9. The rotation
Mutilate rotations are slow to start, but powerful once they get rolling. The basic idea is to build up Combo Points via Mutilate, and then use Envenom. When we Envenom, it will automatically refresh our Slice and Dice via Cut to the Chase. However, we have to start SnD ourselves. So your first CP->Finisher cycle will be Mutilating to SnD, and the rest will be Mutilating to Envenom, as long as SnD doesn't fade. Since you'll be spamming Envenom pretty frequently, this usually isn't an issue unless your SnD fades completely. This becomes your goal #1: Keep SnD up at all times.

However, before all that, we'll also want to start Hunger for Blood, as 8% damage is pretty sweet. It requires a bleed, so unless you're with a warrior sporting Deep Wounds or a feral druid, open with Garrote to get your first bleed activated. Use Hunger for Blood immediately, and then get SnD activated. This is goal #2: Keep HfB active at all times. You may have to Rupture if you're the only 'bleeder' around, just drop a 1 point Rupture, refresh HfB, and then continue on. Try to HfB as close to the expiration time as possible, without letting it drop.

So now that SnD and HfB are rolling, it comes down to building up CP and then unloading them via Envenom. If you have 4 or more CP, just Envenom to burn them, since Mutilating again is a guaranteed waste of combo points and therefor devalues the energy spent. Envenom puts a buff on your that makes you proc more poisons, and you'll want to keep the buff uptime as high as possible. This means possibly pooling your energy if you have 4 CP but you still have the Envenom buff- just don't let your energy cap. It's better to 'clip' the Envenom buff by overwriting it early than to allow your energy to cap out at 100. Learning to play the timer between the Envenom buff duration and filling your energy bar will be one of the challenges of your rotation. Here's goal #3: Maintain a high Envenom buff uptime.

Finally, and this becomes more important when using the Tricks of the Trade glyph and/or the 2-piece Tier 10 bonus, use Tricks of the Trade every time it's off cooldown. Try to give it to your highest DPS raid member, especially those without threat problems like another rogue or possibly a hunter. It's always a raid DPS increase, and with 2-piece Tier 10, it's a personal DPS increase too.

Now, let's talk about weapons and poisons. Mutilate requires one quick dagger for PvE. If you don't have one, go buy one immediately. Now, your quick dagger will have Deadly Poison applied to it, since DP is still on a percentage proc rate and will yield more procs on a quick weapon. Now, the other dagger can be slow or fast: just put Instant Poison on the slower of the two daggers, regardless of anything else.

We've got Deadly on the fast and Instant on the slow; now you're wondering which hand to put which dagger in. The cool thing about the new Mutilate is that it doesn't really matter! Put whichever dagger is the highest DPS in your MH, as your OH dagger still suffers a 25% damage penalty for dual wielding. In short: DP on fast, IP on other; highest DPS in MH, lower DPS in OH. Apply these concepts to whatever daggers you have access to, and figure out which poison/dagger goes where. If you have two of the same dagger, you'll end up with DP on your MH and Instant on your OH for maximum damage.

To recap:

• Keep HfB up at all times
• Keep SnD up at all times
• Use Envenom if you have 4+ Combo Points
• Keep Envenom buff up as often as possible
• Don't let your energy cap
• Use Tricks of the Trade on cooldown

10. Gems
Spreadsheet it. I'm serious, go download a spreadsheet and figure it out. Depending on your gear, you could be gemming any mix of attack power, hit, expertise, or haste. It's easy to spot the times to gem hit: if you're below an important cap. Other than that, only a spreadsheet will tell you what's best for you. If you just want to put a stock gem in every slot, Bright Cardinal Rubies aren't going to be terrible. The other cool thing about Mutilate is that a PvP rogue wants to also socket all AP, so your gems will match either way.

Use one Nightmare Tear to meet your meta requirement, preferably in a blue socket that will grant you the item's socket bonus. Choose the item with the biggest socket bonus but that only requires one blue gem. Speaking of the meta gem, you'll be sporting the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (RED for short). It sports another 3% increased critical strike damage, and I'm sure you're spotting the trend of "Mutilate really loves crit" by now.

11. Glyphs
We've really only got three solid major glyph choices for Mutilate, with one bonus glyph for special occasions:

• Glyph of Hunger for Blood – *Ring ring* "Hello! This is Blizzard's class balance team, we'd like to phone in a 3% boost to Mutilate rogues' DPS. Sure, we could tweak Hunger for Blood, but that means another tooltip upgrade. Can we do it via a glyph instead? Yeah, just make it as boring as the talent itself. Thanks!"
• Glyph of Mutilate – This increases the Damage Per Energy of Mutilate and lets us get our rotation started faster, and is also great for PvP.
• Glyph of Tricks of the Trade – While it's not a DPS increase for us, we're Tricks'ing anyway, so we might as well go all out with it, right?
• Glyph of Fan of Knives – Specifically for multi-target fights, this glyph can help boost our terrible multi-target DPS when using FoK is viable.

We do have a few cool minor glyphs, specifically Glyph of Safe Fall which will save you on a couple of PvE fights but also helps when you accidentally dismount midair. Glyph of Vanish is also valuable for avoiding attacks while in stealth, but since we use Vanish as a DPS cooldown, this one will typically see little use. The third minor glyph is really up to you, but I like Glyph of Blurred Speed for traversing water quickly and running over the rivers in Gun'drak.

12. Enchants for the endgame

• Weapon – Berserking, or Mongoose based on gear levels.
• Helm – Arcanum of Torment
• Cloak – Major Agility or Greater Speed (or engineering / tailoring alternative)
• Shoulders - Greater Inscription of the Axe (or scribe alternative)
• Chest – Powerful Stats
• Bracers – Greater Assault (or leatherworking alternative)
• Gloves – Crusher (or engineering alternative)
• Belt – Eternal Belt Buckle
• Pants – Icescale Leg Armor
• Boots - Icewalker
• Rings – Assault (enchanter only)

13. Links to Mutilate resources
Finally, here are a few links to some great sites that will help answer any questions you may have about the Mutilate spec (or any rogue spec, for that matter), as well as keep you up to date on current best practices:

• Encrypted Text - WoW.com (of course!)
• Elitist Jerks Rogue Forums (lurk for a bit and read the rules before posting!)
• RogueDPS (I recommend the Guide section: great info and cheat sheets of common numbers)
• ShadowPanther (my favorite site for drooling over new gear)

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