Assassination Or Subtlety?Follow

Before we can provide you answers, you need to provide more information.

Do you like PvP? Do you do instances often? What kind of weapons do you have access to? Why do you even want to change your spec to begin with?

I agree. Shadowstep's not so hot. Mutilate doesnt have burst damage in pvp. i would suggest you go for the talents in each tree that you want, and build your rogue around backstab. Unless ofcourse you want to keep a combat build, which in my opinion isnt so bad.

Well, some more information....I enjoy PvPing...ALOT; so that is probably what I will be doing a lot of the time. Also, I wish to change from combat because, well, I just don't really find it all that fun and enjoyed it more when I was assassination before I respeced to combat swords. For the daggers I have access to..I will probably just do instances for them when I am around 54 just so I have some time to get them if they have a slightly low drop rate. Now, I don't really mind doing instances, but I do prefer PvP[whether it be World PvP or BattleGrounds]. If anyone can, please post a link to a 30/0/31 build.
^^If this isn't enough information, just post with more questions and I will answer them as best I can.

~StolenHeartz

I always CB my first mutilate to make sure I get the 5 CP KS in.


Actually, the chance of getting a single crit mutilate is about the same of getting a crit backstab.


Mutilate average damage is significantly higher than Backstab without the combat talents. This was discussed and theorycrafted in depth when it was first added last year. Resilience does not change that enough to make Backstab superior for damage. Generating about 150% more CPs is nice as well.


I use the same poisons for Mutilate PvP as every other Rogue does for every other build, unless the situation dictates that another poison might be superior. Wound MH, Crippling OH.


Plate aside, a Paladin is going to have a hell of a time with the 40% dispel resist, and huge proc rate on the poisons with you swinging at him like a madman. Keeping yourself poison free against a Mutilate Rogue is an effort in futility. If somebody's dumb enough to sit there and chain cleanse, well, you probably won't have much trouble killing him anyway.


Mutilate has better burst damage than Backstab. The 30/0/31 build's perk is that it has prep, not higher burst damage. Let's do some quick math and show that Mutilate does more damage than backstab. We'll assume the Mutilate user has Opportunity (as many do since the addition of Dirty Tricks). We'll assume that the Mutilate build's weapon damages are both 200, and the BS build will have a 200 damage MH (after all AP considerations). There will be a 25% damage reduction on crits from resilience.

Mutilate Damage = (MH Weapon Damage + 101) * 1.5 * 1.2 * 1.1 (find weakness bonus) + (OH Weapon Damage / 2 + 101) * 1.5 * 1.2 * 1.1

(200 + 101) * 1.5 * 1.2 * 1.1 + (100 + 101) * 1.5 * 1.2 * 1.1 == 595 + 398

Backstab Damage = MH Weapon Damage + 255 * 1.5 * 1.2

(200 + 255) * 1.5 * 1.2 == 455 * 1.5 * 1.2 == 819

Now, to factor crit chance. We'll assume 15%, since this is a PvP situation, and Resilience will be in play. The average damage can be calculated by summing the product of the chance each outcome with that outcome's result.

Backstab Hit Chance: 55% - 819 * .55 == 450
Backstab Crit Chance: 45% - (1883 * .75) * .45 == 636
Average backstab: 1086

Mutilate No Crit Chance: 72.25% - 993 * .7225 == 717
Mutilate MH Hit, OH Crit Chance: 12.75% - 595 + (915 * .75) * .1275 == 163
Mutilate MH Crit, OH Hit Chance: 12.75% - (1369 * .75) + 398 * .1275 == 182
Mutilate Double Crit Chance: 2.25% - (1369 + 915) * .75 &* .0225 == 39
Average Mutilate: 1101

Small difference, but we used an extremely small weapon damage. My mainhand dagger has more than twice that damage, and as damage scales up, so does the gap between the two. Improved Kidney Shot will increase the gap even more.

The bottom line is that Mutilate not only gives more CPs than Backstab, it does more damage on the way. 41/20/0 will do slightly less Mutilate damage, but you'll pick up a much larger amount of increased white damage. 30/0/31 is a utility build, Mutilate beats it in damage and CPs.

Nooblestick, I quite enjoyed reading your post, not that I understood all of it. Would you be able to explain to me what the main skills of a Mutilate talent build are and would you mind linking the talent build if it is possible? Also, is this the best build suited for PvP but still useful in PvE? I thank you greatly.

~StolenHeartz

Nice work there, but there's something that doesn't make sense, apologies if I offend you for bringing this up.
In your calculation for Backstab Damage, why didn't you include the bonus for "Find Weakness"? You included it for the Mutilate damage calculation.
I mean, there's nothing stopping you from picking up that talent even if you don't want to use Mutilate.
What will happen to the calculation if you added it?

Find Weakness is too far down in the Assassination tree to include in the 30/0/31 build.

The link in my sig brings you to my armory page, look at my build for a good muti build.

I have taken out warriors and pallys 3-4 lvls higher than me with this build, its great.

I dont PvP as much as used to, but i wouldve taken the Fleet Footed talent, just as an extra boost towards your enemy in battlegrounds.

And Nooble was right as always mutilate has better burst damage and has overall higher damage than backstab.

And even though im only lvl 61 and havea 18% crit rate, i can rock 2k mutilates alot.

Stay combat till 70, heck stay combat at 70. Sub sucks, ambush does no dmg at 70, not opening with cs is a huge mistake, even to mages now.