Mutilate

Mutilate

A work in progress - hiry

Mutilate is a new spec from patch 2.0. With the introduction of 41 point talents, we have had exciting new changes in how rogues can inflict more stabbity death. Mutilate takes its name from the defining skill at the bottom of the Assassination tree.

Mutilate is a strike with both weapons from the rear arc, adding more and more damage with each rank and gaining a 50% damage multiplier on poisoned foes. Each hand calculates crit separately, so you can have neither crit, the main hand crit, the off hand crit or both hands crit. The miss/dodge/parry seems to be calculated only once, so you cannot have only one hand hit and the other hand miss. A successful Mutilate adds two combo points to the target. Seal Fate will only add one additional combo point for a crit, regardless if both hands crit. The poisoned condition is fairly lax, accepting Crippling Poison, Mind-Numbing Poison, Deadly Poison, Wounding Poison, the various Hunter Stings, and even the poison effect from the Chained Essence of Erikanus trinket from the Sunken Temple apparently.

A level 60 build could be built as such, with its focus on leveling in the expansion pack -

Assassination - 42 points

3/3 Improved Eviscerate

Mutilate tends to have plenty of combo points to use. Even with the improved debuff list, Rupture might not be the best choice. Eviscerate is usually a solid finisher choice in PvP as well. These points could also go in Remorseless Attacks in a leveling build.

5/5 Malice

5% crit is never a bad thing.

3/3 Ruthlessness

Even though it has been unlinked from Relentless Strikes, many rogues are still choosing Ruthlessness. The extra combo point still represents saved energy and time.

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. Eviscerate winds up costing 10 energy and becoming a

5/5 Lethality

Mutilate builds can be said to do approximately 50-60% of their damage with Mutilate. Increasing the damage on your Mutilate crits is thus, a good thing.

5/5 Improved Poisons

As poisons are a critical part of doing the most damage possible with Mutilate, improving your chances of getting this debuff up is a solid choice. Some rogues feel that they do not need all 5 points here and move the points elsewhere. I personally prefer to take as much chance out as possible. - hiry

1/1 Cold Blood

This talent has always been solid in PvP for providing burst damage exactly when you need it. It hasn't changed and it's still good. Currently, Cold Blood will cause both hands to crit on a Mutilate, which generally deals more damage than using Cold Blood on a 5 point Eviscerate. Your mileage may vary due to gear levels.

2/2 Quick Recovery

A very popular talent as it has two very useful effects. First, it increases healing so you get more impact from bandaging, drinking potions or getting heals. Secondly, it refunds energy on missed finishers.

3/3 Improved Kidney Shot

This is more of a leveling/grinding/PvP talent, but it is so good with Mutilate that it can be hard to pass up. When an enemy is affected by Kidney Shot, they take more damage. This effect stacks with the self-buff of Find Weakness so Mutilate rogues can get some monstrous numbers. Following a Kidney Shot with a Cold Blood boosted Mutilate is quite fun and very effective.

5/5 Seal Fate

Mutilate obviously generates more combo points than a Backstab. Seal Fate just increases the gap. While you could pass up Seal Fate, it would be hard to explain why.

2/2 Master Poisoner

Master Poisoner is my choice for the loose points, but there are several other excellent places for them. Again, I'm minimizing the chance that my enemy will not be poisoned. -hiry

1/1 Vigor

The ten extra energy may not sound like a lot, but it makes a classic stun chain possible and leads to other uses later. In addition, it is an effect hard to find elsewhere.

5/5 Find Weakness

Find Weakness causes the rogue to self-buff after every finisher, increasing the amount of damage dealt by offensive abilities. This has an interesting effect on game play, as most Mutilate rogues conserve energy after building combo points to maximize their damage by using special abilities during this ten second window.

1/1 Mutilate

The reason why you've dropped at least forty points in the Assassination tree.

Combat - 2 points

2/2 Improved Sinister Strike

Every so often, you find yourself unable to find the backside. Alternately, you want to just blitz something down. I personally find it hard to live without this talent. -hiry

Subtlety - 7 points

5/5 Opportunity

An obvious choice to increase the damage dealt with Mutilate.

2/2 Improved Sap

This is mostly a tool for instance running, but it has some uses in solo play. It has a new position, making it very easy to reach. It has an improved effect, making it possible to never drop out of stealth on a successful sap. Finally, it has an improved cost, requiring only two points instead of the previous three. While not everyone's choice, it is still far improved from previous versions. I would highly recommend it. -hiry

Playstyle -

One common plan of attack for Mutilate is the sequence of:

Cheap Shot - Mutilate - wait - Kidney Shot - Cold Blood - Mutilate - Mutilate - Eviscerate

Cheap Shot is your opener, allowing you to get your poison on the enemy. Once poison is up, you can Mutilate and get the damage bonus. After doing so, you should wait and regenerate energy. The point of this is to have energy to use on Mutilates during the period of increased damage caused by Improved Kidney Shot and Find Weakness.

Assuming you have Relentless Strikes, you can probably Kidney Shot around 80 energy. Relentless Strikes will return the energy used by Kidney Shot so you can immediately Mutilate during the 19% increased damage period. If possible, using Cold Blood to force this Mutilate to double-crit is recommended. You should be able to regenerate enough energy for one more Mutilate during the overlap between Kidney Shot and Find Weakness. If the enemy is not dead after this, you should be able to fit in a four to five point Eviscerate still within the Find Weakness buff.

While in a raid situation, a Mutilate rogue needs to stay flexible and manage combo points and energy intelligently. Some various thoughts -

In general, you want to keep Slice and Dice and perform the majority of your Mutilates during Find Weakness. A timer mod or enabling the second display on your buff bar can be very helpful in showing how long is left on Slice and Dice. Based on how long you have left, you can decide which finisher you want to spend your energy and combo points on.

It is often better to just use a four point finisher instead of using another ability to get the fifth point. Time that you spend regenerating is time that might be better spent for doing damage.