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face="Times New Roman" size="3"> style="font-weight: bold;">Time to get this party
started!

face="Times New Roman" size="3">Sinister
Strike!  Sinister Strike!  Sinister Strike! 
5 combo points, now it's time for the finisher!  Which one is
the best?  Which one will...

face="Times New Roman" size="3"> alt="" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/71887">

face="Times New Roman" size="3"> style="font-weight: bold;">Time to get this party
started!

face="Times New Roman" size="3">Sinister
Strike!  Sinister Strike!  Sinister Strike! 
5 combo points, now it's time for the finisher!  Which one is
the best?  Which one will actually help the raid as much as
you?  Of course, most importantly, which one will help you top
those sexy DPS charts?  We'll break down the combo enders and
help you finish what you started in the PvE environment. 

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src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/71893"> face="Times New Roman" size="3">Slice
and Dice - Increases the rate the target dies by 40% 

No matter what anyone tells you,
this needs to be your first activation.  Your top damage will
always be your auto attacks, and this is what fuels those auto attacks
and drops our attack speeds to below 1.0 for our off hands. 
Ideally, you will use your opening point to activate Slice and Dice,
and then work towards the extension of it.  Combat and Honor
Among Thieves builds will use a 5 point slice and dice at this
point.  Deep Assassination builds will work up an
Envenom.  From that point on, every time your slice and dice
is approaching 6-7 seconds, you need to think quickly about your combo
points and energy remaining on your target and how to best refresh
it.  Remember that any level Envenom will refresh it to the 5
point maximum when you have Cut to the Chase, so if you are forced to
do a 2-3 point envenom, it's far more efficient to sacrifice that
damage and envenom duration to keep your slice and dice
active.  Cut to the Chase is an amazing talent, but it will
NOT start slice and dice, only refresh it.  So it's extremely
important to never let this fall off, moreso for Assassination than
Combat and Honor Among Thieves builds for that reason. 
However, do not let this fall off for longer than a second for any
build unless you are in a phase where you cannot melee the
target.  If your target flees, jumps, blinks, etc, that's your
signal to use your combo points and energy in the meantime to refresh
Slice and Dice while on the way to your target, or save it for when
you're about to begin meleeing it again.  Thanks to our lovely
offhand talents, energy levels are affected by our attack
speed.  So the faster we attack, the more chances for bonus
energy we get, and thus more special attacks for combo
points.  It's a lovely circle, and it all revolves around
starting this skill up and keeping it up. 

 

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src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/68923"> face="Times New Roman" size="3">Rupture
- Bleed, bleed,
bleed! 

This is typically your second
priority at the start of a fight, and second thing to consider
refreshing after slice and dice.  This is nice for ignoring
armor and resistances on your target, and provides a steady source of
additional ticking damage alongside your deadly poison.  This
is an essential thing to get started on your target when your tank is
not a Druid or a Warrior as Assassination.  Hunger For Blood
requires a bleed on the target, so getting that bleed on the target as
quickly as possible for our 18% damage increase (you do have it
glyphed, right?) is necessary to earn and keep our place at the top of
the damage charts as Assassination.  This is also affected by
Mangle and Trauma for bonus damage, so if
you have any kind of Feral Cat or Arms Warrior in the group, you'll get
great results from keeping this up constantly.  You'll get
great results from keeping this up anyway, but that 30% bonus is oh so
nice!  If you have it glyphed for bonus duration so you can
focus on other combos rather than refreshing this more often than you
have to, bonus points! 

 

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src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/71894"> face="Times New Roman" size="3">Expose
Armor - Because not
every tank is a Warrior 

Quite possibly the most
underrated finisher.  If there is not a stack of Sunder Armor
on the target, you will have to include a 4-5 point Expose from time to
time to ensure maximum physical DPS.  Everyone will see a
solid increase in damage from this, so please disregard your giant
yellow numbers for a moment and take one for the team.  This
has a high priority for Honor Among Thieves builds since you do more
physical finishers than the other builds. 

 

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src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/68929"> face="Times New Roman" size="3">Eviscerate
- Why can't every
target wear cloth? :( 

This is our lowest priority
finisher.  While it can critical, and scales decently, the
fact that it's affected by armor reduces the overall damage far too
much... unless you talent and glyph for it.  Eviscerate with
the appropriate talents can put out some impressive damage, but a lot
of that comes from combat and a rather poor overall talent in the
Assassination Tree, where you have more important talents to grab at
that tier for overall damage.  Since Honor Among Thieves
builds generate combo points quickly, you'll see plenty of
opportunities to Eviscerate once your other essential DPS finishers are
active.  Let them have it! 

 
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src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95517">
Recuperate - Finally we can heal!
Finishing move that consumes combo points to restore 2% of maximum health every 3 seconds. The duration of this effect is determined by the number of combo points consumed; each point is worth 6 seconds of duration. This ability will be used in any situation, PvP or PvE where your life is in danger and you're unlikely to recieve heals. This is a very potent ability especially when augmented by Improved Recuperate in the Combat tree and Quickening in the Assassination tree.

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Envenom - To sacrifice a stack for the greater good 

If you are an assassination build, you will be using this in place of
Eviscerate.  It has a lot going for it in ignoring armor, and
you will break five digits when you critical with this often at higher
levels.  I can't emphasize how important it is to take Master
Poisoner if you are serious about using Envenom however, since Deadly
Poison makes up a good chunk of our damage over the course of a fight,
getting it back up to 5 stacks as fast as possible is
imperative.  Remember to use Cold Blood with 5 point versions
of this in moments of weakness to produce Envenoms that might rival the
mages and warlocks!

face="Times New Roman" size="3">And last but
not least, a special mention to

face="Times New Roman" size="3">Deadly
Throw - For
being there for me in forcing Razorscale to land after he took flight
once.  Cheers, our only ranged damage finisher.