Originally Posted by
Squirl
So much is wrong with this. What are you basing any of this on?
Stat priority:
Agi > Hit (7.5%) > Mastery > everything else (which fluctuates a lot in priority)
Shadowcraft will give you exact weights, but only the first three stay consistent or meaningfully better/worse.
Talents:
SF is the absolute best option. Subterfuge provides pretty much no DPS increase, as Ambush ~= Mut and Garrote is VERY BAD. Nightstalker is not as good as SF because a free Mut is better than a Mut x1.25.
ShS is better than Prep for every fight this tier in terms of DPS. It takes very little uptime gained from ShS (2-3s) to outdo Prep.
Glyphs:
Glyphs are absolutely not useless. Vendetta is a DPS increase if you can use the full duration, as you said, but Sprint can provide more uptime = more DPS, and Feint is extremely useful on a lot of fights this tier.
Opener:
Do not use Vendetta or SB before you open; that's completely wasted uptime and there is no burst during your opener worth sacrificing GCDs of uptime on the boss AND your CDs for. Garrote is inferior because it's a 3s tick vs Rupture's 2s tick and the bleed itself does incredibly low damage. Ambush ~= Mut for opening.
As far as what you do after that (5cp rupt, 1cp snd, 5cp env; 2-3cp rupt, 1-2cp snd, 5cp env; etc.) matters very, very little. There are numbers on EJ and the biggest difference is a few hundred DPS for the first ~20s of a fight. The opener sequence does not significantly contribute to your overall DPS unless you do something really dumb (like prepop CDs or use Garrote).
Rotation:
Using Mut with a Dispatch proc is like completely wasting 30% of a Dispatch, on average. It is never a DPS gain to hold a proc unless you have 5+CPs, a healthy Rupture, and do not have Env buff. In this case, you would Env and then Dispatch during the buff for the increased poison proc on your Dispatch.
You also never want to let SnD drop. If is going to drop because you fail or there is a lot of downtime (only Amber-Shaper, really), then you want to just hit Env. If it actually falls off, use as little CPs as possible throwing it back up. You certainly don't want to "continue with your big hits and manage your energy" whatever that means. Your "big hits" are Deadly Poison and autoattacks, both of which are significantly increased by SnD. SnD is our best finisher. Period.
All your execute advice is garbage. You should save your last use of Vendetta and SB for execute (and pref Hero, if not used before) as well as your agi pot. That means the once there is <2m in the fight, hold Vendetta; and at <3m, hold SB. It does not matter how long you hold them as long as it is less than the CD of the ability; and you do often end up holding them for more than a "SHORT" time.
You should not ever have to use Mut in execute. Dispatch is not the old Backstab. The DPS of Rupture and Env do not "teeter"; sure, you don't want to put up a full Rupture if most of it will be wasted, but that's literally in the last 10s of the boss fight where you make that decision. 10s of a fight is not going to matter at all.
The best AoE rotation has yet to be determined afaik and it will vary by the number of mobs. 5-8 targets, you will most likely want to maintain SnD and Rupture while using FoK as your builder. CT is not complete garbage either. It returns double your Anticipation charges, up to 5. That means a 7CP CT leaves you with 4CP.
Seriously, how did you become so misinformed?
EDIT: This all sounds much meaner than I intended. It's great that you put the effort into writing this up, but simply reading what's already available and backed up by sims would be good.