Assassination Rogue Talents Guide

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On the Class tree, there’s some powerful talent choices at the top of the tree, and then some damage options at the bottom. From top to bottom:

• Airborne Irritant vs Gouge. I recommend Airborne in basically all situations as it gives us an AoE stop in mythic+ and raids. It also combos really nicely with the next choice node
• Blackjack vs Tricks of the Trade. I also recommend Blackjack everywhere. This gives the AoE blind from Airborne Irritant an additional powerful damage reduction and heal reduction effect. It might not always be useful, but when there’s 2-3 casters in a pack, or mobs with tank busters, the 30% reduction is really noticeable. Tricks of the trade additionally is really overrated in my opinion. A lot of people don’t realize that Tricks of the trade only redirects the aggro directly generated by the rogue, which is a problem. Tanks naturally have a much higher threat generation than DPS specs, to the point where a Tricks of the trade redirect is comparably a tiny amount of threat. In most cases, the only thing tricks of the trade does is allow for help pulling distant packs together, a job usually better handled by a ranged dps.
• Cheat Death vs Elusiveness. Very simple comparison here. Elusiveness is the stronger defensive especially in high end mythic+, but requires a bit of finesse, game knowledge, and planning to execute properly. Cheat Death is passive and will save you from mistakes you can’t anticipate.
• Numbing poison vs Atrophic poison. Numbing Poisons cast speed reduction is pretty hit or miss generally. On a lot of important casts where you would want the reduction, it simply doesn’t work. In general the comparison here is numbing poison for tank damage reduction, atrophic poison for group damage reduction
• Deadly Precision vs Virulent Poisons. Simple damage choice node. Virulent Poisons is awful and never taken
• Tight Spender vs Improved Ambush. This one actually is a bit of a choice. Improved Ambush is slightly better on single target with Blindside, Tight spender in mythic+ is generally the go to for slightly more overall damage

Then we get to the bottom of the class tree with the capstone choices. You may take 3 capstones with the remaining points, but two of them are permanently locked in for Assassination. Thistle tea and deeper stratagem are simply too strong to pass up, for both single target as well as mythic+. That leaves us with 3 options:

• Lethality -> Cold Blood
• Echoing Reprimand
• Subterfuge -> Without a Trace

Lethality is surprisingly strong on its own, and while Cold blood isn’t particularly impressive, it is played everywhere with Fatebound due to the Inevitability node on that hero talent tree. Deathstalker typically does not play Cold Blood, but the loss isn’t very high and for about a 1% damage loss you can macro Cold Blood on Deathstalker and remove a button from your rotation

Echoing Reprimand is the go-to when not playing Cold Blood. This is the default pick on Deathstalker talent trees as well. When playing Echoing Reprimand, cast it on cooldown, but don’t change your rotation to try and hit the empowered combo points. Simply play the same as you were before, and if you land on an empowered combo point, use a finisher.

Subterfuge and Without a Trace is insanely bad to the point of being unplayable. Subterfuge does not help extend anything on the spec, as Improved Garrote, Iron wire, and Indiscriminate Carnage are already 6 seconds by default. Without a Trace gives a single additional charge, which notably does not help give more casts over a 40 minute dungeon. We already cast vanish very close to on cooldown. From prepatch logs, Without a Trace in practice is providing 2 additional vanish casts in an entire dungeon. This comes with a heavy 4 point investment, and even just the point in Without a Trace is better placed in Lethality. Taking Without a Trace is roughly a 5% damage loss in both single target, as well as AoE. Do not play this talent.

On the Spec tree I want to highlight all of the important talents that you need to know.

