Assassination Rogue DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities (WoD 6.0.3)

On this page, we list your Assassination Rogue core abilities and how they should be used together (rotation) in World of Warcraft WoD 6.0.3. We also explain when to use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties that you will need to know if you want to excel at playing an Assassination Rogue.

The other pages of our Assassination Rogue guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by FieryDemise, a prominent Rogue theorycrafter and the author of Rogue Chat (a theorycrafting blog for Rogues), and by Spazzo, one of the best Rogues in the world, who raids in Blood Legion; you can watch his stream on Twitch and follow him on Twitter.

If you want to read all about the Patch 6.0.2 changes and learn how they affect your character, make sure to read our Rogue Transition Guide!

1. Single Target Rotation↑top

• Combo Point builders (by order of priority)
  1. Use Mutilate to get out of Stealth (because of Shadow Focus) or when you are at max Energy (even if you have a Blindside proc).
  2. Use Dispatch, if the target's health is below 35% or when Blindside procs.
     • Do not hesitate to delay Dispatch by 1 or 2 seconds, if you are about to cast Envenom and benefit from its buff.
  3. Use Mutilate, if the target's health is above 35%.
• Finishing Moves (by order of priority)
  1. Apply and maintain Rupture.
     • It is optimal to apply and refresh, with 8 seconds or less remaining, Rupture with 5 Combo Points. That said, if it is about to expire, refresh it with whatever amount of Combo Points you have.
  2. Use Envenom with 5 Combo Points.
     • If you do not have Anticipation, use Envenom whenever you have 4 or 5 Combo Points.

For more information about the optimal opening sequence, refer to our dedicated section.

For more information about Energy pooling, refer to our section about Envenom and Energy pooling.

2. Multiple Target Rotation↑top

When fighting 2 or 3 targets, maintain Deadly Poison (with Mutilate or Dispatch) and Rupture (cast with 3 or more Combo Points) on all targets. The rest of the time, keep performing your single-target rotation on one of the enemies.

When fighting 4 to 8 targets, maintain Deadly Poison (with Fan of Knives) and Rupture (cast with 3 or more Combo Points) on all of them. The rest of the time, build Combo Points with Fan of Knives and spend them on Crimson Tempest most of the time and on Envenom when all of the following conditions are met:

• Rupture is up on 3 targets with 10 or more seconds left;
• Crimson Tempest is up with 5 or more seconds left;
• you have 9 or 10 Combo Points (so 4 or 5 stacks of Anticipation).

When fighting more than 8 targets, you should simply spam Fan of Knives and use Envenom to spend your Combo Points.

If your main target will die in less than 1 minute and you have chosen Marked for Death as your Tier 6 talent, then use it on cooldown.

If you need burst AoE damage, then pool to 5 Combo Points and high Energy, then use Crimson Tempest and spam Fan of Knives. This applies to adds that will die in less than 12 seconds (approximately).

3. Poisons↑top

Your Lethal Poison should always be Deadly Poison.

Crippling Poison is your only default Non-Lethal poison and you should use it, unless you choose Leeching Poison as a Tier 3 talent or unless the adds should not be slowed.

4. Cooldowns↑top

Vendetta is your main DPS cooldown. When used with Glyph of Vendetta, it increases the damage you do on your target by 25% for 30 seconds, on a 2-minute cooldown. Naturally, it is more beneficial to use Vendetta during times when you deal increased damage to the boss.

If you have taken Shadow Reflection as your Tier 7 talent (as we advise), you should use it in a macro with Vendetta.

In addition, you have several minor DPS and utility cooldowns.

• Vanish makes you enter Stealth. Use this ability on cooldown, immediately followed by Mutilate. Because of Shadow Focus (your Tier 1 talent), Mutilate's cost is reduced by 75% when using it in Stealth. The cooldown of Vanish can be reset with Preparation.
• Sprint (in addition to its obvious survival role) can give you more uptime on the boss, which translates into a direct DPS increase. So, you can use Sprint as a DPS cooldown in some fights. Its cooldown can be reset with Preparation.

Finally, you have a number of survival cooldowns, such as Feint, Cloak of Shadows, Preparation, Evasion, etc., which you can use to keep yourself alive. See our section about survival cooldowns for more information.

