Assassination Rogue PvP Talents and Builds — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

The best way to play Assassination Rogue is to play a bleed-oriented build and focus on high cleave damage to kill multiple targets at the same time.

With this build, the goal is to deal as much damage as possible to every enemy. You will want to have all of your bleeds on every single enemy in the arena as much as possible so that you can win the game through pure damage. With a little bit of CC at the right time when one or several enemies are low on health due to your cleave damage, you will be able to secure victory.

The talents Thrown Precision and Deadly Precision combined with Seal Fate make Fan of Knives your preferred Combo Point builder if you can hit several targets, and allow you to deal a lot of AoE damage while building Combo Points.

The talents Deeper Stratagem and Sanguine Stratagem combined together greatly empower your finishing moves. That makes Rupture and Crimson Tempest much stronger than in the past.

Deathstalker offers multiple great talents to the spec. You need to make sure you use Ambush once in your Subterfuge window when you open to apply Deathstalker's Mark to a target. Past that, the talent Singular Focus will make your main target take extra damage from your cleave on other targets, Corrupt the Blood empowers Rupture which is already one of your strongest abilities, Ethereal Cloak and Shadewalker give you more survivability and mobility respectively, and last, but not least, Darkest Night allows you to land a very powerful Envenom every now and then. The cleave build lacks ways to burst a target down, and this talent solves the problem. While you pressure the entire enemy team with your cleave damage, this talent also allows you to kill someone in a stun with sudden overwhelming damage.

You can choose three of the following PvP talents; each has its uses, but some are better for certain strategies than others. The top three choices are the most useful but can be replaced with other PvP talents, depending on your team's goal.

Smoke Bomb creates a smoke cloud around you. Enemy players who are outside the cloud will not be able to target anyone inside it. This talent is mandatory for multiple reasons. Firstly, it can help you land a kill by stunning a target when they have no trinket. By using Smoke Bomb right after a stun, you will prevent the healer from saving their teammate. Secondly, you can use it defensively to save yourself or an ally from a lethal cast about to go off, such as Greater Pyroblast. And lastly, you can use it to prevent incoming crowd control on you or your team if such crowd control would result in you losing a game, such as a Polymorph or Repentance on your healer when they have no trinket, and you are low on health. As you can see, this talent is helpful in many different situations, which is why it is so powerful. In every 3v3 scenario, this talent is a must-have, but in a few 2v2 match-ups, you will not pick it as you will mostly attack the enemy healer.

Preemptive Maneuver is a solid defensive option as it makes Feint reduce the damage you take even more when stunned, and reduces its energy cost.

Dismantle is a strong PvP talent that allows you to disarm an enemy for 6 seconds every 45 seconds. Disarming an enemy can delay their next kill attempt or stop it entirely if they have pulled the trigger. It is a great pick against Warrior, Rogue, and Marksmanship Hunter. It is also helpful against other Hunter specs. However, they can still use many threatening abilities while disarmed, and the same goes for Retribution Paladin and Death Knight. One thing to note is that you can use Dismantle offensively against Death Knight and Warrior, as being disarmed prevents the use of Death Strike and Die by the Sword.

Hemotoxin causes Shiv to reduce the target's healing received by 30% for 9 seconds. This used to be a very powerful talent, but after multiple nerfs, it is barely more powerful than Wound Poison. Therefore, you will only pick it if you do not need other utility talents, such as Dismantle or Maneuverability.

Death from Above is an interesting PvP talent. The interesting things about this talent are that it makes you immune to crowd control when you use it and is usable from range. It will make you land at your target location. It can be considered in 2v2 against an enemy that is hard to reach, such as a Frost Mage, or against a setup comp that relies on stuns on you to kill you and will kite you in between stuns, such as Rogue/ Mage. Unfortunately, there will often be three better options, so you will end up not picking this PvP talent much.