Three tree rogue build

[Kevin]

Regarding Ghostly Strike.  I personally feel if you are going that far into Subtlety you should pick up Preperation over Ghostly Strikes.  It has far more versatility in regards to being an "Oh Crap" button effectively doubling your use of Evasion and allowing you to solo stuff you never would be able to otherwise. 

Heh, I thought I had preperation in the build.... Yeah, prep is supposed to be there why it wasn't when I posted it I do not know. All your comments on it are very true and valid. :) Ghostly strike was just supposed to be another oh #$%& button with it. So yeah 3 in initiative, 1 ghostly and 1 in preparation.

2.  As mentioned above, you skip over Lightning reflexes to get Improved Gauge at the beginning of Combat.  I think taking Imp Gauge is probably a mistake here when compared to the extra 5% dodge you could get from Lightning strikes.

I acutally use gouge to get in extra back stabs when soloing and sometimes the 4 seconds isn't also long enough to get the energy back it seems so improved gouge lets me be more sloppy there. I also know that 5% dodge will help with the damage mitigation a lot for the solo stuff but then again +dodge is pretty common

3.  Riposte is a great soloing skill.  Unfortunately rogues don't have many "utility" skills that are usable while grouping.  Kidney Shot, Expose Armor, and Sap being the most prominant.  Which brings up a conflict you may find in your build.  Do you want more utility while soloing?  Or do you want it when grouping?  The reality of the rogue is that it's almost always better to go for +damage +crit skills for soloing.  they will always beat out the utility skills.  That's why so many people use a 21/9/21 build.  Depending on what skills you grab with that it can be the most balanced solo - group build.  It grabs all the best damage skills while keeping some good group utility like Sap and possibly Improved Expose Armor.

I want a bit of both and I thought really hard about improved cheap shot. The plan is and has been that I will solo pretty much all the time except for instances and I doubt I'll ever raid with a rogue. So really I'll build it to 60 and grind stuff at times and be around if anyone ever needs extra DPS for a group (yeah right). :) So I want some utility to groups and I want more solo power. I was also trying to avoid the cookie cutter build as well but as you mention many things seem to lead back to that. :)