Hai,

I've been reading these forums for a good while now and it seems questions about particular talents seem to be a subject that never grows old. As such, I've decided to create this thread to adress every single talent currently included in our talent trees. I hope you find it informative.

The talents are rated with either very poor, poor, decent, worthwhile or excellent according to how useful I find them.


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ASSASSINATION

Improved Eviscerate: Increases the damage done by your eviscerate ability by 5/10/15%.
PvP rating: Worthwhile
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: This talent was largely more popular at level 60, when Eviscerate was actually worth its combo points. Although Eviscerate hasn't really scaled with the expansion to any notable extent, this talent at least makes it marginally more useful.

Remorseless Attacks: After killing a opponent that yields experience or honor, gives you a 20/40% increased critical strike chance on your next Sinister Strike, Backstab, Hemmorhage, Mutilate, Ambush or Ghostly Strike. Lasts 20 sec.
PvP rating: Poor
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Remorseless Attacks is somewhat of a must-have when you're grinding your way to level 70. It's rather a waste for anything else, however, as you will have to land the killing blow for it to be activated.

Malice: Increases your critical strike chance by 1/5%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: One of those talents you simply get, no questions asked. This is further supported by the fact that it's required to unlock Lethality (see below).

Ruthlessness: Gives your finishing moves a 20/40/60% chance to add a combo point to your target.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Ruthlessness is a very useful talent in all areas of the game. Not only does it allow for more effective cycles of SnD/Rupture in a raid situation, it also enables you to spam Deadly Throw with some luck (lowering your vurnerability to kiting by a notable extent).

Murder: Increases all damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast and Dragonkin targets by 1/2%.
PvP rating: Decent
Solo PvE rating: Worthwhile
Raid PvE rating: Worthwhile
Comment: I feel that Murder is a somewhat underrated talent - I'd say that 2% more damage caused to a wide range of bosses and even other players is quite worth two talent points.

Improved Backstab: Increases the critical strike chance of your backstab ability by 10/20/30%.
PvP rating: Situational
Solo PvE rating: Situational
Raid PvE rating: Situational
Comment: A no-brainer for any dagger talent build that doesn't include Mutilate.

Relentless Strikes: Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Relentless Strikes is perhaps one of the very best rogue talents. More often than not, it renders your Slice and Dice, Rupture and Kidney Shot abilities free of charge.

Improved Expose Armor: Increases the armor reduced by your Expose Armor ability by an additional 25/50%.
PvP rating: Situational
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Situational
Comment: Another ability that hasn't really scaled in The Burning Crusade, Expose Armor is not a sensible use of combo points in most situations. Investing two points in this talent will increase the armor reduced by a mere thousand. Then again, this can prove worthwhile in some situations (as a substitute for Sunder Armor in PvE or as a considerable damage boost in PvP).

Lethality: Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab, Ghostly Strike, Mutilate, Shiv and Hemmorhage abilities by 6/12/18/24/30%.
PvP rating: Worthwhile
Solo PvE rating: Worthwhile
Raid PvE rating: Worthwhile
Comment: Lethality is a strong talent that increases your (yellow) damage output by a substantial amount.

Vile Poisons: Increases the damage dealt by your poisons and Envenom ability by 4/8/12/16/20% and gives your poisons an additional 8/16/24/32/40% chance to resist dispel effects.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Situational
Raid PvE rating: Situational
Comment: Vile Poisons is an underrated talent. It's popular among PvE-oriented Mutilate talent builds for its notable increase in damage dealt by Envenom, however this is far from its only area of expertise. A crippling poison that is 40% resistant to dispel effects makes you less vurnerable to being kited.

Improved Poisons: Increases the chance to apply poisons to your target by 2/4/6/8/10%.
PvP rating: Worthwhile
Solo PvE rating: Worthwhile
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Improved Poisons will increase the chance you apply poisons to your target by a notable amount, increasing your damage output and/or ability to control opponents.

Fleet Footed: Increases your chance to resist movement impairing effects by 5/10% and increases your movement speed by 4/8%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: A wide range of potentially fatal abilities fall into this category (Harmstring, Frost Nova, Frost Shock, Wing Clip, Crippling Poison) which makes this talent very useful in PvP where being in your opponent's face at all times is king. The passive increase to movement speed is a nice bonus, however this can also be accomplished by a meta gem or enchant (note that these do not stack with the movement speed increase provided by this talent).

