We break down all the reasons you should consider playing Assassination Rogue in Patch 10.1 and even throw in a few reasons of why you might not. From all the changes since launch to the new tier set bonuses coming in 10.1, join us as we explore Dragonflight Season 2 Assassination Rogue!
Why You Should Play a Spec in Dragonflight Season 2 Series
Protection Warrior
Dragonflight Season 2 Rogue Tier Set
I’m Whispyr, Moderator and Theorycrafter in the Rogue Discord. I am in a Mythic raiding guild on Area-52, and often play Mythic+ with friends. I am honored to be able to spend most of my time helping out all types of Rogues, from newly aspiring players, top players in the world, and everything in between. Often, I help with practical theorycrafting and technical questions. I also contribute to Simulationcraft for both Assassination and Subtlety Rogue. If you have any questions, you can find me in the Ravenholdt discord! I also stream regularly on Twitch (whispyrttv). Feel free to message me directly on Discord (Whispyr#0001) for any one-on-one questions you may have.
Why You Should Play Assassination Rogue in Dragonflight Season 2 (and Why You Shouldn’t)
Assassination Rogue has stood its ground as a staple in progression raiding and PvP for many expansions at this point. Being a Rogue Spec, it has all the same great things that people generally will want from a Rogue in an easy-to-manage and potent package. Over the years, the main damage source has fluctuated slightly, but since shadowlands has settled into a mix of maintained damage over time bleed effects, with Envenom being a frequently cast finisher to dump resources with. It has a multitude of ways to augment these effects, with Dragonflights talent reworks providing new options with the additions of Amplifying Poison, Deathmark, Dragon-Tempered Blades, and a host of other effects to further improve poison and bleeds.
It does not come without its downsides, with most of it being directed toward multi-target situations. Historically Assassination has struggled to leave an impression in mythic+ and similarly sees consistently lackluster performance in raid encounters with frequent add spawns. This has been a long-standing issue in every expansion since the introduction of mythic+ in legion, and Dragonflight hasn’t quite found a remedy for it yet. In Season 1, Assassination was nonexistent in the greater scope of mythic+ meta, and after receiving nerfs during week 1 also found itself in a slump in raids. With 10.1 fast approaching and no rogue changes planned for the patch as of the writing of this article, it feels like more of the same going into this tier.
We’ll take a closer look at the reasons for each, however here is a table summarizing why you should (and shouldn’t) play Assassination Rogue in Dragonflight:
| Why You Should | Why You Shouldn’t |
Why You Should Play Assassination Rogue in Dragonflight Season 2
Assassination Rogue doing Rogue Things
Starting with the obvious benefits, Assassination has access to all the usual bells and whistles that come with being a rogue:
- Cloak of Shadows: Can be used to solo soak mechanics, remove a wide variety of debuffs, and generally help survivability.
- Blind: Often used in mythic+, and even in raids as an extra interrupt, or as an imprisonment effect.
- Kidney Shot: A staple single target stun with a long duration and a short cooldown.
- Feint: One of the strongest short cooldown defensives in the game, able to greatly reduce damage taken in every encounter.
- Evasion: While not a full physical immunity, it can still be often used, especially in mythic+, to soak charges and other physical mechanics.
- Cheat Death: Barely requires explanation. It’s been saving Rogue lives for well over a decade. If you’re going to die, no you aren’t. It’s great.
- Sprint and Shadowstep: Staple movement abilities with short cooldowns, invaluable for repositioning.
There’s also some additional honorable mentions to round out the toolkit which are less valued, but still worth talking about:
Benefits, but at what cost
Specific to Assassination as its own spec, there are plenty of things players will be looking for. These can be broken down into 3 categories:
- Niche Utility
- Damage Profile
- Gameplay
Niche Utility
Two things spring out for Assassination from the spec talent tree. The most important here is the interaction between Indiscriminate Carnage and Iron Wire. This combination is frankly crazy strong. Not only does it make Assassination the only rogue spec with an AoE crowd control, but it often also doubles as a defensive for tanks in mythic+, somewhat comparable to a weaker Ironbark. Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story because while it sounds incredibly powerful, Silences can be incredibly finicky. Especially in mythic+, where this effect is most desired, there are mobs with powerful casts that are immune to being affected by Silence. Additionally, damage reduction only occurs if the target is successfully silenced. It can make for some awkward situations where it might not actually do anything. Also, unlike Solar Beam, it only is able to hit a maximum of 8 targets, which you cannot control, and even more demoralizing on top of that, Iron Wire‘s “Garrote from Stealth” stands at odds with Improved Garrote, which we would prefer to play around for damage, making it tricky to time effectively. This makes the whole combo incredibly prohibitive sadly.
