Introduction
This guide was written by Ceverion and was updated by Whispyr for patch 9.1.5.
Ceverion is a community figure in the Rogue class discord, Ravenholdt where he spends a lot of his time analyzing logs, simming, and coming up with ways to push slightly more DPS out of his character. He is very heavy on the DPS min-maxing and will be sharing some of his tips and tricks in this guide with Whispyr.
Whispyr is a Shadow Blade in the Rogue class discord, Ravenholdt, where he spends a lot of his time helping other rogues push to their limits. He also theorycrafts and contributes to Simulationcraft, for both assassination and subtlety, and he also maintains the Wowhead guide for Assassination rogue.
If you have any questions, feel free to tag Whispyr in Ravenholdt or send him a message directly on Discord. You can find him playing on his rogue on his stream every now and again, so make sure to tune in!
Twitch stream: https://www.twitch.tv/whispyrttv
Discord: Whispyr#0001
Ravenholdt: https://discord.gg/Ravenholdt
What has changed
Not much was done to Assassination with the 9.1 patch. Blizzard introduced new borrowed power systems, like new soulbind traits, covenant legendaries and domination shards, which have changed the way we play assassination rogues and I will be going over all of the new setups and possibilities that we have with these new systems.
Assassination is often regarded as the go-to raiding spec for rogues. It is a very versatile spec that has very consistent damage across the board. It is very rare to see assassination in a bad spot and due to the nature of the spec and will often see some sort of play in the mythic raiding scene. Unfortunately rogue are still missing raid utility as a class, which is invaluable in high end mythic raiding.
Good news is that Blizzard has acknowledged the problem and they are possibly giving some sort of raid-wide utility to the class, to put it in line with the other melee specs like Demon Hunters, Monks and Warriors. However, currently that is not the case, which is often the reason you see rogues being benched, even if they are pumping the damage charts.