Combat Dagger

Combat Dagger is a talent build that developed from a need to move away from the flat damage of Eviscerate. Better weapons have changed the focus in PvE from burst damage popular earlier in the game to maintaining a high sustained damage. Toward this end, this build emphasizes the high damage possible from Backstab and increasing damage from normal swings by increasing attack speed with the finisher Slice and Dice.

A typical build is known at 16/25/10 and could be built as such -

Assassination - 16 points

5/5 Malice

5% crit is never a bad thing.

3/3 Ruthlessness

Useful in its own right for maintaining Slice and Dice as long as possible, and a prereq for Relentless Strikes

2/3 Improved Slice and Dice

An important talent for improving overall DPS. A possible variation is to move one point from Dagger Specialization to get 3/3 Improved Slice and Dice. This extends a 5 point Slice and Dice to 30 seconds of hasted attack speed, allowing you to backstab 5 more times and get another full 5 point Slice and Dice, even if Relentless Strikes does not trigger.

1/1 Relentless Strikes

Very useful for keeping momentum up. Slice and Dice becomes essentially free, with your odds increasing as you rack up more CP

5/5 Lethality

Backstab is going to crit, this makes it hurt more. Also, you can wow and amaze your friends and foes by backstabbing for more than a critical Eviscerate :P

Combat - 25 points

2/2 Improved Sinister Strike

Every so often, it's nice to use a nonpositional attack to rack up some CP as you find position. Moving these points to Lightning Reflexes is not terrible either.

3/3 Improved Gouge

Sneaking a bit of utility in. In PvP or duels, Improved Gouge can buy you time to run and restealth. In PvE, you can run unimpeded for a bit if you get a sticky situation. As with Improved Sinister Strikes, these points could be spent in Lighting Reflexes as well.

3/3 Improved Backstab

Another key talent. Coupled with your rogue's natural crit rate, Improved Backstab should make non-crit Backstabs so rare as to be a thing of legend.

5/5 Precision

Increasing your chance to hit is a straight increase to your damage, and only gets better as you get better gear. With patch 1.8, the cap on +hit was removed, so it is possible to reduce the dual wield miss rate to zero if desired. Here, we're interested because of the damage increase and because this is a prerequisite to Dual Wield Specialization.

2/5 Deflection

Filler points basically, and Parry is better than Dodge. It is theoretically possible to drop some points 5/5 Dual Wield Specialization 4/5 Dagger Specialization 1/1 Blade Flurry

Subtlety - 10 points

5/5 Master of Deception 5/5 Opportunity