Assassination also has access to a second charge of Shadowstep, a luxury previously afforded only to Subtlety. While on the surface, this doesn’t seem very good, it is deceptively powerful depending on the situation. Having a second charge allows you to not only Shadowstep out of the group for a mechanic but then also allows you to Shadowstep back in afterward, lowering your downtime. On the mythic version of Raszageth, having a second charge of Shadowstep actually proved invaluable for the pushback in multiple phases, something that other specs struggled with.
Damage Profile
Everyone loves a good burst of damage when there’s a big moment. Seeing a super big number, or a ton of numbers all at once. Assassination can provide some of that feeling. While it’s not the best burst in the game, Deathmark packs a potent punch, especially on pull. It also can gain some execute damage through Blindside and Zoldyck Recipe, giving it that last extra push going into the final phase of a fight. Yet again however, none of these are really slam dunks and these profiles aren’t entirely defining of the spec. While execute damage does exist, it’s a percentage of our bleed and poison damage through Zoldyck Recipe mostly. Unlike Execute for Warriors, our execute is connected symbiotically to our overall damage. If Assassination does good single target on its own, then the execute will also be pretty good. But if its not a clear choice in single target, this niche also suffers because of it.
Some people also argue that because of the bleed maintenance of the spec, it can perform better on downtime off the boss. And while this is technically true, it’s not a reason to play Assassination over anything else. While the benefit might have been more exposed in years past due to how slow Assassination was rotationally, the downtime angle could have been argued more in the way of not wasting Energy while away from your target. In Dragonflight however, Assassination has shifted up a gear and is now nearly as fast as Subtlety and other melee specs, which removes that argument for the most part. In general, the downtime argument doesn’t apply much to the spec in Dragonflight.
Gameplay
Some people also just love the thematic gameplay of Assassination. Bleeds and Poisons have a very strong theme, and that can be exciting. For the most part, the rotation is very simple. Maintain Garrote and Rupture. From there, you will be generating combo points with Mutilate or Fan of Knives and spending those combo points with Envenom, or Crimson Tempest in AoE. In order to spice this up, Assassination has plenty of short cooldown spells to fill the gap:
Obviously this isn’t a complete guide to playing Assassination, but as you can see, the rotation is a very straight forward generate->spend rotation with some added cooldowns to press whenever available. This makes it accessible and easy to learn, even for beginners. The pacing is also slightly slower than the other two rogue specs, for those struggling to keep up with the pacing of Outlaw for example.
Unsurprisingly, there are issues however. While there are strong themes, some of the abilities don’t feel like they connect to the spec at all. Echoing Reprimand has a neat minigame, but it doesn’t really feel all that “Assassination-y”. You push the button, get some empowered combo points, and it makes your finishers a bit better, but there’s no real concrete connection there. Similarly there has been complaints about the button bloat of the spec that provides no real interaction. Most of the above cooldowns I listed are very simple in nature. When they’re available, you use them, they do their damage, and then that’s… that’s really all it is. Having buttons just to push buttons can feel a bit dull sometimes, because it doesn’t feel like you’re doing a rotation as much as you’re just pressing the shiniest button on your UI because the guide said you should.
Why You Shouldn’t Play Assassination Rogue in Dragonflight Season 2
Living in the Shadows
I alluded to this earlier a little, but while Assassination is a rogue spec, often times it’s simply the inferior tool for the job compared to its counterparts. It clings onto its ability to do single target for dear life. In raids designed similarly to Vault in Season 1, there are so many fights where raids simply want an all-around spec more than something specifically tooled to only single target. Both Outlaw and Subtlety can balance their output in those situations much easier than Assassination. While you could talent into AoE on Assassination, the sheer loss of single target damage alone is off-putting for many players. In mythic+ it’s a similar story, where you have to talent into all of your AoE, but end up not being able to compete with most other specs that can do it easier, with less investment, and get more out of it.
The AoE that could’ve been
Plenty of new talents got added that could’ve helped out Assassination in AoE and mythic+, where it struggles the most. Indiscriminate Carnage was a huge deal when it was announced, a sign of better times to come. Sadly however it was just kind of the only major addition we received. Indiscriminate Carnage is great, a staple for Assassination in mythic+, but it cannot carry the spec by itself. The package it got delivered in is just simply too weak as a baseline, and Indiscriminate Carnage ended up being more of a band-aid as we watched other specs get similarly powerful AoE talents added, leaving Assassination in the uncomfortable position of having something new and powerful, but also being left in the dirt as everyone else also got new shiny toys alongside it.
