mongoose on both for the xtra energy procs, glyph of mut, glyph of rupture, glyph of hungerforblood, 21agil 3% meta
I think someone needs to do a little more research in the pvp department. Arena matches with 2200 rating teams are actually pretty long fights. Berserking is the chant to get along with the 50% less disarm time enchant. It’s more beneficial for a rogue to have 400 AP considering all the attacks rely on AP, even bleed dmg is using AP. Dual berserking for max dps cuz it stacks 2x for 800 AP or… Berserking and disarm enchant once you start hitting high ratings and start playing against smart players.
Nice guide m8, really helpt alot setting up my mutilate spec. And it works great. Going to try it out at syndr 10 hc tonight!