The Ultimate Assassination Rogue PvE Guide

[Taelan]

IMPORTANT

After months of playing Assassination and testing out different builds, I can safely say that you should NOT use this spec on all fights. If you do so, you're definetely hurting your group's chances of killing the boss.

The best thing you can do is have one of your specs be Assassination and the other Combat, and switch it whenever the encounter requires it
However, I can recommend Assassination for a few selected Dragon Soul encounters in which it has the upper hand compared to Combat/Subtlety. Here's my list of encounters where Assassination is actually useful.


Morchok - I really hesitated to put this one on the list, because sometimes you could get really unlucky and get tagged by all of the crystals, but if you do manage to stay on the boss, the damage is pretty solid



Yor 'sahj - Rogues overall are usually put on bosses in this encounter, so you should have no problem following your regular rotation. Also your extremely good AoE potential will not be wasted on the add phase.



Zon' Ozz - It's pretty self-explanatory - as a dps you only have to move aside once in a while to let Zon catch the orb, otherwise, you're able to squeez the maximum dps out of your spec.



Ultraxion - This fight surprised me the most after all the tests I did. Every time I went Combat, I did less damage than when I was Assassination, even though I wasn't able to use Garrote or Backstab as Assassination, which is was a major drawback. And the dps gap wasn't small - it was always at least 5k.
Playing Assassination on any other boss is just pointless and you should be kicked from your raid group ( ͡º ͜ʖ ͡º)





Hello Everyone, I've been playing Assassination for a while and I would like to share my experience and knowledge with those of you who want to try it out for themselves.

Pros and Cons of playing Assassination
Pros:
-Increased healing (makes the healer’s job easier)
-Reduced damage taken (also makes the healer’s job easier)
-Consistent single-target damage which continuously builds up as the fight goes on
-Versatile and fun to play
-Brings a lot of utility to a raid group
-Best AoE damage out of all three specs

Cons:
-Doesn’t have the awesome cleave which Combat has (leads to less dps)
-Switching between targets leads to a huge loss of dps
-Requires you to be on your target at all times in order to dish out proper dps.





Talents and Glyphs
31/2/8
These are my current talents and in my opinion this is the best current choice for assassination PvE

I’ll go over the choices I’ve made in detail:


Lethality and Coup de Grace are obvious dps boosters.



Quickening increases your movement speed by 15%. This makes it easier to stick to your target, for example, outrunning the Ice spikes in Hagara’s Frost phase; moving out of the orb’s way quicker while fighting Zon’Ozz ; going to the spot where the oozes spawn quicker during the Yor’Sajh fight.It also increases all healing effects on you by a whopping 20%, which means that healers will use less mana to heal you.
Master Poisoner applies a debuff which causes your target to receive and extra 8% damage from magic spells, which increases the overall dps of all casters from your raid group.



Ruthlessness gives you a chance to generate an extra combo point with your finishing moves. This proves useful, since you don’t have that massive energy regeneration that Combat does, nor Honor Among thieves from subtlety, which just gives you free combo points every couple of seconds. From time to time you will lack the energy to generate combo points due to the large cost of mutilate and backstab, so this talent proves helpful.



Murderous Intent replaces Mutilate with Backstab when the boss reaches 35% health. Glyph of backstab stacks with this talent, meaning that you will receive 35 energy back for every backstab crit (crits also grant two combo points; Seal Fate talent)
My current Backstab crit chance is 56% without any buffs ( counting the talent that gives you +30%), with buffs it should be around 65%
Non – critical Backstab will cost you 60 energy and give you 1 combo point
A critical Backstab will cost you 25 energy [60 – (30+5) ; 30 from the talent, 5 from the glyph] and give you 2 combo points



Overkill Grants you 30% more energy regeneration, which is better than Combat’s passive 25%, but it only lasts for 20 seconds. Vanish also grants you this buff and I’ll explain when to use vanish below in the rotation.
Precision increases your hit rating, thereby increasing your dps.
Nightstalker over Improved Ambush, since Assassination doesn’t use Ambush in the rotation.





I’ll go into detail about what talents NOT to pick.
You only have 1 free talent point to put in anywhere you like, so the talents I’ll talk about below will always be at 1/2, hence, not worth choosing.


Deadly Momentum
Deadly Momentum is about luck, which is why I don’t like to include it. It could be useful in a situation where you have to spam Fan of Knives for AoE damage, which normally wouldn’t grant you any combo points, thus losing your Slice and Dice because you are unable to refresh it. You should be focused on your main target and not waste energy for AoE-ing, using only 2-3 Fan of Knives should be enough to get a couple of stacks on your targets.



