Assassination: Kava

It has been a while since Kava got some love.

Way back in 'nilla WoW, she was subtlty/assassination. This was before I knew about websites and talent calculators and when it was just me and Boon duo-ing the world.

I read somewhere, and no, I don't remember where or who or when, but somewhere... about Assassination being the 'new' Combat. By that, since pre-patch Combat was considered the raid spec, I took to mean that assassination would be the new raid spec.

So I took a looksee down assassination to see what there was to see. I wish I could post my build, except that Blizzard's armory seems to think Kava is currently a talentless hack. So I can't. Other than to say that I'm now an assassin.

A few things I've learned while fiddling with assassination:
- sometimes my DPS is in the 500's. Sometimes it's peaking over 1000. The difference depends on how many extra combo points I get back, energy return, and the randomness of crit chance. Some of it also depends on attack rotation, which I don't have down just yet. I'm working on it. Any suggestions, speak up!

- Mutilate and Backstab cost the same energy to use (60). Backstab requires you to be behind the target and have a dagger in your main hand. It does more damage on a hit/crit. Mutilate does not require you to be behind the target, nor does it indicate that you need a dagger in your main hand (not sure if it does or does not, since Kava uses daggers, but the tooltip is quiet on the issue). It does somewhat less damage on a hit/crit (100/400) but gives you 2 combo points. It does additional damage if the target is poisoned too.

- Hunger for Blood gives you a 6% increased damage when stacked 3 times. You can keep it up indefinately between fights, just make sure to not lose it when in the heat of battle. (It also does not work pre-arena, you have to activate it once the doors open. Why? I don't know.)

- Cut to the Chase gives you a 100% chance to refresh your Slice and Dice to a full 5 point duration. What does this mean? You open with any move that gives you one (or two) combo points. You hit slice and dice. If you're lucky, Ruthlessness will give you a combo point and you can immediately eviscerate or envenom. This will turn your 7s Slice and Dice into a 20s Slice and Dice. Or you can open, slice and dice, mutilate and if you time it right, before your original S&D wears off, you eviscerate or envenom then for more damage and still 20s on your slice and dice.

- If your S&D is up, and your Hunger for Blood is up, and your tank is chain pulling and you don't have time to stealth, or decide to NOT stealth... you can run up, mutilate (and if you have Vigor) wait a heartbeat, mutilate again and wind up with a 4 point combo right away. Which is very nice and makes the tanks twitch. Which is always fun to do.

Some thoughts:
- Is it more beneficial to mutilate to start, then just hit eviscerate if ruthlessness procs until it no longer procs? Or is it more beneficial to mutilate, mutilate then eviscerate. And if ruthlessness procs, just means you get a 5 point combo instead of a 4 point combo? I'm not good at the theorycrafting behind the numbers. So I can't figure it out, even though I have access to the formula.

- I haven't taken points in Deadly Brew or the other poison specific ones. If I did, would envenom then become my finishing move of choice? What are other rogue's thoughts on poisons?

As always, thoughts, comments and criticisms are welcome!

(And no, when I originally made the concept of an assassin named Kava, I did not know about the drink, kava. Kava'Ashen was the name of a character in a short story I wrote when I was in highschool/college. When I started WoW and made a rogue, naturally the name Kava was what I picked.)