5. Optional Read: Mastering Your Assassination Rogue↑top

The Assassination specialisation is rather easy to play. The information given above will yield good results. However, being aware of the few subtleties that we detail in the rest of this page will enable you to play your Assassination Rogue to its full potential.

In particular, poisons do most of the damage of an Assassination Rogue, therefore it is important to understand the synergy they have with your various abilities.

5.1. Combo Points, Energy, and Anticipation

As an Assassination Rogue, most of your abilities need Energy to be used. Your Energy bar has a capacity of 120 Energy (135 with Venom Rush chosen as your Tier 7 talent) and refills at a rate of 10 Energy per second. Your Energy regeneration is increased by:

• your melee haste (Haste + haste-enhancing buffs);
• your Relentless Strikes passive ability, which grants your Finishing Moves a 20% chance per Combo Point to restore 25 Energy;
• your Rupture periodic damage ticks, which restore 10 Energy (you also get some Energy when the target dies with Rupture active on it);
• Venom Rush, if chosen as your Tier 7 talent.

The faster you regenerate Energy, the more Combo Points you generate, and the more casts of Envenom with 5 Combo Points you can fit in your rotation. This maintains a virtuous circle, thanks to Relentless Strikes, more Energy means more Combo Points, and more Combo Points means more Energy.

You should never be Energy capped (i.e., never let your Energy reach its maximum). If you find yourself at your maximum Energy, then you are losing DPS, because any Energy you generate is wasted.

Some abilities add one or several Combo Points on your target, up to a maximum of 5 Combo Points (10 with Anticipation). Other abilities, called Finishing Moves, consume up to 5 Combo Points on your target. The more Combo Points a Finishing Move consumes, the more powerful its effect is. Your Combo Point generation is increased by Seal Fate, which causes your critical hits with Mutilate and Dispatch to add an additional Combo Point on your target.

In a similar fashion as with Energy, you should never waste Combo Points by forgetting to spend them when you are at the maximum. Anticipation gives you extra storage room for Combo Points, which makes Combo Point management much easier (hence why this talent is so great). The implication of Anticipation is that you will never want to cast Mutilate after 3 stacks of Anticipation or Dispatch after 4 stacks of Anticipation (because of the potential extra Combo Point from Seal Fate). When playing without Anticipation, you can however let this extra Combo Point be lost and cast Mutilate at 3 Combo Points. Never use it at 4 Combo Points though.

5.2. Envenom and Energy Pooling

Envenom is your hardest hitting ability. It also gives you a temporary buff that increases your chance to apply your Poison by 30% for 1 second plus an additional second per Combo Point used.

The buff that Envenom gives you acts like a DoT, in the sense that when you refresh it, whatever duration was left on the buff (up to a limit of 30% of the original duration) is added to the new one. In the case of a 5-Combo Point Envenom, it means that if you refresh the buff when it has 1.8 second or less remaining, you will not lose any uptime. So, you simply need to always delay Envenom so that you cast it when the previous buff has dropped or has less than 1.8 second left. Doing so has two beneficial consequences.

1. You get a higher uptime on your Envenom buff.
2. While you wait for your previous buff of Envenom to drop or have less than 1.8 second left, your Energy will pool, and you will be able to perform more casts of Mutilate and Dispatch after re-applying your Envenom buff. This will results in more poison applications and thus more damage.

Note that the Envenom buff is applied on you before Envenom deals its damage, therefore Envenom will always benefit from its own buff, even if it is parried or dodged.

Refreshing the Envenom buff before it has 1.8 second left is not always a DPS loss. Capping Energy is a much higher DPS loss than clipping Envenom, so if your Energy is about to cap, you should cast Envenom even if the previous Envenom buff is still active. This happens mostly when you benefit from haste buffs such as Bloodlust, Heroism, or Time Warp, trinket procs or set bonuses.

Pooling Energy is also useful in other situations than Envenom management, for example when you expect a damage increase (trinket procs, cooldowns, encounter-specific buff, etc.). The idea is that pooling Energy is not a magical DPS gain by itself. It allows you to slightly adjust the timing of your abilities so that you fit more attacks during periods of increased damage (provided you can properly identify when such periods are going to come).