10.0.5 tried to help by giving us Arterial Precision, another AoE/Cleave talent. I feel very strongly about this talent. Disappointment does not begin to cover the range of emotions I’ve gone through with Arterial Precision. This is essentially a copy-paste of our 2 piece bonus from the final tier of Shadowlands with Grudge Match. You might have already noticed a difference though. The tier bonus was not target capped, was twice as powerful, and had an extra second on its duration. Arterial Precision is simply undertuned, and it’s undertuned in multiple areas. For Arterial Precision to become a Capstone Level Talent, and be delivered in such a weak state, was confusing. But that was only the start of the confusion, since it displaced Kingsbane in the process. Because of its new position, Kingsbane immediately was relegated to the trash pile and never played again. The Assassination Community has been hoping that it was only the start of changes due to some other talent circumstances, but 10.0.5 came and went with no further tuning to either of these now dead capstones. The 10.1 PTR also came and went, with again, no changes to this problem that was introduced. The hope continues, but it is a little demoralizing to receive changes that only end up hurting the spec with no follow up to make sure that the additions have their desired effects, especially considering how badly Assassination relies on talents in AoE, like Indiscriminate Carnage. Arterial Precision could have helped change that.
One Tier to Rule them all
The Tier bonus in 10.1 could bring something to the spec, however this is also looking fairly bleak. If you would like to read a more in depth analysis of the tier set bonus, I would suggest my Analysis of the Tier in this article. Going over it quickly:
2 piece – Rogue Assassination 10.1 Class Set 2pc
4 piece – Rogue Assassination 10.1 Class Set 4pc
The 2 piece bonus here a bit confusing for avoiding Garrote considering how much our talents push its damage. That would be okay however if it was tuned high enough to make a noticeable difference over our current 4 piece bonus Rogue Assassination Class Set 4pc, which is just a 20% buff to all bleeds. The real elephant in the room though is the new 4 piece bonus, Rogue Assassination 10.1 Class Set 4pc. Current theorycrafting has this as a simple passive that we do not play around in any major capacity, but it is a striking bonus to grant global damage after a single target cooldown. It poses questions about Deathmark in AoE, and whether the bonus can be abused, for example in mythic+ by trying to Deathmark at the end of a pull in order to have the bonus rolling into the next pack in order to get Indiscriminate Carnage and Rupture up on pull with the full tier benefit. It’s an awkward question to have to ask yourself in terms of gameplay. “Is it better if I try to get the least benefit out of my main cooldown” in my opinion should never be a question that a player should be asking themselves.
This tier bonus could very easily just be a passive effect with no gameplay changes, or it could be a min-maxing nightmare with unintuitive ways to try to time the buff with a burst of damage. It remains to be seen which it ends up being.
The Change we have been waiting for
So far, Assassination has received attention twice in Dragonflight. Once on the release of Season 1, where it was promptly nerfed, and once in 10.0.5, where we received the aforementioned Arterial Precision. 10.1 brings nothing to the spec in terms of changes or tuning. The best we can do currently is wait for something to change, and hope we are tuned adequately for the new season.
There is one talent however that I have omitted so far and hangs in the air like a bad smell. It’s time we address Exsanguinate. At the start of this expansion, Exsanguinate was a 45 second cooldown with 100% speed up. After the theorycrafting caught up with all the changes and new talent trees, it was determined to be so ungodly strong that it rivaled the power of capstone talents. An incredibly unbalanced talent to have in a very accessible spot in the middle of the tree. Blizzard agreed, and tuned it down, very reasonably in fact, to a 3 minute cooldown with 80% speed up. While that is an extreme nerf, it was near perfect in terms of balancing the ability to similarly accessible options. This came with mention that this change is a bit temporary while they wait and determine the future of Exsanguinate. As an ability, Exsanguinate is very polarizing, with many being confused on its usage, its power, and the unintuitive nature of the cooldown in general. It is still here to stay in 10.1.
Conclusion
As negative as I seem about the spec, I think the performance will probably be okay in Season 2. The frustrations of the spec are mostly due to a lack of attention and changes towards the systemic issues that have plagued the spec for many expansions. It’s not an easy task to fix those underlying issues, a job I do not envy in the slightest. But until the day comes where those changes come and Assassination can join the other rogue specs as an equal in the mythic+ meta and hold its own on add spawns, Assassination is stagnating as a second pick for most rogue players, and falling out of favor with the community at large, which pains me to see. I am as always, hopeful that this will change in the future.
For more information on playing Assassination Rogue, please see our class guide updated for Dragonflight:
Assassination Rogue Guide