Cold Blood: When activated, increases the critical strike chance of your next offensive ability by 100%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Decent
Comment: Ah, Cold Blood - the very essence of burst on demand. An excellent key talent in whole, and useful for a wide range of abilities.

Improved Kidney Shot: While affected by your Kidney Shot, target receives an additional 3/6/9% damage from all sources.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Worthwhile
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Improved Kidney Shot is a very popular choice in both 30/0/31, 21/40/0 and 21/0/40. Combined with Find Weakness, it is lethal. It shines in group PvP and arenas specifically, seeing as how your entire team will do 9% additional damage to a target that's locked down. Unfortunately entirely useless in raids, as most mobs and all bosses are immune to stuns.

Quick Recovery: All healing effects on you are increased by 10/20%. In addition, your finishing moves cost 40/80% less energy when they fail to hit.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Poor
Comment: Quick Recovery increases your survivability by a notable extent in arenas and largely contributes to a your team's lasting power.

Seal Fate: Your critical strikes from abilities that add combo points have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to add an additional combo point.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Seal Fate is tremendously effective with backstab-oriented builds as it contributes to the otherwise poor combo point generation by a large extent.

Master Poisoner: Reduces the chance your poisons will be resisted by 5/10% and increases your chance to resist poison effects by an additional 15/30%.
PvP rating: Situational
Solo PvE rating: Very Poor
Raid PvE rating: Very Poor
Comment: Seeing as how poisons are seldom resisted and that resisting poisons yourself is generally only useful against other rogues, this talent is rather useless.

Vigor: Increases your maximum energy by 10.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Very Poor
Comment: Vigor opens for a wide range of stun-locking capabilities.

Deadened Nerves: Decreases all physical damage taken by 1-5%.
PvP rating: Poor
Solo PvE rating: Very Poor
Raid PvE rating: Very Poor
Comment: 5% less physical damage taken is a very small amount for such a large investment.

Find Weakness: Your finishing moves increases the damage of all offensive abilities by 2/4/6/8/10% for 10 sec.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Find Weakness is quite deadly and contributes to your damage output in all areas of the game. (note: the damage increase only effects abilities, not whit edamage)

Mutilate: Instantly attacks with both weapons for an additional [x] with each weapon. Damage is increased by 50% against poisoned targets. Must be behind the target. Awards 2 combo points.
PvP rating: Situational
Solo PvE rating: Situational
Raid PvE rating: Situational
Comment: Mutilate is an ability you either hate or love. Quite essentially, it's a more reliable version of backstab.

COMBAT

Improved Gouge: Increases the duration of your gouge ability by 0.5/1/1.5 sec.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: With 3 points in Improved Gouge, you will essentially gain one combo point and ten energy by using it. It also enables a popular way of re-stealthing in the middle of a fight.

Improved Sinister Strike: Decreases the energy cost of your Sinister Strike ability by 3/5.
PvP rating: Situational
Solo PvE rating: Situational
Raid PvE rating: Situational
Comment: A no-brainer for talent builds that evolve around Sinister Strike.

Lightning Reflexes: Increases your Dodge chance by 1-5%.
PvP rating: Decent
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: 5% increased chance to dodge is only marginally useful in PvP and can work against you as much as it can work for you (namely facing overpower-happy warriors). Generally not worth spending points in unless you've really got a thing for dodging that Gouge.

Improved Slice and Dice: Increases the duration of your Slice and Dice ability by 15/30/45%.
PvP rating: Decent
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Investing 3 points in this talent is absolutely essential in terms of PvE. It's also become somewhat useful in PvP, as white damage is a substantial amount of our damage output in certain situations.

Deflection: Increases your parry chance by 1-5%.
PvP rating: Poor
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: 5% increased chance to parry is only marginally useful in PvP and is generally only invested in to unlock Riposte.

Precision: Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 1-5%.
PvP rating: Worthwhile
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: 5% increased chance to hit is a large amount. Well worth every talent points.

