Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists
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Fire Mage Restoration Shaman Affliction Warlock |
Assassination Retrospective & War Within Wishlist
Assassination has seen a lot of ups and downs throughout Dragonflight, receiving a new capstone in 10.0.5, as well as a bigger talent tree rework alongside the other rogue specs in 10.2. Let’s take a look back at how the spec has evolved, talk about what’s working well (and not working well), before diving into a small wishlist for the Hero Talents coming with The War Within. Before we start, I do want to thank those who have helped share their views on the spec over the last weeks. Having another view on a topic helps the feedback cycle immensely and drives conversation. I appreciate you all so much for it.
Reflecting on the Past
Assassination going into Dragonflight had its issues, but it had strong roots in some core foundational concepts that drove players to the spec. A lot of the spec at the start of 10.0 could be summarized as follows:
Mythic+ Woes
Going into 10.0, the situation for Assassination in Mythic+ was quite dire. The spec had serious issues in the talent tree trying to juggle single target and AoE talents, often failing at doing either successfully without severely hampering the other. While the lack of AoE was addressed at the start of the expansion, it wouldn’t be until 10.2 that the vision would be clear. For the first half of the expansion, this ended up leaving Assassination clinging to Indiscriminate Carnage as a one-button solution to everything AoE. During Season 1 and Season 2, Indiscriminate Carnage was an active cast that applied bleeds to 8 targets. This then created a situation where the bleeds got spread quickly, but there was nothing rotationally to fill the space afterward, which made for a very awkward rotation where your only source of AoE spreading bleeds was also your burst and simultaneously also eliminated a big part of the greater rotation. Outside of the confusion of “what do I do after Indiscriminate Carnage“, it was quite straightforward and fairly simple. The addition of Arterial Precision later in the tier helped push a bleed-centric build even further, even though the talent juggle between single target and AoE was still problematic.
Single Target Only
In Raids, Assassination firmly held onto its position of doing great boss damage but being unable to hit anything aside from the boss. Especially in 10.0 this created some animosity, as every boss was reduced to being a glorified target dummy. The duty of an Assassination Rogue this patch was gluing themselves to the boss, while the rest of the raid did mechanics. Deathmark was an interesting new 2 minute cooldown that opened a lot of new possibilities for interactions, but in terms of gameplay did not provide anything different from its predecessor, Vendetta.
Gameplay wise Assassination was a little lost. Aside from getting more uptime for melee hits and Deadly Poison applications, there was very little skill expression and uptimes on buffs like Envenom and Elaborate Planning were reaching a breaking point for the spec. These used to serve a role in gameplay, having to play around them and maximize energy and combo points as a result. In Season 1 however, with every buff at 100% uptime, every debuff easily maintained, and no issues managing resources, the spec quickly became stale. This had a much needed change in Season 2 with a large buff to Sepsis that ended up adding a noticeable shift in gameplay, which most people appreciated for the extra layer of thought and methodical cooldown planning the spec was sorely missing previously.
A Big Step Forward
Going into 10.2, Assassination received quite a lot of changes, specifically targeting some of the large weaknesses in Mythic+ and general AoE. It also opened up some gameplay more focused on energy management, which was well received. Lets take a quick look at how those changes affected the spec:
10.2 brought huge changes to Rogue as a whole, but Assassination got by far the biggest shake-up in gameplay. Sudden Demise was an entirely new capstone with a lot of hype behind it for mythic+. Kingsbane and Dragon-Tempered Blades could be taken together, an insanely strong synergy for burst damage. Indiscriminate Carnage was turned into a passive from stealth, which when combined with a more accessible Shadow Dance in the class tree has panned out great for mythic+. Caustic Spatter single-handedly changed how the spec considers AoE damage. Not to mention the resource gameplay from Path of Blood, Sanguine Blades, and Vicious Venoms. There’s a lot of good here, but with new shiny toys come new shiny problems. Overall however, the changes here have had a huge positive impact on the spec and I’m quite pleased with where it ended up.
Mythic+ Improvements
In Mythic+ the spec has seen a resurgence for its strong priority damage that it has always been known for, now with Caustic Spatter driving a ton of AoE damage at the same time. In combination with the Season 3 Tier Set Bonus, Envenomous Explosion, most of the concern having to pick between Single Target and AoE has been solved. Indiscriminate Carnage is able to be used often with Shadow Dance in the class tree and has provided a consistent way to spread bleeds. Because of the power of these two talents, the rest of the talent tree has had the ability to breathe and open up for a lot of different choices depending on the situation. In Mythic+ right now there are no less than 5 viable talent builds for Assassination that take the core talents before moving into a specific niche. The two common ones are poison based, playing fully into Caustic Spatter and single target damage, with the other being bleed based, removing some single target in order to pick up Crimson Tempest and Sudden Demise. The ability to pick and choose the right tool for the job has been refreshing and very welcomed, albeit slightly frustrating for new players picking up the spec who see the immense choices and become overwhelmed.
