Come on Blizzard, seriously...Follow

Why do 75% of the end game leather items have large amounts of dodge in exchange for AP, crit and/or agility? I don't give a damn about dodge. It's decent in PvP, but then again, raid gear isn't PvP gear, so why should you be getting PvP gear from raiding?

Case in point. This helmet drops off the first encounter in Gruul's Lair. This helmet is a quest reward from a non-heroic instance. Let's compare. We'll assume you simply use the free meta gem from spirit shards (there's a better crafted one, actually).

Malefic Mask of the Shadows:
Attack Power: 76
Critical strike chance: 1.17%
Stamina: 37
Dodge: ~2%

Helm of the Claw:
Attack Power: 66 + 25(Agility) + 20(Meta Gem) + 12(Bright Blood Garnet) == 123
Critical Strike Chance: .61%
Hit Chance: ~1%
Stamina: 21
Dodge: 1.25%

The Gruul helmet is epic, the quest helmet is rare. Why is the quest reward so much better? Is nearly 50 AP and 1% hit worth .56% crit and 16 stamina? I think not. Hell, the agility on the blue adds nearly as much dodge as the dodge rating on the purple.

A great deal of the "end game" items Blizzard has implemented are an uncomfortable hybrid of PvP and PvE that doesn't do either very well at all. How about a little consistency. Take that worthless dodge rating off our DPS gear, if you're getting hit often enough for that to matter you deserve to die anyway.

I find this somewhat ironic, they literally screwed us over with the Shadowcraft set, then they release Assassination which is an extremely solid set for raiding, then our Gladiator/Tier4 isn't as hot as a set.

Its almost like they want us to mix and match set and individual pieces. :\

I got all excited when I heard they were adding different versions of tier 4/tier 5 for each class; one for each different spec... Little did I know this didn't include rogues.

IMO rogues got screwed in this aspect - Only one set to pick from.
Any good rogue knows to be really good at their spec, you need to strengthen slightly different key stats...

Appearantly, it seems like blizzard thinks all we need is gobs of ap with a touch of hit%/stm and a little bit of agi/crit/dodge.

With my build, I need as much agi/crit as I can nab and a poison proc set bonus like bloodfang's would be sweet. But instead, to make good use of tier4/tier5 I'm almost forced to use some sort of combat spec.

BOO @ that I say. Give us another set or two to chose from so we can make the most of the spec we like to play.

why is it that AP is a goal for most rogues while they dont really care about strength?? 1 strength = 2 AP they do the same thing by increasing dmg

That is also usefull to druids seeing as they cant block or parry extra dogde is essential maybe blizz also wanted to cater for feral druids with the Malefic mask IMO.

Yeah, i've basically passed(or don't use) on a bunch of epic gear in kara because the gear has no agi on it. While i may see a slight increase in ap from some of the gear, i take a huge loss to agi which also effects crit/ap/dodge(which isn't that big of deal but is nice to have when farming).
If you're not satified with assassination gear, remember that there's wastewalker gear out there as well, socketed to your spec can be as good/better than assassination. As far as the t4 gear, most of it is just slight upgrades from the gear i have now(or the epics i have now and am not using). At this point i'm trying to mix and match dungeon sets for the 2 set bonuses. Assassination bonus is nice(basically a free 6sec SnD after ks or cs) and wastewalker set bonus is great too(+35 hit rating). Kinda stuck with that gear for awhile as most of the epics don't include 1 stat or another and when you factor in the set bonus come out inferior or so little an upgrade they aren't worth enchanting/socketing.

Another helm you could compare is the Stealther's Helmit of Second Sight.
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=31109&locale=enUS;source=live
Socketed with +8 agi(delicate living ruby), +4 agi and +6 sta(shifting nightseye), and +4 hit and +4 agi(glinting noble topaz) gives:

Attack Power=108(60ap+24agi+8agi+4agi+4agi+8ap)
Crit=1%(40 agi)
Hit=17(1.1%)
Dodge=2%
Stam=24

Essentially same crit as the epic mentioned by Nooble and +30ap, 17 more hit rating, same dodge and only 13 less stamina, doesn't seem like an upgrade to me.

The helm was probably designed more for feral druids in mind than for rogues. But I agree, it's really not "awesome" for either. If there was str instead of AP on it it would be a clear feral helm (still is anyway in my eyes). Either way, it doesn't really matter. There are several nice blue helms (second sight, helm of the claw, wastewalker, etc...) that you can get pre kara. Kara also has 2 nice epic DPS helms (T4 and Cowl of Defiance). In addition, you can also get a cobra scale hood crafted (not worth it really).

Our T4 set is meeh. I'm currently wearing 2 pieces that proved to be only a marginal upgrade over the gear I had previously. I have the shoulders from the chess event in kara which are hands down better than either T4 or T5 (thanks for the dodge blizzard).

As far as shaolinz's comment about stamina is concerned - you have to understand that this is a PvE raiding set. You don't need 9k stamina to raid. Hardcore raiders are ******** that there's too much stamina on the tier sets compared to what's needed (and again everyone hates the dodge). Ironically, there is only once piece of either tier set that doesn't have more stamina on it than the matching assassination set piece (the T5 shoulders only have like 16 stam on them).

Assassination is a good set, for the most part blizzard got it right. The pants are and gloves excellent, and shoulders are also very good. The chest is lacking quite a bit (the chest from BF that you can get at level 62ish is pretty much equal to it - and there are better choices that are easy to get at 70). The helm shares a similar fate - both the helm of the claw and the second site helm are both easily questable and better than assassination. Both set bonuses on assassination are very nice.

As far as PvP is concerned, there's nothing wrong with the rogue gear - save the epic horde boots are worse than the aliance version by several stat points (***** you blizzard). The gladiatior's set and the blue set do their job. They give you an option to boost your stamina and resiliance at a cost of attack power (and hit - not really needed beyond 6% ish anyway in PvP). You don't have to wear full PvP gear to PvP/arena... but it's nice to have the option to buy a few pieces, and then gem and enchant them for PvP... maybe giving you that extra boost of HP that you need.

Either way, as it stands right now, I have 7.6k hp, a bit over 1500ap, about 22% crit and about 18% hit in my DPS gear... and that works fine with me. I'd like a bit more crit, but hit is much easier to stack (lower itemization cost) and scales very well in raids (even with mutilate). I can swap a few pieces and be at like 1350ap with 8.7k ish hp and 25% crit in my PvP gear (which still sucks TBH).

Hopefully T4 and T5 will be buffed all around in the future. I'd like to not have to blow a ton of pots every raid to compensate for gear that really isn't progressing. 4 ap and 2 hit on a piece of gear isn't going to stop you from having to flask.... and adding dodge at the cost of damage stats definitely isn't... Luckly... I don't plan on picking up the druid helm or T4/5 shoulders any time soon...