I’ll state this upfront – I’m a newb when it comes to raiding. I finally joined a guild (with my 80 Rogue) which does some raiding (mostly PUGs) and when asked,”Hey, ya wanna join us for (some raid abreviation)” my answer is typically, “What’s that?”

So I prodded a friend, who does raid a lot, into writing an article on Rogue Raid DPS which I found quite useful. Now it’s time to start playing around with some of this stuff and see what I can come up with and see if I can get to the point where my Rogue is useful.

My first raid was 25 Man OS (no drakes) and I beat most of the healers for DPS output. I was running a PvP mutilate build and had no clue so didn’t respec.

More browsing brought me to the ElitistJerks.com Roguecraft Spreadsheet which factors in a huge amount of stuff. It includes a Mutilate build and various defaults for maximum DPS.

I specced into that build and hit 2k DPS on the Orgrimmar practice dummies, so maybe there’s hope for cracking the top 20 of a 25 man raid?

Anyway, here’s what I’m working with for now:

Mutilate Build Details

Here’s the build on WoWhead

Note: this is a dagger build and assumes use of instant and/or deadly poisons. Lev 80 (non elite) mobs go down real fast with this build.

Assassination:

1. 5/5 Malice – more crit chance
2. 3/3 Ruthlessness – more combo points
3. 2/2 Blood Splatter – Adds to your DoTs
4. 3/3 Puncuring Wounds – +15% Mut crit, +30% Backstab crit
5. 5/5 Lethality
6. 3/3 Vile Poisons – Greater chance to actually apply poisons
7. 2/2 Fleet footed – Moved faster while stealthed and spend less time being rooted
8. 1 Cold Blood – add this into a macro with your favorite strike. I add mine to Eviscerate.
9. 5/5 Seal fate – Use less energy
10. 3/3 Focused attacks – gain energy from crits
11. 3/3 Find Weakness – All damage increased by 6%
12. 1 Mutilate – Your bread and butter attack
13. 3/3 Turn the tables – Adds 6% crit chance to bread and butter attacks. lots of arguing going on over whether to choose this or 3/3 Master Poisoner. Comments?
14. 5/5 Cut to the chance – lets you keep Slice and Dice up permanently.
15. 1 Hunger for Blood – More damage, Rarr! Edit: Will be changed (improved?) when the 3.1 patch hits.

Combat

1. 5/5 Dual Weild Specialization – More DPS
2. 5/5 Precision – Your Dual Weild gives a major “to hit” penalty. This compensates somewhat.
3. 3/5 Close Quarters cbt. – More crit chance

Subtlety

1. 5/5 Relentless Strikes – Restores energy
2. 2/2 Opportunity – +20% damage to your bread and butter strikes.

Weapons I’m using right now. Both drop off the Auction House.

1. Main – Titansteel Shanker
2. Off hand – Librarian’s Paper Cutter

Enchants:

• Exceptional Agility (+26 ag) on Main hand
• Titanium wpn chain on off hand (+28 hit rating)

I’ll be playing with some weapon choices, poison combos, gems, etc. to see what I can do to boost DPS.  Your comments? Thoughts? Changes? What do you have to say?

Edit 4/9: Joined a PUG into 10 man OS. Hit almost 2400 dps on the trash (#2 on the DPS list,) but the group disintigrated before the first drake. No one died, but people suddenly realized they had to wash their socks, so poof. All of a sudden I’m raid leader with two people in the raid.

The Recount addon said I had a miss rate of almost 15%, so I guess I need to look for more Hit ratng. Might try the Titanium Weapon Chain on the main hand as a start and swap an Ag gem for a Hit gem.

Changed off-hand to Namlak’s Supernumerary Sticker

Mongoose provides better DPS than Exceptional Agility and Berserking is better still, but Mongoose is over 400 gold (and Berserking is a lot more.) I’ll see if I can get better weapons before blowing that much cash on Berserking.