The ugly truth about talent flexibility
By now, the cracks are starting to show in what is otherwise a flawless design. With so many different talents and situations to use them in, it becomes surprisingly difficult to nail down exactly what the correct rotation should be. Finding the “best dps” option is fairly standard, but most of the time the differences in builds are designed to combat one specific type of damage. Having more burst AoE for example with Sudden Demise, or more priority damage on a large monster in a pull with Amplifying Poison. Because these decisions are inherently geared towards moving AoE damage into single target or vice versa, it has created a sliding scale of “you should do X, HOWEVER YOU COULD ALSO…..“. As the week changes and different builds get used, these recommendations are constantly changing and keeping track of all the nuances becomes quite confusing for regular players. Some of the choices that seem fairly obvious also aren’t strong enough to hold their own this Season, which does not help the situation. Sudden Demise, Scent of Blood, and Crimson Tempest all seem like go-to Mythic+ talents regardless of week, but have all fallen out of favor in the hunt for more single target damage. The fact that the talent tree can support those choices is admirable and from a player standpoint even refreshing against a lot of the rigidity in the past, but it feels counter-intuitive even to me that these talents that practically scream Mythic+ are just thrown to the wayside. I think finding a middle ground between fully rigid and completely free-form would be healthier for a lot of players here.
Ramp time woes
Aside from the confusing build and talent choices, the biggest issue people bring up time and time again with Assassination in Mythic+ (as well as some raid fights), is the ramp time. It is really long, and only gets worse depending on the build. Realistically with Indiscriminate Carnage, Kingsbane and Caustic Spatter, which are all must-haves in Mythic+, a full opener will end up requiring the pull to last 25, up to 30 seconds, just to get the full damage out of your opener and the ramping nature of Kingsbane. Even in keys in the +23 range, expecting a priority target to survive that long against the massive single target burst from Kingsbane in order to spread damage through Caustic Spatter is frankly delusional and ends up creating very frustrating gameplay where not only your cooldowns need time to tick, but your prep for your cooldowns also has a dozen steps beforehand. As a community, we’ve come up with some creative solutions to these problems. “Accelerated Openers” have become commonplace in Mythic+ and higher-end raiding, where simply skipping some of the prep in the opener is favored over a “correct” opener. A good example of this is Mythic Tindral Sageswift, where the opener is fully accelerated in order to save 6 seconds of prep time, allowing cooldowns to come back up in time for intermissions while also lining up better for AoE spawns. This concept follows in Mythic+ as well, to mixed results. Most of the time, even when accelerating, the mob in question simply does not live long enough to see the end of an Assassination Rogue’s cooldowns. There is an argument for skill expression here, but with how rigid and lengthy the opener becomes, it’s unwieldy for most content.
All roads lead to Kingsbane
And that brings us to Raiding. Assassination, in general, has had a really good tier in 10.2. The burst is high, Caustic Spatter is carrying all the AoE on the spec by itself with only 1 talent point changed. The dream of Assassination players for the last 8 years (since the start of Legion in 2016) to finally be able to compete in AoE situations is here and in full force. Normally that would be the end. We did it, Assassination has AoE! Except it’s not that simple. Almost as a polar opposite to Mythic+, the talents in Raids end up not changing. Ever. The only change that regularly occurs is Caustic Spatter in place of Internal Bleeding. Internal Bleeding would be the preferred option on Volcoross, Smolderon, and Nymue, with Caustic Spatter being preferred on the other 6 fights.
This has led Assassination down a path of fully leaning into Kingsbane, and all of the talent choices around it as a support to this one button. The list of things that we’re stacking onto Kingsbane currently is immense:
The damage on Kingsbane is great, don’t get me wrong. But it is also once again the only thing Assassination has. The gripe of years past rears its ugly head once more as Caustic Spatter tries to paste over it, however at the end of the day the meta of “Assassination only does boss damage” has shifted into “Assassination only does Kingsbane damage”. Outside of Kingsbane, there isn’t really much to the spec, and the most on-demand damage available would be Envenom, our main spammable finisher. While having this sort of damage as an option is welcomed, it’s also recently become oppressive to the spec, and no viable alternative is able to fill the gap. Something like Sudden Demise could serve a purpose in AoE situations while still granting boss damage through bleeds, but the investment is too high. In terms of single target damage, dropping Kingsbane is not an option to ever consider, and there’s nothing higher up in the tree to help support that choice either, leaving the spec stranded with a single build to ride, feast or famine.