• Deadly Poison is the first talent on the tree, and the default poison we use
• Venomous Wounds is a large portion of our energy regen and needs to be played around in mythic+ by spreading bleeds
• Seal Fate provides a ton of extra combo points and is our main source of combo points from Fan of Knives in AoE
• Caustic Spatter is a core AoE mechanic for us. Maintaining this in AoE and leveraging Envenom and Kingsbane casts into priority targets for AoE through Caustic Spatter is important in mythic+
• Crimson Tempest is a staple AoE finisher for Assassination Rogues. This needs to be maintained whenever 2 or more targets are present.
• Deathmark is our main cooldown every 2 minutes. In single target this is lined up with Vanish in order to apply and then duplicated Improved Garrote. In AoE Deathmark is a single target cooldown mostly used to make Kingsbane ramp faster and provide heavy priority damage
• Sanguine Blades isn’t very good in single target, but turns into a monster talent in AoE when bleeds can be spread and energy income from Venomous Wounds is really high.
• Lethal Dose is a core mechanic to Assassination. It isn’t directly played around but it provides a strong damage buff, especially during the duplication effects from Deathmark. In single target this can reach almost 30% increased damage with a large portion of our kit
• Blindside provides a proc for a free Ambush. This is one of the talents that helps make Assassination really good during execute
• Zoldyck Recipe is the second talent that provides a large amount of execute damage
• Serrated Bone Spike has been turned into a passive for The war within and helps speed up AoE openers. This is a new staple pick for mythic+ and single target
• Shrouded Suffocation is similar to Serrated Bone spike in terms of its effects on the speed of AoE openers. The increased garrote damage is entirely passive however and is not reliant on stealth. This is a common point of confusion with the talent.
• Scent of Blood is an insanely strong talent specifically for priority damage in mythic+. Maxing out at 20% agility, this is a large boost in damage for all your abilities and most mythic+ talent builds will be taking it for this reason
• Arterial Precision turns your shiv into an AoE debuff that also increases bleed damage taken. Notably the AoE effect here allows for buffing the damage of Caustic Spatter. Like Blade flurry, Caustic Spatter damage is calculated before increases to target damage taken, meaning that without Arterial Precision, shiv on your main target will not increase the damage of Caustic Spatter.
• Kingsbane is a staple 1 min cooldown for Assassination that ramps up its damage over time. We usually hold shiv charges for this and make sure to cast it during deathmark in order to get the poison duplication to help ramp it even faster
• Dragon tempered blades is a passive that just allows us to have more poisons on at once. Notably this lets us use Amplifying poison, helps the Kingsbane ramp, and provides extra stacks of lethal dose
• Indiscriminate Carnage is a staple mythic+ talent that helps us spread bleeds more effectively in Aoe. Consider this a part of your AoE burst, not a requirement for your core rotation. Caustic Spatter, Crimson Tempest, and manually casting Garrote and Rupture cover your main rotation just fine, indiscriminate carnage is a jump-start for it.
• Sudden demise is a touch of death style ability that kills low health targets based on the bleed damage remaining. There is some confusion regarding how it works however. At a basic level, if a target has 100 health remaining, you need to have 150 damage or more worth of remaining bleeds on the target in order for Sudden demise to trigger and kill the target.

Deathstalker

Notable on the deathstalker tree is the core gameplay around Deathstalker’s mark and darkest night. These together apply and then consume the main debuff of deathstalker. It’s cyclic in nature, where you apply a mark, use 3 finishers on the target to consume the mark, and then build up to your max combo points with the capstone in order to re-apply the mark with a buffed envenom. Activating and subsequently consuming the capstone buff to keep this cycle alive is the #1 goal for the tree.

Other important talents on the tree include:

• Clear the Witnesses. While this buff is present and you are not talented into Vicious Venoms, you will want to use fan of knives to consume the buff, even in single target.
• Singular Focus. This is a hotly anticipated talent that people were hyping up as "the return of funnel dps". In reality it’s around 3% of our overall damage, which is just okay. It’s not strong enough to be abusable in any way, and mostly just serves as some bonus damage
• Fatal Intent should technically be a strong execute style pop at 20% target hp, which is very valuable generally. Similar to singular focus however the numbers just don’t add up