The Rogue's Gallery

[Concillian]

Elusiveness/Ghostly Strike are not bad, but not that great. You're going to have Preparation for quick double skill use, so Elusiveness is not that critical. Ghostly Strike is good, but if you need dodge, you can use Evasion.

Ghostly strike is mostly useful for a mace/sword wielder. 125% of dagger damage is weak. 125% of mace damage is much better. Just like SS, this skill is better with high BASE damage weapon. So if you use daggers it makes total sense to skip this skill.

The additional value of GS is that a 10 second cooldown makes it available for use once per fight for a large dodge increase to keep from taking damage. Evasion has a MUCH MUCH longer cooldown, and is really only situational.

Improved Sap is a great skill for PvE. But I'll argue that you won't be gimped without it. In most solo'ing you won't need to use it unless you want to do things you wouldn't normally be able to do.

Umm, yeah. Improved sap enables things you wouldn't normally be able to do. Like take on a linked group of three ~equal level elites solo:
Sap one, return to stealth, sap two, kill third, run, rest and start over.
If you hit the 10% not returning to stealth, and two go aggro you run until the mobs hith their leash and reset.

In most groups, you'll have someone else to help with the 'sap' abilities, or won't need to sap more than one with a strong group and good pulls.

I think you misunderstand the primary use in groups. You normally don't want to sap more than one target at a time, Improved Sap just lets the pull happen in a MUCH more controlled way because you can sap without pulling aggro on you and being beat up right away. It's not so much the multiple sap opportunity, it's the CC without being a mana suck for your healer. Rogue saps, puller pulls, mage poly's, tank tanks, everyone is happy.

If you sap without improved sap, you start the encounter in a state of semi-chaos already. Groups will quickly identify this, and sometimes will rather you not sap at all than start each encounter with someone having to pull aggro off a leather wearer in melee range of the mobs.

Improved Instant Poison is a good skill, but I think I'd rather have a 40 energy Cheap Shot than 2% higher chance to apply poisons.

Again, Improved Instant Poison is good, but I'd personally rather have a 5% higher chance to hit for my key skills.

absolutely agree, especially on the murder tradeoff. Openers hitting are perhaps more important than anything else for a rogue. 6% to hit on the opener vs 4% extra chance to proc poison? No brainer.