Improved Expose Armor
At 50%,Improved Expose Armor is not worth taking, since it can totally mess up your rotation. The same debuff is provided by the Druid’s Faerie Fire. Even if you had enough points to make it 2/2, the debuff won’t improve your dps by a huge amount, so your points a better spent elsewhere.


Deadly Brew
Deadly Brew makes your Fan of Knives a useful AoE slow, but the encounters in Dragon Soul don’t require it. It used to be useful in Blackwing Descent for kitting huge groups of mobs, but now there isn’t any point in having it.
An important thing to mention is the possibility to swap talent points from Ruthlessness to Deadened Nerves. On some Heroic fights where you need a lot of healing, you can choose to take 2 points from Ruthlessness, leaving it to 1/3 and putting them into Deadened Nerves, making it 3/3 and causing you to take 10% less damage from everything, which makes the healer’s job easier. This could also be your main spec, but I keep Deadened Nerves at 1/3 because of a personal preference.


Glyphs
Prime
-Mutilate
-Rupture
- Backstab

Major
-Cloak of Shadows
-Tricks of the Trade
-Feint

Mutilate is the ability that you are going to spam during the majority of the time, so having its cost reduced by 5 is good, since Assassination Rogues are hungry for Energy.
Glyph of Rupture increases the ticks on your Rupture, giving you a greater chance to receive 10 energy and deal damage on each tick.
Glyph of Backstab gives you 5 energy every time it crits and this stacks with your talent,which gives you 30 energy, resulting in 35 energy per crit.
I did some tests on the dummy and found out that having Glyph of Vendetta improves your overall dps by only 1%. Swapping it out for Glyph of Rupture or Backstab is the better option. The bonus provided by the Blackfang 4 pieces set bonus is similar, but better than Glyph of Vendetta, since it lasts for 2 extra seconds.
The damage reduction on Cloak of Shadows makes it a good defensive cooldown for intense boss phases where everyone is taking a lot of damage (Zon’Ozz’s black blood eruption phase for example). You can also dispell yourself from debuffs that would kill you.
Feint is one of your most important abilities in terms of survival. Use it right before the boss finishes casting a huge spell that deals huge damage (Morchok’s Stomp for example) and this damage will be reduced by 50%. It is important to remember that Feint only works on AoE spells.


Rotation and Cooldown Management
The best way to open is with a Garrote, following a Vendetta.This will grant you Overkill for 20 seconds. From then, activating Slice and Dice is your main priority, not Rupture ( Apply a 4-5 cp Rupture after you have gotten Slice and Dice up). Next, after reaching 5 stacks of Deadly Poison and 5 combo points ( Vendetta is still remains on the target) activate Cold Blood and use it with Envenom. Always try to chain Cold Blood with Vendetta for extra damage.
If you're dealing with a lot of Ads, use Tricks of the Trade and start spamming Fan of Knives (while your thrown weapon is coated with Deadly Poison). Because you're an Assassin Rogue, you should be easily able to get 5 stacks of deadly poison from 5 fan of knives on everyone around you, resulting in some crazy damage ticks and HUGELY increased dps.
Once 20 seconds from the Garrote have passed, you are going to lose your Overkill bonus. Immediately after you lose Overkill, Vanish and Garrote again to regain it. Chaining 2 Overkills together will result in having 30% increased Energy Regeneration for 40 seconds.
Your main rotation after the opener consists of this:
-Keep Rupture up at all times
-Refresh your Slice and Dice by using Envenom
-Use Tricks of the Trade whenever its not on cooldown to get the 2 piece bonus from Blackfang, which reduces the energy cost of your abilities by 20% for 6 seconds ( if you don’t have the 2 piece bonus, you still give 5% more damage for 6 seconds to your chosen raid member, which will still result in a faster boss kill)
-Use Vendetta and Cold Blood together whenever they are not on cooldown
It’s impossible for your Deadly Poison stacks to wear off, since you are Assassination, so there is no need to keep track of them and trying to refresh them with Shiv.


Stats
15% Hit chance > 27 Expertise > Mastery > Haste > Crit
After you have got 15% hit and around 26-27 expertise, you should reforge everything to Mastery , which increases the damage of your poisons and is the main stat for Assassin Rogues. Haste increases Energy Regeneration, Attack Speed and Global Cooldown of abilities. Crit is the least valuable stat.