Looking for Alternatives
The addition of talents like Vicious Venoms and Sanguine Blades could have filled this gap slightly and carried their own more methodical gameplay outside of cooldowns, but ended up not quite being able to bridge the divide. Additionally on the topic, while Sanguine Blades ends up promoting a unique playstyle, it ends up being mostly ignorable in terms of gameplay this patch. The gameplay also has been stomped on by the 4 piece, Envenomous Explosion, which takes priority over Sanguine Blades. Another talent changed in 10.2 was Vicious Venoms, which while slowing down the spec and helping re-center the uptimes on the class, has not been strong enough to see any play either. There’s a direction that I’m liking with Assassination, to focus more on resource management and correct methodical play. The opener is rigid and punishing when done incorrectly, further promoting that gameplay, but it’s shifted heavily into the cooldown side of things. The energy-play though, mainly through Sanguine Blades has missed the mark a bit. While energy is slower than before, and there is a gameplay around pooling, this is mostly driven by the tier set which will most likely be going away in The War Within. It would be cool to see it as a talent in the future, since it does promote some of the resource/uptime gameplay the talents have been steering the spec towards. Overall I think that exploring ways to push more resource based gameplay, rewarding the player for correctly identifying moments to spend and moments to conserve, waiting and lurking for the right time to spring onto the enemy and Assassinate them, that’s exciting.
Hope for the Future
Dragonflight has had some rocky changes for Assassination, but they ended up panning out in the end and most agree that the spec is better for it in the process. Going forward, I believe some of the problems can be addressed with some minor tweaks and hopefully some of the Hero Talents coming with The War Within. As a whole I think it’s better to stay conceptual rather than concrete right now. A lot of the things on Assassination that have worked well with the rework and have been welcomed by the community have followed a design of “cool idea first”. Sanguine Blades took a lot of iteration to get right, but is now a staple for the spec and a unique twist on energy. Alongside the Hero Talents, I think the baseline has two areas here that I would want to see explored some more.
Deathstalker
For Deathstalker, the Assassination/Subtlety hybrid Hero Specialization, this could be where that big burst gameplay from this Season could be. I see potential for stealth effects and cooldown-centric gameplay from the fantasy here that could play into more of the explosive nature of both the specs. Talents like Master Assassin, Nightstalker, Lethality, Cold Blood, and Shadow Dance all have their place on this Hybrid and can be expanded on.
Fatebound
For Fatebound, the Assassination/Outlaw hybrid Hero Specialization, I think it would be helpful to see something related to resources. Outlaw is already very resource-centric and could lean into it, while Assassination would love to tap into that. Something I would personally like to see to combat the issues in ramp time here could be an effect that reduces the global cooldown, an improved Adrenaline Rush perhaps. Seal Fate could see something here too that can add some more intricacies. I think there’s a lot of space here for special combo point interactions here, from stronger finishers to buffs attached to combo point usage.
Old Poison
Poisons have been a rogue staple for a long time now in World of Warcraft, but have lost a lot of luster. They’re essentially just passives you have to refresh every hour and don’t provide any interesting choices in terms of gameplay. This is one big thing that sets Assassination apart from Feral for example. It feels like Poisons in general have been somewhat forgotten and stuck in the past, but I think it could be a way to introduce some really cool new mechanics to Assassination.
Space to Innovate
Combo points, while being a core resource for Rogues since the inception of the game, have stayed practically the same since then. We’ve gotten more maximum over the years with things like Deeper Stratagem and Anticipation, but the most innovative ability in terms of combo point gameplay was introduced in the form of Echoing Reprimand. Echoing Reprimand misses the mark for a lot of people and I think a big part of it is a lack of reward, but I appreciate the design space that it’s working in. Making combo points more interesting is a big goal that I would love to see explored, since the gameplay right now essentially comes down to “fill the bar, then press a button to empty it”. While Echoing Reprimand might not be the right way to go about it, there’s a lot of potential for other effects in the future that could see combo points thrust into the spotlight as an interesting resource to play around, especially now that Marked for Death is gone.
Overall I am very hopeful for the future. The changes to the spec so far have done a ton to help the spec flourish and grow into something unique. I hope the design direction stays going forward and we can see a deeper, flourishing gameplay for Assassination.
Hiya! I’m Whispyr, Moderator and Theorycrafter in the Rogue Discord. I’ve been playing Assassination at a high level for many years now, offering people help with the spec, contributing to SimulationCraft, and doing what I can to educate on all things rogue!
I also stream regularly on Twitch (whispyrttv) and have a couple of youtube videos. Feel free to message me directly on Discord (@whispyr) for any one-on-one questions you may have.
