Mutilate vs. Combat specs

I recently ran did a VoA run just to pick up some pvp gear. I was invited by a former guildie that just happened to be a rogue. She's always had pretty decent gear comparable to my own. Upon inspection her gear is a bit better than mine by a few gear points AND she's specc'd mutilate. Immediately, I thought this is going to be a contest to see who does more dps. I'm not sure if she was competing, but I know I was!! I don't run into many good rogues anymore... actually, I never really did.

Her spec was pretty much cookie cutter HfB. Mine has the essential combat point allocations. The first bit of trash went down pretty fast with the two rogues topping the meter. I do want to point out one interesting thing I noticed. The first pull she was distracted and didn't start dps'ing for the first few seconds giving me a lead on overall damage done... but that frakkin' mut spec is so damn bursty that by the time the mob was down she had clearly caught up to me. I'm very annoyed at this...

Anyway, by the end of the raid we were both clearly the best geared toons there. How often does anyone see 2 rogues leading on the dps meters anymore? It was a virtual tie on both damage to Archavon and overall damage done for the raid. Her dps was a bit higher due to the burstiness of the spec. I believe with the new patch combat is going to surpass mut by a nice margin... I've noticed that as a single target dps class that my dps on single targets isn't really that great. I've seen classes catch up to me on the meters on boss fights quite often. This is the only place where I see haste actually providing a buff to me. Longer fights mean more energy procs and with the changes to mana pots I forsee a bonus to having non-mana users in raids. I'm very much looking forward to Ulduar.

I'm still not sold on the changes blizz made to haste to improve overall combat dps. I would like to see Armor Penetration get buffed a lot more. I would also like to have Blade Flurry on a shorter cooldown OR have Blade Flurry effect more mobs.