Gems and Enchants
You should be aiming to get the most possible Agility from gems and enchants, since you can’t reforge Agility
Gems
Meta – 54 agility + 3 % increased crit damage
Reds - 50 agility (40 if not avaible)
Yellows -25 agility + 25 mastery ( 20 agility + 20 mastery if not avaible)
Blues – 25 agility + 25 hit ( 20 agility + 20 hit if not avaible)

Enchants
Shoulder – 50 agility + 25 mastery
Cloak – 22 agility (Swordguard Embroidery if you have Tailoring)
Chest – 20 to all stats
Bracers -50 agility
Gloves-65 mastery
Legs-190 attack power + 55 crit
Boots-35 agility

“What Trinkets to use ? “
Vial of Shadows and Kiroptyric Sigil are the best if you're just starting to play Assassination. Later (or if you already have it) you can swap out Kiroptyric Sigil for Wrath of the Unchaining.
Theoretically, the best trinkets you can possibly get for this spec are Heroic Vial of the Shadows and Heroic Wrath of the Unchaining.
Starcatcher Compass is not really that good, since it only valuable for the flat Agility it gives you. The periodic haste gain isn't worth Jack shit for Assassination Rogues.


Thank you for reading this guide! I’ll be trying to update this page with more and more information and improving it visually. If you have any questions, tips, or you just simply want to give your opinion, you can do that below. Have a nice day!

[IronSNK]

Good guide. What kind of dps do you usually pull in raids as assassination?

[Taelan]

IronSNK wrote:

Good guide. What kind of dps do you usually pull in raids as assassination?

Usually somewhere around 30k. On Yor'sajh , when I'm asigned to the boss, I pull off a solid 38k dps (with all possible buffs). The opener gets me somewhere around 50k and then drops to 38/39k at the end of the fight. This is pretty much my limit with this current gear, not to mention that this spec got nerfed to hell.

[Skex4You]

Taelan wrote:

IronSNK wrote: Good guide. What kind of dps do you usually pull in raids as assassination? Usually somewhere around 30k. On Yor'sajh , when I'm asigned to the boss, I pull off a solid 38k dps (with all possible buffs). The opener gets me somewhere around 50k and then drops to 38/39k at the end of the fight. This is pretty much my limit with this current gear, not to mention that this spec got nerfed to hell.

The guide is quite detailed , GJ on that , sadly enough Assassination isn't a viable spec on 4.3.4 =) due to hard nerfs. The spec is really fun to play but it's the last on the dps meter.

[Taelan]

Skex4You wrote:

Taelan wrote: IronSNK wrote: Good guide. What kind of dps do you usually pull in raids as assassination? Usually somewhere around 30k. On Yor'sajh , when I'm asigned to the boss, I pull off a solid 38k dps (with all possible buffs). The opener gets me somewhere around 50k and then drops to 38/39k at the end of the fight. This is pretty much my limit with this current gear, not to mention that this spec got nerfed to hell. The guide is quite detailed , GJ on that , sadly enough Assassination isn't a viable spec on 4.3.4 =) due to hard nerfs. The spec is really fun to play but it's the last on the dps meter.

Thank you, I appreciate the support.
I can't deny that the spec got nerfed hard, but it's certainly not unplayable. You'll still do the required dps for a fight, but you won't be able to compete with other classes. You are just average. In Baradin Hold pugs, some over-fed guy from Ominence always blows me away in terms of dps, despite my perfect gemming,reforing and rotation. I just wanted to encourage people to try something new for a change, because I, myself, got bored of the 2-button rotation that combat has.

[Skex4You]

Taelan wrote:

Skex4You wrote: Taelan wrote: IronSNK wrote: Good guide. What kind of dps do you usually pull in raids as assassination? Usually somewhere around 30k. On Yor'sajh , when I'm asigned to the boss, I pull off a solid 38k dps (with all possible buffs). The opener gets me somewhere around 50k and then drops to 38/39k at the end of the fight. This is pretty much my limit with this current gear, not to mention that this spec got nerfed to hell. The guide is quite detailed , GJ on that , sadly enough Assassination isn't a viable spec on 4.3.4 =) due to hard nerfs. The spec is really fun to play but it's the last on the dps meter. Thank you, I appreciate the support. I can't deny that the spec got nerfed hard, but it's certainly not unplayable. You'll still do the required dps for a fight, but you won't be able to compete with other classes. You are just average. In Baradin Hold pugs, some over-fed guy from Ominence always blows me away in terms of dps, despite my perfect gemming,reforing and rotation. I just wanted to encourage people to try something new for a change, because I, myself, got bored of the 2-button rotation that combat has.

Indeed , the spec is fun , ppl should try Sub since at some fights it does like shit loads of damage , but the spec has a *complicated* rotation so ppl just play combat cause it's easy xD. And also you don't have a good MH dagger for sub or even for assassination (at least for now) xD.
Either way , really good guide ^^.

[Taelan]

Added more information and visual improvements.
I will continue doing the same over time when I decide I should include something that is vital to know ; Planning to add in-depth guides for each individual boss listed above as Assassination.