Best posted before anyone sees my actuall dps

So your a rogue and you want to raid.  Do a little bit of heroics, a little bit of Karazhan, poke gruul with that dagger of yours:

I will speak very little about talent builds.  Strongly beliving that a player will preform best with something they like.  Just know your facts.  Combat ( 100% dps ) - Mutilate ( ca 99-98% dps ) - ShS ( 88-83% dps ). 
Sometimes 100% is needed, other times Kara is on farm and things are smooth. 
Also know that a combat build won`t get into its full glory untill you have stacked haste.  ( around T5 )


Karazhan and heroics puts higher demands on both your skill and your gear than the instances that came before it.  Back in the pre mc days a raid could carry serveral members not preforming to their best. 

In 10 man raids we can`t do that any more.  25 mans is even more demanding.  Becaus you won`t only be a lean mean killing machine.  You got to focus on staying alive in longer, harder and more chaotic fights.

So here is what I feel you NEED to even start raiding in Karazhan. 
It is`t just a matter of raiding to gear up.  You need to be able to do your job.  Your job is to kill things.

First of minimum you should have:
25% crit.  +8% to hit and 1250 Ap unbuffed. 

Even a combat spec that gets much of their dps from white dmg,  it still needs that crit to punch through. 

And as you start with a 95% chance to hit, were every level above you the mob are deducts 1% chance, you will need atleast 8% to hit so that your main hand special attacks will hit. 

You should aim for even more to hit when especially combat speced, as your off hand does a lot of your steady dps.  And on your off hand, the miss chance is far greater ( 28 % ).  Also for a combat rogue you got combat potency, so more +hit = more potency proc = more energy = more dps.
 
1250 ap is honestly a bit low for starting.  But we are supposed to be casual, and 1250 is easy to hit. 
It is not worth trading +1% hit for +1% crit untill you have atleast 12-13% +hit. 
It is not worth building more than 1250 Ap untill you have +25% crit and +8% +hit.  From a raiding perspective. 

As I love teasing admins I will post some links after this with starting gear tips

As your raiding progresses your dependancy on stamina increses.  As you hit Gruul and in some parts ZA you should be looking at 9k health unbuffed. 
This so you can handle a bit of dmg and still keep going.
Because a rogue is often on the bottom of the healing list, Healers focus on themself and tanks first.  And lets face it.  Healing a caster/ranged is easier than healing melee these days.

Enchants:

Mongoose is the best weapons enchant, 120 Agility for 15 sec, can stack if you got it on both weapons.  Aswell as a small speed boost we rogues love.

Executioner Worth looking into if you stack ignore armor gear.  But it still is slightly less interesting  Mongoose.

For those on a budget: +20 Agility on weapons. 

Heads and shoulders should be enchanted with Scryer/Aldor for shoulders and the nifty 90 gold glyph from Cenarion Expedition on head.

Leggings:
Cobrascale 40 Ap and 12 crit.  Epix version is`t worth it unless your insane like me.  The Clefthoof version ( 30 Stamina and 10 agility ) is good while you still look for your good leggings :)

Rest of you:

+6 Stats on chest, Agility on boots or ideally "cats switftness" ( +7 agility and small non stacking run speed bost )
15 Agility on gloves, 26 Attack power on bracers. 



The addons you need:

Omen, a treath meter basicly.  It is more reliable than KTM, even if it is still suffering post 2. 4 patch depression.  Gives you big good warnings everytime you near tanks agro. 

DeadlybossMods. Simply warnings when boss is about to do something nasty to your repair bills.

Rogue power Bar. Makes it easier to keep track of your temp buffs like SnD and various other temp buffs. 

So with Addons, buffs and so out of the way.  Time for a little playstyle.

Playstyle. 

First of all we are brought to do damage, keeping our agro in cheeck don`t work with that.  Both our agro controlling moves are broken in a way or another. 

So our tools are the three. 
tanks skill.  That is the one thing we are always measured up against.  It also makes bladeflurry so funny when you have one tank that takes on two targets. . 

Feint.  Yes. . .  feint. .  it is so nice.  Let me ask you one thing.  If feint really woked properly, would it need to reduce the chance of you being critically hit then?
Feint can be apprently be reisted, dodged and parried.  It also costs energy.  Making it hard to work into a cycle. 

Vanish.  Yes, this is also what vanish does.  Not many rogues use this activly in a raid of some reason. 
When vanish works as intended ( aka not bugging in a non bugging manner according to blizz. . .  ) It whipes your agro.  ( a point for stealth being rogues magic in a rp setting btw )
Important to know is that a treath meter will report you as having droped agro, even if the enemy don`t agree.  But people will look at the same meter, so you are guilt free from a wipe.

Tricks
When in a raid I give the tank 3-5k agro headstart, then I push up to him, doing my best to hit about 100% agro and vanish.  By then a decent tank should have around 15-30k headstart and I can give it all I got.  This is when I start blowing my cooldowns. 

For most boss fights I ( a combat dagger rogue ) Starts with Garrot-SnD-Backstab etc untill I get 3 to 4 combo points and my first SnD runs out.  Then I work on keeping SnD going 100% and use Rupture as a finisher if I got the combo points free.

Of Finishers in a raid setting, all things considered equal the best finishers are: SnD->Rupture->Eviserate. 
Rupture is even better with druid tank but never better than SnD, Expose armor is better than rupture when you got +3 melee and something else than a warrior tank. 

Last words.

I prefer to being secondary on the treath meter for various reason. 
Gives me a target to aim for, and with a good hunter/mage/warlock this can be hard.  Also I have a good chance of Evasion tanking a boss for 15 sec.  Those 15 sec is time were another tank able class can madly work on getting agro.  Its 15 sec were the rest of melee don`t have to chase a mob running around killing healers and casters.  Its 15 more sec with a shoot at it.

I once were in a run through regular SL: Ended up against Murmur, our tank and off tank were dead.  We had taken down about 5-8% of Murmurs health.  So with rogue tanking and two good healers we got him killed.  from 32-0. 

Great introduction Nom thanks!

Good read Nomine

Not too many links so I didn't loose all my fingers

Cheers,
Zarx

Good to see we 90% agree Inkeyes :)

Hit > AP > Haste > Crit  Hit should be your primary goal.   The cap is 365 and that is what your shooting for.   Remember white damage counts for over 50% of your total damage.   So the less you miss the more dps your doing.   At this time my hit 363 

I feel there is a question of bang for the buck here.  I really notice how much smoother everything goes as my +hit crept over the 200 mark, more off hand procs of mongoose, more energy to play around with.

But before you hit mostly those 25 man raids SSC, BT etc I don`t think you get enough from +hit to shoot much past oh, 250-280 ish.  Simply due to the level of most mobs you face and the gear avaliable to you.  The cost of +hit vs other things you can stack ends up as very expensive. 

I put Crit above Ap myself, this might be due to being a dagger rogue, while a sword rogue might see it differently. 
Also I like having a predictable non spiky dmg curve.  Meaning for me a high crit value, so I know they come more often that not.  That is`t based on any other thing thank actually feeling while playing. 

Worth noting is Expertice, most rankings I have seen on it, puts it as about equal to hit, with a far lower cap.  Around 6% if I recall.  Shard of Contempt from Heroic Magisters terrace sorting out that rather nicely if you want to farm for something.