Does subtlety have enough damage to take the crown away from mutilate? If you look at Snutz 4 and Woundman 15, the best American rogues in the game are playing mutilate. However with Reckful’s advice I gave crit stacking a try and I think the damage is actually very respectable. Reckful’s argument is that with full time recuperate (which you should be using), you are already at 140% energy, adding another 10% doesn’t make as big a difference as 7% more crit when you are trying to score a kill. Even with shadowstep you will get kited quite a bit, and haste loses a lot of its effectiveness when your up-time goes down.
With 31% crit, it really makes a big difference. Backstab with full lethality hits really hard and the 5 energy return from glyph is icing on the cake. I get quite a bit more combo points to work with from things like hemorrhage bleed and of course, higher chance to crit my eviscerate as well during dance. I actually don’t feel energy starved at all since backstab is just 40 energy. Unfortunately crit is an awful stat for mutilate, and haste is still the best stat if you plan on playing both specs evenly. Reckful said he plays this game for subtlety, and even with crit stacking, mutilate does enough damage. You get more combo points from seal fate and you get more envenom crits. It is not as good as mastery by any means, but it is sufficient.