Endurance: Decreases the cooldown of your Sprint and Evasion abilities by 45/90 sec.
PvP rating: Poor
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Poor
Comment: Sprint and Evasion are core abilities, however decreasing their cooldown by a mere 90 seconds will hardly help in anything but exceptionally long arena battles and battlegrounds.

Riposte: A strike that becomes active after parrying an opponent's attack. This attack deals 150% weapon damage and disarms the opponent for 6 sec.
PvP rating: Decent
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Riposte is fun, however serious PvPers are immune to disarm by talents (arms warriors) or items/enchants (weapon chain, master thief's gloves). The attack will deal deal 150% weapon damage, however, which is rather fantastic for a mere 10 energy. Entirely useless in raids, as you're not likely to parry some random and very menacing mob's attack and even less likely to have time to disarm him before you die a miserable death.

Improved Sprint: Gives a 50/100% chance to remove any movement impairing effects when you activate your Sprint ability.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Situational
Raid PvE rating: Situational
Comment: Improved Sprint is a wonderous thing, and well worth the talent points indeed. While being perhaps most efficient in PvP, it can also be a life-saver in certain PvE encounters (such as Shade of Aran, Lady Vashj etc).

Improved Kick: Gives your Kick ability a 50/100% chance to silence your opponent for 2 sec.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: A 2-second silence is priceless against enemy casters and healers. Coupled with Garrote's 3 seconds of silence and Cloak of Shadows, Improved Kick is amazingly effective against casters and healers alike.

Dagger Specialization: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with daggers by 1-5%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Like Malice - one of those talents you simply get, no questions asked. 5% crit is 5% crit.

Dual Wield Specialization: Increases the damage done by your off-hand weapon by 10/20/30/40/50%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Dual Wield Specialization offers the largest increase in net damage output of all rogue talents. It is the very backbone of PvE-oriented talent builds and largely effictive in PvP as well.

Mace Specialization: Increases your skill with maces by 2/4/6/8/10 and gives you a 1-5% chance to stun your target for 3 sec with a mace.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Situational
Comment: A very popular choice among top-shot PvPers these days, as the timely stun can save your life and/or allow for a seamless Kidney Shot without having to worry about it being dodged or parried. Lagely useless in PvE because targets are generally immune to stun (except in certain situations, such as the Solarian encounter, where a timely stun might save the day).

Blade Flurry: Increases your attack speed by 20%. In addition, attacks strike an additional nearby opponent. Lasts 15 sec.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Blade Flurry enables you to dish out obscurely high amounts of damage in certain situations. It's also highly useful in raids because of the 20% haste.

Sword Specialization: Gives you a 1-5% chance to get an extra attack on the same target after dealing damage with your sword.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Much like Malice, Dagger Specialization and Fist Specialization. Since 2.1 no longer resets your swing timer, making it very viable indeed.

Fist Weapon Specialization: Increases your critical strike chance with fist weapons by 1-5%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: 5% crit - need I say more?

Blade Twisting: Gives your Sinister Strike, Backstab, Gouge and Shiv abilities a 10/20% chance to daze the target for 8 sec.
PvP rating: Worthwhile
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Dazing a target for 8 seconds can be quite effective in PvP, particularly much so because it cannot be dispelled (in fact, not even Blessing of Freedom will remove it).

Weapon Expertise: Increases your skill with dagger, sword and fist weapons by 5/10.
PvP rating: Decent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: +10 weapon skill equals roughly 0.40% crit and 0.40% hit. In other words, quite worth the two talent points even after the huge nerf to weapon skill.

Aggression: Increases the damage of your Sinister Strike and Eviscerate abilities by 3/6%.
PvP rating: Situational
Solo PvE rating: Situational
Raid PvE rating: Situational
Comment: A notable amount of increased damage that is well worth the two talent points for Sinister Strike-oriented taent builds.

Vitality: Increases your total stamina by 2/4% and your total agility by 1/2%.
PvP rating: Poor
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Poor
Comment: This talent is rather poor for being so deep into combat, however +4% stamina could still be worth two talent points if you've nowhere else to spend them. +2% agility is a pathetically small amount and to be quite honest I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhat of a mock to the rogue community.

Adrenaline Rush: Increases your Energy regeneration by 100% for 15 seconds.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Adrenaline Rush is arguably a rogue's strongest cooldown. The amount of hurt you can lay down during Adrenaline Rush is awe-inspiring.

