Assassination Rogue Raid Guide (2024)

Tier Set

• 2-Set: Each 10 Energy you spend grants Natureblight, granting 1% attack speed and 1% nature damage for 6 seconds. Multiple instances of Natureblight may overlap, up to 12.
• 4-Set: Envenom additionally empowers itself causing an Envenomous Explosion dealing Nature damage to all nearby enemies when cast with Envenom active. Deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets. If Envenomous Explosion deals damage to a single target, it is increased by 150%.

Your Tier is focused around Envenom and its uptime. You want to try to maximize your Envenom uptime as much as possible, using it at 2 seconds or below on the buff. If you are unable to keep chaining Envenoms before they run out, you need to reset by going to 6-7 Combo Points and pooling into a healthy amount of Energy, approximately 70%, before starting your chain again.

Single Target

ST or "Single Target" refers to focusing all damage and abilities on a single enemy. This approach is crucial for maximizing damage output against bosses or specific high-priority targets in encounters.

Opener Rotation single-target opener in Raids

• Casts during your opener are mostly telegraphed throughout the duration of your cooldowns.
• Your goal is to keep Envenom and Shiv up for the entire duration of your cooldowns. Below, you see an example of how your opener looks when using the recommended Single Target talent spec. The number of Mutilate casts before your first Envenom depends on whether you land on an Anima Charged Combo Point or not.

• Always cast Slice and Dice unless it was already applied by Cut to the Chase.
• Use Ashes of the Embersoul right before using your second Envenom during the Deathmark window.
• When your cooldowns are over, Garrote should be entering into Pandemic territory, that is when you Vanish and refresh it.

Priority List

This is a general priority you aim to maintain throughout the fight.

1. Make sure you have Deadly Poison, Amplifying Poison, and Atrophic Poison or Numbing Poison on.
2. You need to press Slice and Dice once during your opener, Cut to the Chase keeps it active for the rest of the fight.
3. Keep up Rupture and Garrote throughout the fight.
4. Maximize Envenom uptime and always clip it before it ends. If you cannot maintain Envenom, get to 6-7 Combo Points and pool your Energy back to 70% before starting again.
5. Use Echoing Reprimand on cooldown.
6. Only use Shiv during your Kingsbane.
7. Be ready to use your Deathmark and Kingsbane as soon as they come off cooldown, start preparing for them once they have approximately 8 seconds remaining on their cooldown.
8. Do not overwrite your Improved Garrote and instead apply Garrote as soon as the buffed one expires.
9. Press Mutilate if not at 4 Combo Points or on an Anima Charged Combo Point, otherwise Envenom.

Multi Target

Multi target or in some cases AoE (Area of Effect) involves dealing damage to multiple enemies simultaneously, making it effective for clearing groups of enemies quickly.

Multi Target Opener Rotation

• On Multi Target fights, referring to ones where you get adds spawning throughout the fights occasionally, your rotation remains largely unchanged with the Multi Target build. The only thing to keep in mind is Caustic Spatter.
• How to utilize Caustic Spatter:
  • Always keep Rupture up on your main target. If you have to swap, your first global should be Rupture on the new mob.
  • Keep track of your Caustic Spatter buff. Refresh it with Mutilate before it runs out.
  • Deathmark and Kingsbane augment your Caustic Spatter damage. Always use them on a mob that survives for the full duration.

• Always cast Slice and Dice unless it was already applied by Cut to the Chase.
• Use Ashes of the Embersoul right before using your second Envenom during theDeathmark window.
• When your cooldowns are over, Garrote should be entering into Pandemic territory, that is when you Vanish and refresh it.

Multi Target Priority List

1. Make sure you have Deadly Poison, Amplifying Poison, and Atrophic Poison or Numbing Poison on.
2. You need to press Slice and Dice once during your opener, Cut to the Chase keeps it active for the rest of the fight.
3. Keep up Rupture and Garrote throughout the fight.
4. Maximize Envenom uptime and always clip it before it ends. If you cannot maintain Envenom, get to 6-7 Combo Points and pool your Energy back to 70% before starting again.
5. Use Echoing Reprimand on cooldown.
6. Only use Shiv during your Kingsbane.
7. Be ready to use your Deathmark and Kingsbane as soon as they come off cooldown, start preparing for that once they have 8s~ remaining.
8. Do not overwrite your Improved Garrote and instead apply Garrote as soon as the one buffed falls expires.
9. Press Mutilate if not at 4 Combo Points or on an Anima Charged Combo Point, otherwise Envenom.

