Mark of the Wild does not scale anything - it only adds on a fixed amount of the stats unlike blessing of kings which increases stats by (up to) 10%.

So don't take this the wrong way but you've just "flagged yourself as a noob"

Thanks, superfrank. You've caught a factual error that doesn't invalidate my point at all. You win a cookie.

I have to say I disagree a bit with your list of situations.

Once you get down to it there are 3 ways to play

1. pvp
2. raiding
3. solo/do a bit of all.

for raiding it really doesnt matter whether you are in 5/10/25 content the basic setup and stats you need are the same. I would say its the same for pvp. for solo it really doesnt matter you probably want to balance all stats, though I would say that solo builds are for lvling alone.

@Bunyipee: In general, yes, the things you need to worry about are more or less the same, and I was sort of talking in general and not specifically referring to rogues. However, there are subtle differences in mechanics. 5-mans generally allow a bit more freedom and situational leeway depending on your group, but in 10-mans and 25-mans (at least in BC), where your role becomes very specialized, Combat quickly become the only viable spec if you really want to maximize raid dps.

In PvP, focus in battlegrounds and arenas are similar. BGs offer a bit more freedom, and "offspecs" (spriest, fury wars, feral druids, combat rogues, etc) can be quite viable. In arenas, assuming you want to push for the upper brackets, you absolutely need to have *the* viable build & gear, which for rogues generally means shadow-step, as every other build is too fragile or lacks mobility.

For soloing/leveling, you goal is generally to maximize the kills-per-minute, basically dps and up-time. This can be quite different depending on your class. For rogues, it won't matter much, but for a class like a mage (frost vs fire) or warlock (affliction vs destro), it does greatly.

Again, this isn't saying that a player can't have all sorts of fun with "offspecs" or gear. But if you weren't interested in Min/Max'ing in the first place, this whole article and conversation would have been irrelevant.

Ravenice, you are aware that combat is no longer the only viable spec for raiding right? In fact, mutilate is more viable a spec with 3.0.2. I was hitting 2200 DPS with 2pc T6 and the badge daggers.

~Driphter