Another Mutilate Leveling QuestionFollow

I have pretty much been combat all my way to 71. A bit of sub when I was trying to grind out some honor but combat as a whole. I kind of want to give mutilate a try and see what I think of it. My question is, can I expect to perform well (decently) with run of the mill auction house daggers until I can get something better? Rogue seems to be more dependent on gear than any other class I have played so I worry that just going in with AH daggers won't cut it.

Also, I am finding it hard to determine which types of gear I want to use.. stat wise I mean. What should the main stats I go for be. I am finding that if I want AP I may have to sacrifice crit or hit rating. If I want hit rating, I may have to sacrifice AP and crit etc. Then I keep finding stuff in Northrend that has all kinds of haste. I guess it's just a bit confusing trying to decide what actually helps my character the most.

I have gotten plenty of tips and pointers from Theo's guide but it's more geared toward level cap and raiding/PVP. I saw the other discussion about muti leveling and I think it was Theo who suggested this but I doubt I will be killing mobs in a single finisher with AH daggers so I might want to put some points into Ruthlessness.

Poison hit cap is actually 315 I believe.

Ok.. Thanks for the reassurance. By AH daggers I pretty much meant whatever I could find on the AH. Ended up with two "of the bandit" daggers. Neither seems all that spectacular but, looking on wowhead, there don't appear to be a lot of dagger options available (to me) right now.

I gave it a try and.. well.. it's odd. So accustomed to combat that it took me a while to get used to it. When it crits there are some pretty impressive numbers. I can only imagine what it would be like for someone with really good gear. No badges of justice or anything like that. The ones I do have are almost all AV and when I went to look at the vendor, all the stuff I wanted used EoS badges. This time last week I was 62ish so I haven't done a lot with him yet but level.

Thanks again.

Would suggest Tundra instead myself ... there's a series of quests (very cool quests, I might add) you can start as soon as you get there which ultimately gives you a ~91 dps blue dagger, and some of the quests on your way to the end of that line reward you with some 84 dps green daggers.

However, not sure about how much on the Tundra is soloable (I only did the line to get the blue staff on my mage), but the entire Zone of Howling fjord was soloable, and rewards some neat trinkets and a few pieces of gear (wasn't really paying attention to the leather and melee stuff ... but when I did, it looked good).

edit - this is from a horde perspective only btw - I believe the questline for the alliance to get the blue reward has a group component to it, and I have no idea how easy/difficult it is ... also the "Coolness" of the quests I mentioned also revolved around horde (a real horde icon is involved)

[i]Edited, Dec 3rd 2008 10:16am by robertlofthouse

Just to short cut your searching efforts : Fang of the desolate soul is the blue dagger I was talking about. It is rewarded by this Alliance quest or the Horde Counterpart.