04.14
I’m back, baby. After an excellent vacation I’m back just in time for patch 3.1. And look at that, it’s dropping today, April 14th, just like I said it would.
Now I know what you’re thinking: “Zaltu, you’re so awesome and handsome and you picked the day of the patch perfectly, what other great thing can you do for me?”
Well I’m glad you asked! I’m going to supply you with some nice patch day specs for my stabby brethern and sistern. Let’s check it out, shall we?
PvE – Combat
Not a lot of changes here except that Lightning Reflexes is now so useful that you can no longer viably spec into both sword/dagger and fist. Sad, I know. Currently you have only one “free floating” point in this spec. I choose Endurance – but Throwing Specialization is also a popular choice.
PvE – Mutilate
The big change to the Mutilate build is the taking of Master Poisoner instead of Turn the tables. The reason for this is that previously Master Poisoner only provided a buff to crit that was usually provided by other classes which made it a relatively easy talent to skip, but now, with it’s increased chance to apply Deadly Poison after an Envenom, it’s a must have.
PvP – Mut/Prep
A few things worth noting with this build is that there is really no set-in-stone “this is the best Mut/Prep build”. This is the build I like to use. Some variations include replacing Initiative with Serrated Blades and/or replacing Find Weakness with Ruthlessness.
PvP – Shadow Dance
I’ll be honest with you here, I have yet to try this spec but it really has my attention. Likemost PvP specs where there’s not a 100%, this is the right spec. What I’ve linked is my best approximation after doing some research and looking over the armories of some of the best PvP rogues in the game currently.
Enjoy patch 3.1!
I will try out both PvE specs using the dual-spec feature. Lets see what works best. I am mutilate for the time being. Gonna say goodbye to my old mutilate spec with todays naxx. I hope the servers will be up tomorrow when I get home from work
Is the ideal for pve mutilate now slow mainhand and fast offhand since they changed the way poisons proc?
@Cory Yes. Slow Mainhand/Fast Offhand for Mutilate now
Regarding combat spec:
Do changes to deadly poison make it at all worthwhile to put three points into vile poisons and take 3 away from [insert anything here, I personally was thinking sword specialization since I'm fist/dagger at the moment]?
@Krtout
The 3 points in Vile Poison have been talked about around the rogue community, however the only viable place to take points from is Relentless Strikes (since those points in Sword spec you talked about should actually be in Lightning Reflexes).
The general consensuses is that while Vile Poison might be a slight DPS the lose in cycle stability from losing points in Relentless Strikes is probably not worth it.
Why slow/fast and not slow/slow on mutilate pve?
When you hit envenom deadly poison chance is near 100% over 6 seconds… so… stacking 5 deadly poisons is not a problem even with 1.80 speed… so… why slow/fast? ^^
@Eren, this is true.
My guess is that a fast weapon is to help with Focused Attacks but you are right about the nearly 100% deadly poison proc with Envenom.
Truth of the matter is that it is still really early and things have not been fully evaluated yet. I believe that slow/fast is the consensus right now but it may very well turn out to be slow/slow that wins out in the end.
Which I’d be quick happy for actually, stay away from my Golem-Shard Sticker
You should probably remove the ptr. from the wowhead links, they’ve updated all the items, so the tooltips won’t work
Zaltu, how slow of a MH dagger are we talking about for PvE Mutilate? I don’t happen to have any… “slow” daggers lying around.
@Anethor 1.8ish
Would it be worth sacrificing stats/a good dagger just to get a slower dagger in my MH?
Why the slower MH? not that disagree I just do not understand the logic behind it..
Sons of Hodir as the Broken Stalactite at Revered. It is the exact same stats as librarian’s paper cutter, but a 1.8 speed. Throw one of those in the mh, the paper cutter in th oh, and you’re good to go!
It should be noted that once the Glyph of Envenom is available, Master Poisoner won’t be such a hot pick.
(Your Envenom ability no longer consumes Deadly Poison from your target.)
When talking about pve mutilate and slow/fast…i am assuming IP/DP when it comes to poisons…also for the combat spec, what would be the best weps for that?? calamaity+webd death? and the poisons im guessing would be WD/DP?? Thanks in advance!
Also, if its not too much to ask, what glyphs for both combat/mutilate would you use! Thanks in advance bro..you da man!
@Sam – The slower MH is for higher mutilate strikes
@Sykoh – Glyph of Envenom was removed
@Streets – Yes, IP/DP for Mut. Calamity/Webbed for Combat with WP/DP, also, expect a full glyph post sometime tomorrow
@Anethor, as far as sacrificing stats for a slower dagger, will that all depends and can only really be answered on a case by case basis. Hopefully some new spreadsheets will be coming out soon.
thanks for the quick response bro, can’t wait for the glyph post!
Ok the new patch is out…I am sitting here lost in what to do. I want a solid answer on the best dps spec..mutilate or combat. I am currently sword/sword combat with 15/51/5 build. Is there anyway i can possibly get a talent tree build, glyph selection, and rotation? i know its a lot to ask but im totally lost.
Hello all, this is my first post here so /wave. Kerp and Zaltu know me as Kerpfanboy. I have a question, currently im going dual FIST with Calamity’s Grasp and the Fist of Nerub. Should i keep the Fist of Nerub or would an LPC be better for dps.
Where’s HaT? I’m thinking about dual speccing Combat/HaT so that I can swap to a HaT build when there’s a fight that’s going to work for it (DPS race where there’s not a lot of raid damage so my party should stay up) and combat when it won’t. I figure my similar gear should work for both builds, and so it’ll just be a matter of respec/reglyph, which conveniently is exactly what dual spec will do. Perhaps it’s overkill, but if the Ulduar fights really are going to be tuned harder, every bit counts.
