The Rogue's Gallery

[Roland]

He is partly right, though he never expressly mentions the reason, so he may not realize why he's right...

Yes and no. I'll see if I can explain a bit more clearly.

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Off-hand weapons are not a part of any damage calculation for special attacks, but critical strikes are. SS is only calculated based on main hand damage and eviscerate damage is not based on weapon damage at all. These special attacks get additional damage from crit%, but do not get additional damage from the damage bonus of the dual weild specialization talent.
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Yes. I did forget to mention this, although to be honest I don't know why. Just never crossed my mind to mention it. Guess I thought it was common knowledge, but then I think that's just because I've been playing my Rogue so exclusively lately that I forgot what it was like not to know anything about Rogues. :D My bad, and my apologies for such.

However, he mentions that he rarely uses eviscerate and instead uses finishers like Slice and Dice and Rupture. These are finishers that don't crit. Slice and dice works by putting even more weight on your normal attack damage. I guess it would come down to the % of total damage that comes from each attack type.

Here's where _I_ made a major flaw: since my last post, I've been using Eviscerate a lot more. Perhaps that's just because I've been wanting to try it out, per your advice, and perhaps because I have nothing better to use. :P For short-work mobs (read: 90% of what I fight), NOTHING is worth building up combo points for, because they just don't last long enough. When I'm farming leather, I've been using SnD MUCH more because the health bar of my enemies quite literally goes down faster by almost 100%. But while that's active, I have to do SOMETHING, so I'll occasionally through in a couple SS's plus a quick Eviscerate to finish them, IF I have time. A lot of the time, I'll get off one or two SS's (by the time I've used up SnD, I've gotten off a Garrote and two - three quick SS's, and finished with SnD whipes my Energy to 0, so it takes awhile for me to gear up again), and then the mob will be dead. :P

However, in instances when fighting tougher mobs, Eviscerate makes for semi-decent damage at high points, especially when I critical. OTOH, without a critical hit, Rupture does much better damage, and is GUARANTEED damage (I whiff a lot with my Daggers since I don't have Precision yet; focused on Dodge and Parry before hit% so I can solo better), and it's DoT, which works wonders in long fights. So, it often depends on my mood as to whether I use Rupture, Eviscerate, or Slice and Dice. Expose Armor I tested, and even at one point it nearly doubles my physical damage right now, but as you said, Armor is on a sliding scale, so while it works great now, it will be a mere pittance later on, AND I have other skills that work better overall, IMHO. So, as you said, it would be a waste to bother with. I was right when I dropped it from my quick-bar initially. They need to make it %-based, so it's more effective. Maybe then it would stack with Sunder, too.

In my play style I am far more reliant on damage from special attacks like SS and Eviscerate, but I also don't go far enough into the combat tree to have to worry at all about which specialization to choose. Tonight I'll have to look more closely at how much damage comes from what attacks in my usual play style. CTmod tracks these kinds of statistics, and even if I didn't use the mod for UI changes, I'd use it just to have the combat statistics.

I may have to check out this mod, if only to see what kind of damage I am doing. But then, I'm not SO concerned about damage from which attacks, nor my total damage, as I am about the THEME of my build. :)

As I said it's heavy on the special attacks with a typical fight going:

CS + SS + gouge + run + fire bow + SS + eviscerate + SS (usually dead) + SS or gouge (depending on the health level... if needed)

This one turns off normal attack for a while when the guy is gouged and I regenerate enough energy that I can string together 2 to 4 special attacks. The result is a far higher special attacks:normal attacks ratio than someone like Roland who is doing normal attacks the whole time he's waiting for energy to regenerate.

I don't doubt the viability of the skills mentioned at all. It's downright difficult to make a rogue build that can't do enough damage to solo green and yellow mobs well. I don't even know if it can be done.
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So very true. The oddity of my build is that special attacks are almost a waste of energy, because with my Instant Poison I deal so much extra damage from it proccing, and using SnD just makes me proc that much more often, in addition to all the extra physical damage I dish out. Eviscerate is a nice skill, and I would love to build another Rogue that emphasises it much more, but for this Rogue, it's more of a "filler" because I have nothing better to do than an actual staple skill.

BTW - Just hit 26 and got Cheap Shot. Haven't used it yet, but am dying to. :) Not sure if it will replace Garrote in my normal soloing tactics, though, because the extra DoT, especially stacking with Rupture, helps whittle down my opponent while I'm proccing poison and waiting for my Energy to recharge. But, we'll see. I can see this skill getting more use in Instances, I think, when I have less time and ability to charge up combos, especially since I don't want to draw aggro.

To sum it up:
Some things have changed a bit from initial conception. I'm still growing, as is my character and my knowledge, and in doing so I am adapting my playstyle while still trying to keep to my original goals. I'll keep you all posted as to future progress. 28 will see a boost to my Instant Poison, so I hope that will help me improve my already-capable soloing ability. :)