Malice?Follow

It was marginal before really and taken more as a second-class talent if anything. Combat isn't crit heavy, it was a small buff in relation to the other DPS talents. In current 70 combat builds there are much better DPS talents to take, period. Most of us are going 5/51/5 when combat now.

Drop Deflection for Weapon Expertise and you're about there it looks like.

And I should clarify, Malice is not a terrible talent, but not among the first to take.

Edited, Nov 5th 2008 9:43pm by TherionSaysWhat

Combat Rogue build at 70lvl
It is 5/51/5 spec where Unfair Advantage is used as a filler. You can change UA for Improved Sprint or put that 2 points somewhere else.

Before patch (3.0.2) Relentless Strikes was in assassination tree in place where Vigor talent is now. Before patch Relentless Strikes was great talent and every rogue, no matter if it was combat or subtlety, took Relentless Strikes. So that's why people took Malice first, because they did that to get Relentless Strikes. :)

Another thing is that after patch if you going into combat, you want to put first 50, 51 points into combat. You also want Relentless Strikes even that it is now 5 point talent (it is still great talent dps wise). Then you have 5 points left, so you take Malice to get that 5% more crit.

Also before 3.0.2 patch rogues had choice to take assassination or subtlety after spending 41 talent points into combat. Assassination with Relentless Strikes, Ruthlessness, Murder, Malice Lethality and Vile Poisons was just superior to Subtlety tree. Oh and Vile Poisons > Improved Poisons.
Before patch if I remember correctly we had 20 points to put outside of combat tree. 5/5 Malice, 2/2 Murder, 3/3 Ruthlessness, 1/1 Relentless Strikes, 4/5s 5/5 Lethality and 5/5 4/5 Vile Poisons were best choice (yes 5/5 Vile Poisons instead of 5/5 Lethality, Vile Poisons > Lethality).

Edit: Yeah my memory fails. 5/5 Lethality and 4/5 Vile Poisons. Still no Improved Poisons in pve build.

Edited, Nov 6th 2008 6:28pm by Drayna

The only time it should be true is in PvP. Otherwise, Lethality > Vile Poisons.

Lethality and PotW look like they were designed to work in tandem. At least, that's how it looks to me.

Here's my combat fists build for raiding at 70, for what it's worth.

I actually keep it for dailies/farming (and I'm good on health due to gear), but for pure raiding you're correct.

*edit: I should note that I don't plan on any more raiding as combat unless it really out-scales Muti in Naxx25 gear. =D

Edited, Nov 6th 2008 11:24am by TherionSaysWhat

True.. luckily the other rogue seems pretty hardcore into combat. Oh, also: we've added a retadin now.. TtT is kinda neat-o.

You had other choice and if you would check link to build in my post you would have other option not to take deflection. Lightning Reflexes and Deflection and put 2 points into Endurance.