Well, here's a more in depth answer.
Blizzard did succeed in making us use the 41 points talents. I really don't see people going hybrid anymore. As such, it comes down to which of the build you want to take - Assassination, Combat or Subtlety.
Assassination (a.k.a. Mutilate): There's only 2 viable variant on this one, and it depends on if you go with
Combat or
Subtlety.
It's my firm belief that Mut/Com is simply a better build. More dps, longer gouge and Imp Sprint makes it the way to go. While Mut/Sub isn't total crap, it's definitly the weaker of the two.
Mutilate is not a bad build. It was still somewhat viable even during the HARP phase. However, it's my opinion that it is much weaker then Combat Mace. I was Mutilate for the entirity of S1 and I remember being litterally in shock at how much more powerful I felt when I switched to Combat. The only thing that has changed for Mutilate since then is a 7% speed increase, which I don't believe will make up for it's shortcoming.
The positional requirement and Resilience scores being what they are make Mutilate fall short. Simply put, for all the requirement the ability requires, it should be more powerful then it currently is. Mutilate's rogue burst damage and imp KS would really help in a 5v5 4dps team, but this set up is now too easily countered by a Discipline Priest.
Another rather big drawback of going Mutilate - you have to buy good daggers. If you end up not liking it, switching spec is going to be fairly horrible.
And if that wasn't enough, this spec is heavily affected by the 'ranged bug'.
A big no no overall.
Combat (a.k.a Combat Mace :P): We all know this
one really well by now. Combat has proven it is better then Mutilate has far as I'm concerned. The only question is if it's better then Shadowstep. I got to say that I'm pretty confident Combat will edge out and we'll all be back to Surprise Attack sooner then later.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know the strenght and weakness of this one. Other specs then mace are somewhat viable (Sword especially), but Maces are simply better for pvp.
Subtlety (a.k.a. Shadowstep, a.k.a. lolstep): It's funny to think shadowstep might end being viable after being a joke ability for so long.
Speccing Shadowstep is stepping into the shadows of uncertaincy (+1 pun) - we don't really know if it's going to be good or not. It looks good on paper, but the change to it hardly seem like they're big enough to make it compete with Combat. Still, I, like many others, will give it a try.
The main concern is damage. Shadowstep should make us much harder to kite... but what's the point if we can't finish off a target when we're on them? A good exemple is on druids... they're hard enough to kill even with double AR and Blade Flurry, how the hell are we supposed to do it as shadowstep (which has no AR)?
The other concern is the lost of Weapon Spec - No mace stun. Ugh. This is going to suck.
There's still a lot of possible variant on this one, due to it being so new, we haven't locked down what works and what is stupid :P.
Combat Shadowstep is the one I'm the most interested in. With imp sprint, prep and shadowstep, kiting isn't going to be a problem, and thanks to dual wield spec and precision, you should still be able to keep your overall dps pretty solid (In fact, with imp s&d/Deadlyness/Sinister Calling/Hemo/Serrated Blade/Precision/DW spec - your white damage will be the highest it can be).
Assassination Shadowstep is also somewhat interesting. You get better crits (nice syngery with Sinister Calling), your Hemo crits will be fairly massive and you get very good energy/combo management... and you get to use the poison talents to a degree, which is something I miss from Mutilate (Getting 5 stack of wound up is sooo much easier with imp poison!). That being said, I think your overall dps of this spec is lower then Combat Shadowstep (math genius care to find out?) and you do lose Imp Sprint, which might be a big deal (depending on how good shadowstep is at countering kiters).
Hybrid Shadowstep is the other variant that I believe could work. You get to keep imp sprint, but you lose S&D and DW Spec - which will be a pretty big hit to your white damage. You do get the excellent reckleness and 5% more crit, which might balance things out.
I don't think Dagger Shadowstep will work at all, so I'm not including it here. All the problem of mutilate applies to Backstab (position, resilience, range bug, stuck with daggers) and on top of that, since you'll need imp BS, you pretty much have to go 19/0/41+1 which limits your options.
"Hey, why did you take X talent over Y!?"
You're more then welcome to critic my builds, this is after all, a talent discussion :P.
This is merely the way I would make the following builds, fillers talents will of course change between players according to preferences.
Edited, Dec 17th 2007 5:25pm by Tyrandor