5.3. Rupture

The DoT left by Rupture does not deal much damage by itself, but if your target is poisoned (which it should always be, if you did not forget to coat your weapons with Deadly Poison), each tick will deal extra Nature damage (through Venomous Wounds, which benefits from your Mastery: Potent Poisons) and grants you 10 Energy.

The Energy granted by Rupture's ticks and the extra Nature damage they do on poisoned targets is the reason why you want to maintain Rupture up on your target.

When you refresh Rupture before it expires, the duration that was left is added to the new Rupture DoT, up to a maximum of 30% of the original duration. So, you can safely refresh a 5-Combo Point Rupture when it has 7.2 seconds or less remaining.

5.4. Dispatch and Blindside

When your target is below 35% health, Dispatch becomes available and it replaces Mutilate as your Combo Point builder. Dispatch costs roughly half as much as Mutilate, gives less Combo Points, but does slightly more damage.

When you are using Mutilate, Blindside grants you a 30% chance per hit to trigger an Energy-free Dispatch that you can use even if the target is above 35 health.

You need to watch out for procs of Blindside, so that you never cast Mutilate before first consuming your Blindside proc with Dispatch (otherwise, you run the risk of wasting the proc, by overriding it with a new proc). If you have to choose between Dispatch and a Finishing Move, cast your Finishing Move first.

5.5. Opening Sequence

There are several possible opening sequences for Assassination and none has been proven to be significantly better than the others, in terms of final DPS output. The opening sequence that we present you below is the one our reviewer uses.

1. 1 second before the pull, get in Stealth and use your Draenic Agility Potion.
2. When the boss is pulled:
   • Shadowstep it if the boss is far away, if you have picked this talent, and if you will not need it in the next 24 seconds;
   • Sprint to reach the boss if it is far away and you cannot use Shadowstep;
   • otherwise, simply run to the boss and continue your opening sequence.
3. Cast Mutilate to get out of Stealth.
4. Cast Dispatch, if Mutilate gave you a Blindside proc.
5. Mutilate your way to 5 Combo Points, consuming every Blindside proc.
6. Cast Rupture.
7. Cast your macro for Shadow Reflection + Vendetta.
8. Start your rotation.

5.6. Survival Cooldowns

One of the greatest strengths of Rogues is their survivability, which they owe to a large number of powerful survival cooldowns.

• Feint (with Glyph of Feint) reduces your damage taken from AoE attacks by 50% for 7 seconds. With the Tier 3 talent Elusiveness, damage taken from AoE attacks is reduced by 65% and damage taken from all other types of damage attacks is reduced by 30%. Feint has a very low Energy cost and has no cooldown, which makes it your primary survival tool (as you can use it whenever you need).
• Cloak of Shadows removes all harmful spell effects on you and makes you resist all spells for 5 seconds, on a 1-minute cooldown. This 5-second window consists of 1 seconds of immunity against spells (both damage and application of harmful effects) followed by 4 seconds during which spells will miss you. Some fight mechanics can only be bypassed during the 1-second window (e.g., Ionization against Jin'rokh the Breaker in Heroic mode).
• Evasion increases your dodge chance by 100% for 10 seconds, on a 2-minute cooldown. It should be used whenever you receive physical damage that can be dodged (e.g., Ji-Kun's Quills or Sha of Fear's Death Blossom) or when you have to tank an add. The cooldown of Evasion can be reset with Preparation.
• Combat Readiness causes you to take 50% less damage from melee attacks. The damage reduction builds up gradually by stacks of 10%, until you have 5 stacks. Each enemy hit grants you a stack. The effect lasts 20 seconds, but it is removed after 10 seconds without receiving melee attacks.
• Smoke Bomb reduces damage taken by your raid by 10% on a 8 yard radius during 5 seconds (7 seconds with Glyph of Smoke Bomb). It is the only raid cooldown you have. You can use Smoke Bomb to force ranged enemies to come to melee range or to prevent those inside the smoke to be targeted by mechanics.

6. Changelog↑top

• 15 Dec. 2014: Spazzo's update to the single-target and multiple-target priority.
• 14 Nov. 2014: Updated for Level 100.

Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

Buffs, Debuffs, and Useful Abilities