4+ Targets Opener Rotation

• On 4+ Target fights, referring to ones where you have bosses permanently up such as council bosses, you utilize Indiscriminate Carnage to spread Garrote and Rupture to every mob during your opener and Vanish windows.
• This opener varies a bit depending on whether you land on an Anima Charged Combo Point as well as Seal Fate procs from Critical Strikes.
  • Seal Fate example: Your Echoing Reprimand does not Crit on your opener and you land on 2 Combo Points, forcing you to use Fan of Knives before pressing Crimson Tempest.
  • Alternatively, your Echoing Reprimand Crits, and you land on the 3rd Combo Point which is Anima Charged.
  • If you are unlucky and do not end up getting a lot of Crits, you might need to use the same builder 2 times in a row.

• Your Vanish into Garrote can be used right after Kingsbane as well. This opener simply makes use of your Master Assassin for the end of Kingsbane.
• Always cast Slice and Dice unless it was already applied by Cut to the Chase.
• Use your active trinkets, Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power, and racials like Blood Fury or Berserking right before using your first Envenom in your Deathmark window.

4+ Target Priority List

1. Make sure you have Deadly Poison and Atrophic Poison or Numbing Poison on.
2. Keep up your Garrote and Rupture on all targets if possible.
3. Slice and Dice if needed.
4. Use Crimson Tempest on 4 or more targets.
5. Use Echoing Reprimand on Cooldown.
6. Use Fan of Knives as your builder, only casting Mutilate to refresh Caustic Spatter.
7. Use Envenom if every DoT is up.

Min maxing Your Envenom Uptime

• Due to the new talent Rapid Injection, you now always want to use Envenom before the buff expires. This means that you want to create a chain of Envenoms throughout the fight, maximizing its uptime and never letting it drop. However, due to the random nature of the class with Seal Fate and Blindside procs, you hit moments during the fight where you might not get either of these procs making it extremely difficult to keep chaining Envenoms. When that inevitably happens, you have to build up to the maximum Combo Points or be 1 away from the maximum, then pool your Energy until you hit 70% to 75%, before using Envenom again. This ensures that you can establish a new chain of Envenoms.

When to Refresh Your Garrote and Rupture

• With Shadow Dance removed from Assassination Rogues, you are no longer able to snapshot your bleeds, with the exception of Garrote with Improved Garrote. Because of this, you need to follow a few rules when refreshing Garrote.
  • If your current Garrote is buffed with Improved Garrote, do not overwrite it and leave it to expire before applying it again.
  • If your current Garrote is not buffed with Improved Garrote, you do not have cooldowns running, and it has less than 5.2s left on it, refresh it.
• With Rupture being a Combo Point based finisher, it uses a flexible pandemic. This means that regardless of how many Combo Points the current Rupture on your target was used with, the pandemic is calculated with the Combo Points of the new cast of Rupture. The list below are the rules to follow for optimal refreshing:
  • If you currently have 5 Combo Points, you can safely refresh your Rupture at 7.2s or less.
  • If you currently have 6 Combo Points, you can safely refresh your Rupture at 8.4s or less.
  • 1: 2.6s
  • 2: 3.6s
  • 3: 4.8s
  • 4: 6s
  • 7: 9.6s

Maximizing Your Deathmark and Kingsbane Window.

Your opener is a very crucial part of the fight and learning it is very important. In general, you want to use the same casts pretty much the entire time but there are a few rules that you should follow.

• Envenom needs to have 100% uptime during your cooldowns and the same goes for Shiv. It is important that you do not drop Shiv at all, with the last ticks of Kingsbane being the most important.
• Use 2 charges of Thistle Tea when both Kingsbane and Deathmark are up, with your 1 minute Kingsbane window getting only one use of Thistle Tea at less than 6 seconds remaining on the duration of Kingsbane.
• If you have Master Assassin talented, use your Vanish on the last 3 seconds of Kingsbane, but make sure that your Kingsbane has less than 3 seconds remaining before casting.

Outside of your Opener, your 2 minute cooldown usage is very similar, this is the most important rule to follow when setting up for Deathmark:

• Always refresh your bleeds before using Deathmark if they have 18 seconds or less at the moment that you press it. In particular:
  • Refresh your Rupture at 6+ Combo Points.
  • Sync up your Vanish so that you cast an Improved Garrote empowered Garrote over an existing Garrote on your target to get the full pandemic benefit.
  • Mutilate to 6 Combo Points then Envenom before pressing your Deathmark.

Below is an example of using your Deathmark correctly outside of the pull in Raids.

• This is not a fixed rotation; This is just one example of how to play during your Deathmark window. Blindside procs and critical hits can potentially alter the ability usage.

Understanding Mechanics

Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.

• Pandemic
• Spell Queue Window
• Stat Diminishing Returns

Vault, Aberrus & Amirdrassil

The current focus is on the relevant bosses from Season 4, covering important aspects such as talent specs, cooldown management, and other crucial details. For the upcoming Raid in "The War Within," you receive a comprehensive look at all the bosses in the next update.