Nerves of Steel: Increases your chance to resist Stun and Fear effects by an additional 5/10%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Poor
Comment: 10% is a notable amount of resistance to two of a rogue's greatest enemies. Well worth the two talent points indeed.

Combat Potency: Gives your successful off-hand attacks a 20% chance to generate 3/6/9/12/15 energy.
PvP rating: Worthwhile
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Combat Potency is a very viable talent for PvP and somewhat of a must-have for PvE. The amount of energy generation is impressive with a decent amount of hit rating, to say the least.

Surprise Attacks: Your finishing moves can no longer be dodged, and the damage dealt by your Sinister Strike, Backstab, Shiv and Gouge abilities is increased by 10%.
PvP rating: Worthwhile
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: 10% increased damage of your most spammed abilities is quite noteworthy indeed, however I daresay it should perhaps be even 15% being located so deep in the talent tree. There's nothing like slamming a Kidney Shot in the face of a rogue thinking he's perfectly safe in Evasion!

SUBTLETY

Master of Deception: Reduces the chance enemies have to detect you while in stealth mode.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Investing talent points in Master of Deception will increase your stealthing ability by a noteworthy extent. Quite worthwhile in PvP, albeit somewhat less useful in high-end arena combat (seeing as how you'll typhically only spend the first few seconds stealthed anyway).

Opportunity: Increases the damage dealt when striking from behind with your Backstab, Mutilate, Garrote and Ambush abilities by 4/8/12/16/20%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: A somewhat elementary talent for dagger-oriented talent builds. This talent will increase your damage output with named abilities by a dazzlign 20% for a mere five talent points.

Sleight of Hand: Reduces the chance you are critically hit by melee and ranged attacks by 1/2% and increases the threat reduced by your Feint ability by 10/20%.
PvP rating: Situational
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Poor
Comment: Sleight of Hand is not really a worthwhile talent, although its secondary attribute of increasing the effect of Feint may be remotely useful in Combat Hemmorhage builds.

Dirty Tricks: Increases the range of your Blind and Sap abilities by 2/5 yards and reduces the energy cost of your Blind and Sap abilities by 25/50%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Dirty Tricks is a somewhat new and extremely useful talent for PvP. It will enable you to sap opponents much more easily and efficiently. The range increase on Blind also reduces your vurnerability to kiting.

Camouflage: Increases your speed while stealthed by 3/6/9/12/15% and reduces the cooldown of your Stealth ability by 5 sec.
PvP rating: Decent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Camouflage is really a somewhat useless talent these days (particularly much so for arenas and whatnot), however it's certainly a lot of fun.

Initiative: Gives you a 25/50/75% chance to add an additional combo point to your target when using your Ambush, Garrote or Cheap Shot abilities.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Initiative can be very helpful in PvP for obvious reasons, however it is equally useless in raids because you typhically only get to use these abilities a few times even for prolonged boss fights).

Ghostly Strike: A strike that deals 125% weapon damage and increases your chance to dodge by 15%. Lasts 7 sec.
PvP rating: Decent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Ghostly Strike can be used occasionally and typhically deals somewhat higher damage than Sinister Strike (according to the quality of your weapons). It is quite efficient against enemy rogues, enhancement shamans and whatnot. Unfortunately, a great number of rogues suffer under the misconception that Evasion combined with Ghostly Strike will make you entirely immune to melee attacks. This is not true, as dodge is capped at 75%.

Improved Ambush: Increases the critical strike chance of your Ambush ability by 15/30/45%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Ambush provides rather nice burst damage against cloth, leather and mail-wearing opponents when it crits. Investing three talent points in this talent makes it crit more often. You do the math.

Setup: Gives you a 15/30/45% chance to add a combo point to your target after dodging an attack or fully resisting one of their spells.
PvP rating: Worthwhile
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Setup is a largely underestimated talent that can rack up an impressive amount of combo points during Evasion and/or Cloak of Shadows.

Elusiveness: Reduces the cooldown of your Vanish and Blind abilities by 45/90 seconds.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Poor
Comment: Elusiveness reduces the cooldown of Blind to merely 90 seconds, which will increase your utility and surviablity in arenas by a notable extent.