Hi Zaltu, this is my first post so forgive me if i ask dumb questions but here goes….I am a NE Combat rogue using a dagger mh and sword oh, I think your site is amazing and i have learned alot since finding it but now am quite confused about the new stuff in 3.1. Just a simple run through of the best weapons to use with combat spec in wot hand and with which poisons would put me on the right track. Call me a noob if you like but i don’t have the luxury of playing all the time and some of us take longer to grasp the game.
P.S i am working toward getting the pre-raid gear you talked about in an earlier post, thats going well!
Keep up the good work
@Jimbeth The best combat weapons set up is Fist/Dagger, Sword/Sword is doable but there really aren’t any great swords (the best ones are just meh). You really shouldn’t be using a dagger in your MH as combat as it makes your sinister strikes really weak. If all you have are daggers, then I suggest giving mutilate a try. As for poisons, for combat, it should be Wound MH/ Deadly OH
There must be a decent Hemo build no?
I will start experimenting and get back:)
/Kili
Ok … clearly there are mass confusion here … let me clear this up .. in Mutilate, u shoould have a fast mainhand with instant poison. and slow offhand with deadly posion. Instant poison is will be like 20% of your dps so you need a fast mainhand for it to proc alot. and u dont need fast offhand. u get deadly poison on anyway, so take a slow offhand for more mutilate damage.
In combat u should use slow mainhand and fast offhand, wound poison in both.
@Wogge, Your statement about Mutilate weapons is wrong as of 3.1. They have normalized Instant Poison, moving it to a proc per minute system. Under this system the speed of your weapon doesn’t matter for poison procs therefor you need a slow main hand for the bigger mutilates. Deadly Poison wasn’t put on this system so a quicker weapon in the offhand is better (though this is still being tested a bit since the proc rate of Deadly with Master Poisoner is very high)
wuts the rotation on
PvP – Shadow Dance
12/0/57
I’ve been playing with the dual spec as well, and after the forced respec this week, decided to test out a hybrid 14/52/5 sword/fist combat pve spec. It’s working well, though I agree that a solid dagger/fist or sword only combo is ideal. For those of you who are grabbing what you can as you hit the raids, you can see this setup on my toon, Darynn, rexxar US.
What I’ve found is that losing the 3 points in lightning reflexes hasn’t killed my dps, since you can cover it with pots/chants. Of course, double dipping is always nice, but until I get a 156.x slow main hand sword like Silent Crusader or one of the new Uldaar toys so I can drill down to sword spec again, this is working.
For those of you well versed in the PVP shadow dance spec, can you post a rotation? I’ve never dabbled in the PVP much, and want to take it on, with some shiny new daggers, of course… thanks in advance for your help.
Any advice on my existing spec would be greatly appreciated!
D
My rogue is Srottem on Arathor. He is currently mutilate specced. I have tried really hard and cant seem to break 3k dps with him. I have seen several other rogues doing 4k-6k dps with combat spec. I give up and will be respeccing shortly to combat. I am savign my daggers for my sub offspec i will have as soon as i purchase dual spec. I want a nice sub spec for my offspec to pvp with. I wonder if somone could post a good rotation to se with that spec? So I am bummed I couldnt get mutilate spec to achieve the large dps numbers otehr cmbat rogues get but I was able to getabout 2400 dps consistenly with him in 5 mans with heroic gear and 10 man but know valor or 25 man gear.
Rogues FTW,
-Srottem-
alright… so I love this site btw… i think there should be a facebook for rogues… and only rogues… but to the point. I got sucked in to believing in switching your MH with your OH dagger (mut spec pve of course) if the speed of your daggers werent the same. In this case Shadowbite being 1.80 and Golem-Shard Sticker being 1.50 speed. I use the macro, /equipslot 17 Shadowbite
/equipslot 16 Golem-Shard Sticker in my mutilate hotkey… and then /equipslot 16 Shadowbite
/equipslot 17 Golem-Shard Sticker in all my other attacks (HfB, Rupture, Envenom and all that sorts) to put my dags back in their original hands… here-in lies the problem though – I cant figure out what to do with my poisons… because when I first apply my poisons I want to think that my Deadly poison will be in my offhand when im attacking with everything but mutilate. But is that even right? should i even bother with switching them? or should I just always have my faster dag in my OH? or is it faster dag in MH? I Instant poison my MH and Deadly poison my OH btw. Please help me to get this stupid habit out of my head… i hate having to change my macros every time I get an upgrade. THANKS in advance!
… oh and one more thing, golem-shard sticker is obviously a better dagger… I was told that you put your better dagger in your MH… but since its a faster dagger… isnt it better to have it in my OH?
Hey Zaltu – are you gonna put a revised build list etc. up now that the patch is well established, people are hammering ulduar and 3.1 has hit the community?
I run a fist/dagger combat spec for pve (although i currently don’t have a fist) and will be respeccing my pve build to mutilate as i’ve just got Titansteel Shanker and Namlaks Super Sticker….
Whats the rotation for mut rogues for pve… i’ve been mut for pvp but obviously can’t be stun locking mobs in raids that often lol
Thanks,
Strayer
@Strayer http://oneroguesjourney.com/2009/06/03/ask-zaltu-rogue-frequently-asked-questions/
I see that you dropped Iniative points for Serrated Blades. How is that working out?