Damage optimised rogue

[Quark]

Okay, I'll try to make some clarifications.

Yup, but what I'm driving at is that if I'm joining a team where everyone else has strong CC skills I don't need to sacrifice damage talents for CC talents

I would also like to ask how easy does a battle need to be? From playing EQ2 which is an extremely similar game and from reading Bolty and others on healing it doesn't sound like healers are especially challenged 99% of the time when in a good group. So I don't need to spec to make their life easier rather than speccing to level us all up faster.

Let me give examples:

1) Standard pull, 3 mobs. One gets sheeped, tank holds aggro on other two, I ambush, priest heals

2) Standard pull, 3 mobs. One gets sheeped, I sap one, tanks holds aggro on other, priest nukes

In the second case we have the rogue doing damage mitigation with Sap instead of damage just so the healer can do damage instead of damage replenishment

Surely that's sub-optimal? Let the dps do damage and the healer heal

Consequence of not having Improved Sap, then. With Improved Sap I'll sap a target, get aligned for the next target, and wait for my hunter to pull. My energy is back at that point and I'm not losing any damage potential. Something else comes up, but I'll combine that with a point below ...

Point noted, 5 combo points is what I'll aim for before using Eviscerate
OK, I had it in mind to generate a combo point with Cold Blood getting my Eviscerate off faster. It sounds like the monsters are tougher than I'm bargaining for. I'm envisioning fights where everyone hits it four or five times then it's dead. The advantage of using Cold Blood with Ambush is to get the Eviscerate off one move earlier, making the difference between completing my sequence and being left with 5 unused combo points when the monster dies. It sounds like mobs are tough enough for this not to be an issue

(Partial continuation of above) It's dependent upon you fighting elite or non-elite mobs. In a non-elite mob, especially earlier on, I would frequently not even get a finishing move. Right now with my normal group I'll typically get a 4-point and use the Eviscerate to finish off the mob. Elite mobs, if you can't get 5 points then something's wrong :)

Yup. I guess I could ditch combat and go Assassination 31/Subtlety 20 instead. I'll have a look at that option

As I said though, try yours out. Nice to see how a different build goes :)

One of the lovely things about this game design is that one has all the skills of the Rogue, with the tactical flexibility that implies, with the talents simply providing specialisation. However what I have in mind for spellcasters is (usually) to be in a capable group where the others are counterspelling, pummeling etc and I can just damage. We don't need all 5 players shutting down casting and no one doing the killing.

Guess it depends on the group dynamic. Since I'm the best at preventing a spell in my group, I gladly kill my damage potential. In Uldaman at one point I would Sap one caster, solo another while the other 4 would take on a hurtful melee mob. By the time I killed the one caster, the other was just about out of sap so I took him on.

Also Gouge is sub-optimal in groups, no? The other players interrupt it, don't they? I'd thought Kick looked to be the option for this function in groups

Yes, but I'm not using Gouge for the delay, purely for the spell interrupt. Since Kick has a cooldown and you don't always have a Kidney Shot ready, Gouge fills in as an interrupt :)

Definately I don't see anything wrong overall with your ideas. Just recommending tweaks here and there :)