How to play your Mut Rogue (in a nutshell)

I've recently had to go over a slew of potential rogue recruits with some of our officers. Most who are taking advantage of the higher numbers of mut vs. combat. I personally play combat and have since combat swords was viable but, this doesn't mean I don't know how to play Mut. So to help out some of these other guys, I'm putting a quick guide together.

Talents

Well we'll start with talents. Your spec should be 31/2/8 and for those of you who have difficulty figuring out what increases your dps and what DOESN'T, here is a link Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Hopefully I don't have to justify my talent choices but if you have questions I will answer via comments.

Glyphs

For Prime Glyphs you will want to use Mutilate, Rupture, and Backstab. Slice and dice makes the rotation easier but won't increase your dps. A Major glyph you will want is Feint regardless. You want glyph of kick if you're raiding too, it allows you to handle more interrupts or pick up someone elses if they screw up in raids, and many of Cata's fights include interrupts.

Gear

When choosing gear, keep your stat priority in mind. Your stat priority is Agility>Hit until 1332>Mastery>Haste>Expertise>Crit>Hit after 1332

You want 1332 hit in order to reach the spell (or poison) hit cap for raids. Poisons are almost all of your damage, which is the reason mastery is the next most important secondary stat. Agi is FAR more valuable than any other stat.

On your weapons, of course, you should have Deadly Poison on your OH, Instant Poison on your MH

Enchants:
Head: Head enchant from Ramkahen
Cloak: +22 Agi until a better one comes out
Shoulders: Shoulder enchant from Therazane
Chest: +20 Stats
Bracers: +65 Haste
Gloves: +65 Mastery
Legs: Dragonscale leg armor or the LW equivelant
Boots: +35 Agi
Weapons: Landslide. It's VASTLY superior. Don't even get another enchant, save and get landslide. I have it on both of my weapons and I barely ever farm gold, so don't even bitch.

For gemming, you'll want to match the sockets based on stat priority for the most part, but use common sense, if the bonus is something like +20 crit, dont bother. Honestly, you lose a negligible amount of damage by dumbing it down and just getting +40 agi in everything. It isn't much.

Rotation

For your rotation, which is more important than gear spec and glyphs put together, you have to keep a few things in mind. The first is THERE IS NO ROTATION. Energy procs from Rupture and varying amount of combo points in finishers screws that up.

So your rotation is more like this: Open with Garrote, Use SnD off of that, hit a 4-5 point Rupture, whichever you get. At this point, if you can get a 4-5 point Envenom before SnD goes down, do so, if not, get a smaller Envenom to refresh SnD. Continue Mutilating to 4-5 points and using Envenom until Rupture is about to fall, then pop a 4-5 point Rupture. Your goal is to keep both Rupture and SnD up 100% of the time, but if you have to choose, Envenom and keep SnD up over Rupture. Pop Cooldowns as they come up and remember Vanish is an offensive cooldown.

After the boss drops below 35% replace mutilate with backstab and use 5 point finishers. This is your execute phase.

Situational Abilities

Feint: Feint can be used to reduce AoE damage by quite a lot. Use it on every AoE mechanic.

Cloak of Shadows: Your best friend. Trivializes many mechanics. Drops a large variety of debuffs, even "Acquiring Target" on Omnotron Defense System, saving your raid from the flamethrower!

Recuperate: I know it isn't much... but in some fights it makes it WAY easier. On the Chimera boss in BWD you can use it to get your health up above 10k, which is ALL you need. When healing is needed on the entire raid, use it religiously when you have the energy and combo points to spare.

Redirect: Not a major one in most fights, but when you're switching targets a lot on certain fights it is quite useful, please remember you have it to maximize your DPS and keep your rotation running

Dismantle: Not useful in raids, but some heroic bosses can actually be dismantled, notably, the second boss in Grim Batol's swords.

Shiv: IT DROPS ENRAGES NOW. NO MORE STUPID ASS ANESTHETIC POISON!

Tricks of the Trade: If you have aggro trouble, and you shouldn't if you properly follow this guide, because after overkill drops you should be vanishing, USE TRICKS, DON'T BE STUBBORN.