← Scroll for more Bosses →

Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid boss fights as an Assassination Rogue. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.

• All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!

Tertiary

• Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
• Leech - Provides additional healing through damage dealing.
• Speed - Niche tertiary that can be very useful and has been proven useful in the past. Makes playing certain mechanics a bit easier.

Trinkets

Trinkets come in two varieties: active and passive. Active trinkets require manual activation and inherit a cooldown providing a temporary boost to your output. On the other hand, passive trinkets provide a more consistent boost to your stats and abilities without requiring any actions.

Active Trinket alternatives

• Irideus Fragment
  • Significantly worse than Ashes of Embersoul since this has a 3 minute cooldown.

Passive Trinket alternatives

• Cataclysmic Signet Brand
  • Great alternative that is very strong the longer the fight is. Fyrakk and Raszageth are great examples for where this can be an incredibly powerful trinket.
• Whispering Incarnate Icon
  • Requires a tank and a healer with the trinket equipped to unlock it's full potential.

Simcraft

To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.

• 2x Blue Silken Lining
  • It is a good choice if you have over 90% health most of the time, especially during your cooldowns.
  • The optimal slots to craft on are Wrists, Boots, Waist, or Cloak depending on your available gear.

or

• 1x Blue Silken Lining and 1x Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch
  • Use Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch instead of Blue Silken Lining in order to proc your Seal of Diurna's Chosen more consistently.
  • The optimal slots to craft on are Wrists, Boots, Waist, or Cloak depending on your available gear.

Remaining Sparks

• Make sure to apply Alchemical Flavor Pocket if you have an additional crafted item equipped.
• Crafted items are 525 item level and regular items are 528 on max item level, therefore, it is not beneficial to equip crafted items outside of your 2x embellishments unless you do not have access to other high item level gear on that slot.

Phials

• Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage -- Maximum DPS.
• Phial of Tepid Versatility -- Less DPS but more survivability.

Food

• Grand Banquet of the Kalu'ak
• Thousandbone Tongueslicer

Combat Potion

• Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power
• Residual Neural Channeling Agent -- Can be used while being dead if your potion is ready.

Health Potion

• Potion of Withering Dreams -- A big burst of healing
• Dreamwalker's Healing Potion -- Less healing upfront but an additional small heal over time.

Weapon Rune

• Howling Rune
• Hissing Rune

Augment Rune

• Dreambound Augment Rune -- Requires Reputation
• Draconic Augment Rune

Sockets

• Skillful Illimited Diamond or Fierce Illimited Diamond -- Unique, made by work order
• Sensei's Neltharite or Keen Neltharite*
  • *Depends on the rest of your gear, a sim is always advisable.

For min-maxing an Assassination Rogue in raiding, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your characters. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.

• Stoneform -- Dwarf
  • Can dispel Magic and Bleed debuffs. Has been useful in the past on some bosses with Bleeds.
• Rocket Jump -- Goblin
  • A small jump in the direction your character is facing.
  • While in the Rocket Jump animation you are placed on a global cooldown until your character lands.
• Berserking -- Troll
  • Strong DPS racial but lines up poorly with Deathmark.
  • Reduce the duration of movement impairing effects by 20%. Was only useful once in the recent history of progression raiding but worth noting.
• Blood Fury -- Orc
  • Useful racial that used to be good in the past since it lines up with your Deathmark on 2 minutes.
  • 20% reduced stun duration on you which can be useful in some situations.
• Spatial Rift -- Void Elf
  • Spawn a shadow traveling into your facing direction, and activate again to teleport to it.
  • Maximum range of 100 yards.
• War Stomp -- Tauren
  • Stuns up to 5 nearby enemies for 2 seconds.

Recommendation

In general, it's safe to say that if you care about min-maxing your DPS you should go with the highest DPS racial. That being said the story is a bit different if it's about progression raiding. Some help out massively to speed up the progression on certain bosses. Notably Dwarf with their Stoneform helped out on Tindral Sageswift & Fyrakk the Blazing in the latest Race to World First by having easy access to dispelling yourself at crucial points of the fights mentioned.

Discover recommended macros for Assassination Rogues during Raid encounters and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.

Macro Import Guide Video

#showtooltip Garrote/cast [@mouseover,exists] Garrote;Garrote

#showtooltip/cast [@mouseover,exists,nodead,harm] Rupture;Rupture

/focus [@mouseover][]/run SetRaidTarget("mouseover",6)

#showtooltip Shadowstep/cast [@mouseover] Shadowstep

#showicon Kick/cast [target=mouseover] Kick

Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Assassination Rogue, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.

FAQ

Credits

Written By: Perfecto

Reviewed By: Kush