Serrated Blades: Causes your attacks to ignore 140/280/560 of your target's armor and increases the damage dealt by your Rupture ability by 10/20/30%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: Serrated Blades is an absolutely fantastic talent. In fact, one would gladly spend three talent points for either of its two attributes. Passively ignoring 560 armor and increasing the damage dealt by Rupture by a dazzling 30% is amazing for PvE and PvP alike.

Heightened Senses: Increases your stealth detection and decreases the chance you are hit by spells and ranged attacks by 2/4%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Ensuring an opener against enemy stealthers is often vital, which makes this talent quite worth the investments. Its secondary attribute is a nice bonus as well.

Preparation: When activated, this ability immediately finishes the cooldown of your Vanish, Sprint, Evasion, Cold Blood, Adrenaline Rush and Premeditation abilities.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Poor
Comment: Ah, Preparation - there's been made entire movies about this talent. It enables you to use all of the abilities that are the very core of our class twice in a single fight. Enough said.

Dirty Deeds: Decreases the Energy cost of your Cheap Shot and Garrote abilities by 10/20.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Like Vigor, Dirty Deeds enables a wide range of effective stun locks. Well worth one or even two talent points (although only one is required for the most popular variants).

Hemmorhage: An instant strike that damages an opponent and causes the target to hemmorhage, increasing physical damage dealt by 10. Lasts 30 charges of 15 sec. Awards 1 combo point.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Worthwhile
Raid PvE rating: Worthwhile
Comment: Hemmorhage is the king of stunlocks, as it provides an immense amount of control due to its small energy cost. It's worth noting that Hemmorhage is not a normalized attack, which means that it scales better with slow weapons than Sinister Strike, Backstab and other rogue abilities.

Master of Subtlety: Attacks made while stealthed and 6 seconds after breaking stealth cause an addtional 4/7/10% damage.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Decent
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Master of Subtlety will increase your burst damage by an impressive amount and can be useful for grinding (to the extent that Subtletly-oriented builds are effective for grinding). It is, like other talents in this tree, utterly useless for raids because you'll find yourself stealthed a preciously small amount of time.

Deadliness: Increases your attack power by 2/4/6/8/10%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: 10% more attack power! Well worth the investment indeed.

Enveloping Shadows: Increases your chance to avoid Area of Effect attacks by an additional 5/10/15%.
PvP rating: Situational
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: The only area of effect attack I can think of that would be worth resisting is Frost Nova, and I most certainly wouldn't invest three talent points to resist it 15% of the time (and frankly, neither should you).

Premeditation: When used, adds 2 combo points to your target. These combo points must be used or added to within 10 seconds or the combo points will dissapear.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Premeditation enables a wide range of new and exciting combinations.

Cheat Death: Gives you a 10/20/30% chance to completely avoid any damaging attack that would otherwise kill you.
PvP rating: Very poor
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: This talent may seem nice at first, but considering you'll find yourself dying to DOTs more often than not and the fact that most abilities intended to finish people off are overly spammable (such as Execute) you'll be better of investing your talent points elsewhere.

Sinister Calling: Increases your total agility by 3/6/9/12/15%.
PvP rating: Excellent
Solo PvE rating: Excellent
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
Comment: More crit, attack power and dodge is never a bad thing!

Shadowstep: Attempts to step through the shadows and reappear behind your opponent. The damage of your next Ambush, Garrote or Backstab is increased by 20%. Lasts 10 sec.
PvP rating: Very poor
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Shadowstep is rubbish. Trading a mere +20% damage to Ambush/Garrote and a very situational and limited mini-teleport for the advantages of Cold Blood is a hilariously bad choice. It may be fun to see those big numbers fly, but know that they come at a quite enourmous disadvantage as a whole.

sweet work - reported for sticky!

On a side note -what's the developer's thing for Gouge? We have a number of talents that increase the damage dealt by an ability that's intended to incapacitate our target and deals pathetic damage. What's next? o_O

Shadowstep: Attempts to step through the shadows and appear behind your enemy. The damage of your next Ambush, Backstab, Garrote or Gouge ability is increased by 20%?

-.- I wouldn't be surprised. Then again, who am I to complain about extra damage, however small?

