#0 - March 4, 2007, 3:44 a.m.
Mutilate is a 41-point talent in the Assassination tree. The in-game tooltip reads:
Instant
Requires Daggers
Instantly attacks with both weapons for an additional 44/63/88/101 with each weapon. Damage is increased by 50% against Poisoned targets. Must be behind the target. Awards 2 combo points.
Facts:
- Any poison that applies a debuff to your target triggers the 50% increased damage. This includes Wound Poison, Mind-numbing, Crippling, Deadly, all hunter Stings, as well as Snake Trap (which is currently bugged and counts as a poison on poison immune mobs - this may get fixed soon) and Blind. This is especially important for encounters where mobs appear to be immune to poisons, such as The Curator (Deadly doesn't work, Wound does).
- It is more efficient to use a slow dagger in the off-hand, as well as the main hand.
- Mutilate does roughly 2% more damage than Backstab, but generates 48% more combo points than Backstab (source: http://www.wowwiki.com/Mutilate_vs_Backstab)
- Mutilate builds are viable raiding builds, contrary to what some people might say (if you want to see for yourself, check the spreadsheet found on http://www.bleedo.net/rogue/).
- Mutilate only reaches it's full potential when mobs are poisoned it, meaning builds focused on Mutilate don't fare well against mobs that can not be poisoned, such as Elementals.
- Mutilate builds don't give you alot of freedom in spending combo points, due to the 41 points ones needs to invest in the Assassination tree.
- Mutilate's critical strike chance is calculated as follows. Let's assume you have a critical strike chance of 15%, and you have 5 points invested in Malice. That puts your critical strike chance at 20%. Each attack when you use Mutilate has a 20% chance to crit, and there's a 4% (20%*20%) chance that both will crit, so the possibility that at least one of the attacks will crit (and trigger Seal Fate) is 36% (20%+20%-4%).
The 2 main Mutilate builds:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/rogue/talents.html?0253001055021325010510053052000050000000000000000000000000000000000 (Raid-/Arena-oriented) (the 5 points in Lightning Reflexes can be spent in Improved Gouge and/or Improved SS)
Discussion: Gouge is a 4 second incapacitate at 45 energy.
That means 1 point in Imp. Gouge makes it an energy neutral Combo Point.
3 Points extend the duration to 5.5 seconds, that means that on average you gain 10 energy points from a gouge - that's fairly usefull, and the real strength of putting points into it if you can spare them. Worst case you have 2 ticks for 4 energy during a gouge, best case you get 3 ticks for 60 energy - that's highly unlikely with 0 or 1 points in Imp. Gouge.
And when comparing them to dodge: you can get higher dodge values by improving your gear. Sure 5% dodge looks very juicy right now with the dampened dodge values we're running around with when we hit 70; but you cannot (ever) make gouge an energy neutral CP (or a CP +10 average energy) without Imp Gouge, no matter what gear you use. Bear that in mind.
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/rogue/talents.html?0253001055021325010513000000000000000000000000502000000000000000000 (Add the remaining talent points to any tree you wish)
Mutilate's issues
- Positioning: you must be behind the target in order to use Mutilate. This can be a nuissance at times, but remember that no monster/player can parry/block from behind, so it's not really a nuissance.
- Control: Mutilate builds offer a medium amount of control, situated between that of a Combat build and a Subtlety build.
The true strength of Mutilate, however, comes from the tree it is situated in. You will have access to a number of useful talents, such as
- Quick Recovery, which helps reduce downtime while grinding, allows you to regain more health faster when you have to bandage in dungeons/raids at certain bosses, takes care of energy loss due to dodges/blocks/parries
- Fleet-Footed, which kicks in more often than you'd think (http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b146/Lancelot1/WoWScrnShot_021507_195105.jpg) and stacks with Camouflage, granting movement speed equal to up to 92% of normal movement speed while stealthed
- Seal Fate, which is arguably one of the best talents, allowing for insane combo point generation when paired with Mutilate.
- Vigor, a very nice all-around talent, worth the point you spend on it even without the Nightslayer set bonus.
- Find Weakness - which is especially nice when paired with Improved Kidney Shot, granting an approximate 14% increase in damage while both are active.
Most of these talents aren't accessible with your average Combat/Subtlety build, because those usually restrict you to (give or take) 17 points in the Assassination tree.
I don't think this post is quite that comprehensive yet (or worth a link in a sticky, since Vaneras kindly asked us to reduce the number of stickies), which is why I'm asking the Rogue community to help. Please post any information I have omitted that you consider useful, and I'll do my best to keep the main post edited.
Thanks for reading,
Tardara
Edit: added some more info about some of the higher tier talents in the Assassination tree, added info about Mutilate's critical strike rate, added a note next to the first talent build.
