Let's talk about this for a hot second. So, I'm going over our WWS parse from last night's Naxx10 clear (1shot every boss... we rock), and I'm noticing at a top-level that our rogue's damage has boosted about 300-400 from the SnD buff alone... this is a REALLY big change and a very good one, but I started looking at his damage composition and saw something odd.

On Patchwerk, his main source of damage was from white swings (40% lawl), which is to be expected. However, his next highest source of damage is from Mutilate at 19% followed shortly thereafter by Instant Poison at 15%. What?! Instant poison... a passive extra damage RNG on his main hand (the slow hand) proc'd enough to account for 15% of his damage!? So, I started looking into it a bit more... Instant Poison does a crap-load of damage and with the poison buffs, he has a really good chance to proc it.

So, I started thinking "well, if only there was a direct damage attack that would 1) build combo points, 2) do decent damage, 3) cost a very little amount of energy, and 4) apply instant poison more often."


Shiv


Why not!? It fulfills every single one of my requirements (and with a 1.4 swing speed and the 4-set bonus it costs 32 energy) and it applies Instant Poison 100% of the time... awesome. So, I started playing with the numbers, and it roughly translates to Shiv being 29dpe while mut is 22dpe as long as Instant Poison always hits... but there's the caveat. Instant Poison is considered a spell, so that means that the rogue would require 17% hit to cap his poisons always hitting. He has ROUGHLY 10% hit rating raid buffed (with food), another 5% to hit with poisons from his talents in the Combat tree, and if we roll with a moonkin or spriest, he'll get enough 3% from misery/IFF... that's a spell-hit-cap.

So... the numbers work out to Shiv being the better ability for PvE dps... but I'm still skeptical, so I will have him test it out on a dummy when I get home today. I'm excited.

EDIT:
Well... that was a flop. Shiv DID improve Instant Poison's overall damage, but not by enough to get ahead of the damage lost from NOT mutilating. OH WELL, we'll keep trying out new stuff.