Agree - very nice work. Theres a couple of instances where you've marked something down (imp slice n dice being one) in a particular area then given it glowing praise in that area in the comments. Might be worth a quick check as your guarenteed to get a troll or 2 give you hell for it.

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Q u o t e:
Agree - very nice work. Theres a couple of instances where you've marked something down (imp slice n dice being one) in a particular area then given it glowing praise in that area in the comments. Might be worth a quick check as your guarenteed to get a troll or 2 give you hell for it.

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Oh snap, thanks! Corrected.

Edit the Imp. SnD section - it's not 'poor' for raid PvE.

Otherwise - good stuff. I may try blade twisting next time I rearrange my combat filler points, sounds better than I thought it was.

lethality is not 30% total on a critical strike. its 30% more critical strike bonus dmg.

it adds 15% more dmg

so a 1k crit doesnt become 1.3k but 1150.

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Q u o t e:
lethality is not 30% total on a critical strike. its 30% more critical strike bonus dmg.

it adds 15% more dmg

so a 1k crit doesnt become 1.3k but 1150.

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Correct, thanks for notifying. Silly mistake on my part.

Nice guide, could well help a lot of people.

One suggestion i'd make is including some kind of key decribing the scale you have used for rating the different talents in the three areas. This would aid with the clairty of the guide overall imo.

Nice guide however some mistakes.

Quick recovery is not poor for Raiding, it reduces the amount of healing required. This is sitautional really, depends on how good your healers are in the raid. If they are a bit on the poor side its a good talent to have if they are imba then its not so good.

I was horrified with the mace spec comments. Poor for solo and very poor for raiding? Are you for real? Mace stun procs can save your life in solo grinding and could save a healer in raiding. There are plenty of mace specced raiders out there that would disagree with you plus the +mace spec improves your +hit on targets which is something the other builds cant boast about. Ammend please.

Perfect! Thats the list I wanted to post but always been too lazy to do that! Thanks a lot for all your effort!
/hug

change Murder
Raid PvE rating: Worthwhile
to
Raid PvE rating: Excellent
because 2% more damage is quite a lot on fights over time (such as boss-fights)

Edit Quick Recovery.
For solo PvE it's really handy, you gain lots of extra healing with bandages with is good when grinding and in raid PvE your failed abilities lose less energy, which ofc, we use to deal damage..over a large amount of time, the damage you've done from the saved energy from Quick Recovery is quite a big amount - besides that, healers don't have to heal you that much and bandaging in critical moments heals you for more which saves your healer's mana. I'd say quite decent for PvE too! : )

Id say riposte is great for solo PVE if you are going with a SS build! You will have 10% parry chance that will reduce melee damage taken, and my ripostes dealt more damage than SSes.

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Edit Quick Recovery.
For solo PvE it's really handy, you gain lots of extra healing with bandages with is good when grinding and in raid PvE your failed abilities lose less energy, which ofc, we use to deal damage..over a large amount of time, the damage you've done from the saved energy from Quick Recovery is quite a big amount - besides that, healers don't have to heal you that much and bandaging in critical moments heals you for more which saves your healer's mana. I'd say quite decent for PvE too! : )

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QFT.

the Quick Recovery part was the only bit i disagreed with. the rest is very nice though :)

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COMBAT




Blade Twisting: Gives your Sinister Strike, Backstab, Gouge and Shiv abilities a 10/20% chance to daze the target for 8 sec.
PvP rating: Worthwhile
Solo PvE rating: Very poor
Raid PvE rating: Very poor
Comment: Dazing a target for 8 seconds can be quite effective in PvP, particularly much so because it cannot be dispelled (in fact, not even Blessing of Freedom will remove it).

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Thats not entirely true, BoF does infact remove blade twisting. I tested it a few days ago, with a pala friend of mine.

nicely done.

if not mistaking you missed improved poisons in assassination.

ps: get a girlfriend or something :D

You forgot Improved Poisons, which is one of the better talents in the Assassination tree, definitely for PvE.

I disagree with your judgement of Lethality. It is so and so in PvE and not particularly great in PvP. It's highly overrated, with the lower crit chance and resilience, main damage coming from white attacks and so on it doesn't live up to pre TBC. I would probably take it in an assassination heavy dagger build, otherwise not.