Rogue - Assassination - PvP

[Taelan]

In this guide, I will cover everything that you need to know about the assassination spec in PvP. Assassination is an ignored spec when it comes to PvP-ing, but that doesn't mean it's not good. In fact, it dominates every other melee class, except for subtlety rogues. Let's get started.




Purpose/Mechanics of Assassination
In order to do viable damage, you need to always stay on your target. You must keep Expose Armor https://www.wow-freakz.com/spells.php?spell=8647 (wowhead link) and Rupture(5cp) https://www.wow-freakz.com/spells.php?spell=1943 (wowhead link) on your target at all times. Since this spec is very energy-hungry, it's important to take advantage of https://www.wow-freakz.com/spells.php?spell=79134 (wowhead link) as often as you can. Get as much mastery as possible from reforges and gems, without sacrificing a lot of agility,mastery increases the damage done by your poisons,which do over 70% of all of your damage.Your sources of damage are DoT effects (Garrote,Rupture,Deadly Poison) and poisons (which inflict nature damage, that's where spell penetration kicks in), as well as envenom(5cp,also deals nature damage)









Gems
Meta: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond http://www.wowhead.com/item=68778
Red: Delicate Inferno Ruby http://www.wowhead.com/item=52212
Blue: Glinting Demonseye http://www.wowhead.com/item=52220 or Stormy Ocean Sapphire http://www.wowhead.com/item=52246
Orange: Adept Ember Topaz http://www.wowhead.com/item=52204
It is very important that you hit the spell penetration cap (195)









Reforge and Glyphs
Reforge
Remove critical strike rating and haste, and replace them with Mastery. This increases the damage done by your poisons, and this is essential for every assassination rogue.

Glyphs
Prime:
Glyph of Vendetta http://www.wowhead.com/item=45761
Glyph of Rupture - removed from wowhead
Glyph of Mutilate - removed from wowhead

Major:
Glyph of Garrote - http://www.wowhead.com/item=42964
Glyph of Vanish - http://www.wowhead.com/item=63420
Glyph of Blind - http://www.wowhead.com/item=64493

Minor:
Your choice








Enchants
Head - Arcanum of Vicious Agility 60 agility + 35 resilience
Shoulder - Greater Inscription of Vicious Agility 50 agility + 25 resilience
Chest - Mighty Resilience
Back - Greater spell piercing 70 spell penetration / Swordguard Embroidery (if you have Tailoring)
Wrist - Precision 50 hit
Gloves - Mastery 50 mastery rating
Legs - Your choice
Boots - Mastery 50 mastery rating
Landslide - Chance to gain 1000 attack power
Pyrium Weapon Chain - Reduces the duration of Disarm effects by 60%








Talents










Rotation/How to win duels
Apply Instant Poison on your main hand weapon,deadly on your off hand and choose between Mind-numbling and Wound poison for your throw weapon(You must have Deadly brew talent. Against every class, open with a Sap(with Blackjack talent) and a Garrote after that. Hurry up and get 5 combo points, use Expose Armor(it will return your combo points if you have the talent) and then immedietely land Rupture. Get some combo points and activate Recuperate (with at least 3 points).
Always keep a 5 point Rupture on your target, and use a 5 combo-point Envenom whenever you can(with 5 stacks of poison). If you have spare points, use them on Slice and Dice. Your main ability to build up combo-points is Mutilate, use Shiv to refresh your stacks of Deadly Poison when they are about to expire. Use Vendetta only when your target is at around 60% hp, and ONLY if you have all of your DoTs on the target (Rupture,Deadly Poison, Garrote - applied during Vanish). When the target hits 30 000 - 20 000 health, activate your PvP Trinket, Cold Blood and land a critical Envenom that usually kills the enemy.








2v2 Arenas

As an Assassination Rogue, your job is to always stick to your target and keeping up your DoTs. Use Vendetta in your opener if you are fighting a double dps team and save it if you are fighting a dps with a healer.
One of the best partners for an assassin rogue is a Combat Rogue. I know, that sounds laughable, but hear me out. The Combat spec has the most crowd control out of all rogue specs:
-Improved Kick adds a Silence to the normal Kick
-Throwing Specialization adds an interupt effect to the normal Deadly throw
-The duration of Gouge is increased to 6.5 seconds
-Their Kidney shot lasts 8 seconds if they use Revealing Strike with a glyph
If you combine your CCs and cooldowns, you can pretty much conquer any arena team.

Other good partners are Frost Mages, Shadow Priests, Affliction/Destruction Warlocks, since they all benefit from the debuff that you apply https://www.wow-freakz.com/spells.php?spell=58410 (wowhead link)







I hope this tutorial has helped.
If you have any questions,want to add something or if you just want to give your opinion about this guide, feel free to drop a reply below.

[Stepkick]

No offense but...., Assassination is 100% dog in all sorts of PvP ever since 4.0.x, and combat rogue is another horrible choice for PvP.

Not being a dick just stating facts lol.

[Mitza158]

Works if you're bored with subt in bgs. A good explicit guide , thanks.

[Taelan]

Stepkick wrote:

No offense but...., Assassination is 100% dog in all sorts of PvP ever since 4.0.x, and combat rogue is another horrible choice for PvP. Not being a dick just stating facts lol.

It really depends on the player that's playing the assassination rogue. If you have just specced assassination for the first time and you've had no previous experience with it, it's obvious that you will be doing bad in bgs/arenas.

However, the trick is not to give up on the spec. Just be positive and keep trying your best.
I had a crappy start myself when I started playing assassination, this goes for my partner too, who was also a rogue and specced combat for PvP.
In the next two months, we started playing our specs to near perfection and started playing as a real team in 2v2, reaching a bit over 2000 rating.

The most important thing is to have fun while you are playing and to enjoy yourself, which is hard to do if you are specced sub while stacking agility gems in order to kill everyone with a single shadow dance.