Mists of Pandaria Classic Assassination Rogue Rotation and Cooldowns
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Assassination Rogue in both single-target and multi-target PvE situations in Mists of Pandaria Classic. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your DPS.
Assassination Rogue Rotations
If you have not already, we recommend reading the Spells Summary page first. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.
Assassination Rogue in Mists of Pandaria remains one of the strongest melee DPS in the game. Your goal as an Assassination
Rogue is to deal as much damage with your Envenoms as possible while optimizing each of your
Vendetta windows
and keeping
Slice and Dice and
Rupture on active at all times.
Poisons
Your poison usage as an Assassination Rogue is quite simple, we will always use Deadly Poison as
our lethal poison. For our non-lethal poisons you have a few choices to make
Leeching Poison will cause a small amount of
self-healing and will often be the best choice but also consider
Mind-numbing Poison to slow casting speeds on your
target and
Crippling Poison to slow the targets move speed.
Single-Target Rotation
As an Assassination Rogue you will follow a list of priorities rather than a traditional rotation.
The goal as an Assassination Rogue is to generate Combo Points
with Mutilate/
Dispatch and keep your
Rupture and
Slice and Dice abilities
active at all times while spending excess Combo Points on
Envenom.
Keep in mind as Assassination that your Envenom ability will automatically refresh the duration of Slice and Dice
so this becomes much easier once the buff is established.
The priority order is as follows:
- Keep
Deadly Poison active;
- Make sure to prepot using
Virmen's Bite;
- When exiting from
Stealth open with
Mutilate;
- Keep
Slice and Dice active at all times, this should be refreshed by
Envenom thanks to
Cut to the Chase but you will need to apply it manually if the buff is not already active;
- Keep
Rupture on the target, this is ideally refreshed with 5 Combo Points but it is more important to keep this active than ensure it is refreshed with 5 Combo Points;
- Use
Vanish on cool down to take advantage of
Shadow Focus for cheaper
Mutilate;
- With 5 Combo Points cast
Envenom.
- While the boss is above 35% Use
Mutilate to generate Combo Points unless you get a
Blindside proc, then use
Dispatch instead;
- While the boss is below 35% Use
Dispatch to generate Combo Points;
AoE Rotation
Your AoE rotation as an Assassination Rogue will depend largely on the amount of targets you will be hitting and how long you can expect them to survive.
Against Two to Three targets
When fighting just two or three targets your goal is to keep your Deadly Poison and
Rupture debuffs active on all targets
and then resume your single target rotation which is highlighted above.
Against Four to Eight targets
When fighting against 4-8 enemies use Fan of Knives to generate combo points, make sure to apply
Slice and Dice
and continue to cast
Envenom to maintain your Slice and Dice buff. Your Combo Points
should be spent on applying as many
Ruptures as possible to the targets once
Slice and Dice is active.
- Keep
Deadly Poison active;
- Keep
Slice and Dice active, casting
Envenom will refresh its duration thanks to
Cut to the Chase;
- Apply as many
Ruptures as possible with 3 or more Combo Points;
- Use
Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points
Nine or more targets
When fighting 9+ enemies things get much simpler, our goal at this point is to keep our Envenom buff active
while spamming
Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points. The majority of our AoE
damage at this point will be from the application of
Deadly Poison.
- Keep
Deadly Poison active;
- Keep
Slice and Dice active;
- Use
Envenom to spend your Combo Points
- Use
Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points
Cooldowns
Assassination Rogue has only a few DPS cooldowns but making sure to utilize them
optimally can lead to a massive increase in your damage done.
Vendetta increases your damage done to the target by 30% for 20 seconds. This is a massive increase of damage
dealt to our target and should ideally be used on cool down if you are guaranteed up time on the target for its entire duration.
Glyph of Vendetta will increase its duration by 10 more seconds but reduces the damage bonus by 5%. This glyph will
be a default choice again in a situation where we can ensure up time for the entirety of its duration. Vendetta is best
paired with any other source of increased damage so try to pair it with your combat potion
Virmen's Bite,
Bloodlust/
Heroism
and
Shadow Blades if possible.
Shadow Blades causes your auto-attacks to deal Shadow damage and causes your Combo Point generating
abilities to generate an additional Combo Point making abilities like
Mutilate and
Dispatch
even more powerful per Energy spent. Shadow Blades are best paired with
Vendetta if possible to
take full benefit of the increased damage taken on the target.
Vanish causes you to instantly return to
Stealth. Assassination is a bit unique in that your
stealth with optimally be used to cast another
Mutilate/
Dispatch as opposed to a regular Stealth
ability like
Ambush. Even though neither Mutilate or Dispatch require Stealth they will often be a more efficient
use of your Energy than Ambush, especially when paired with one of the talents that
impact your character upon leaving stealth like
Subterfuge or
Shadow Focus.
Smoke Bomb obscures anyone inside of it from outside targets and reduces damage taken by 20% while inside of the Smoke Bomb. This
ability has many unique interactions with various mechanics in dungeons and raids so make sure to coordinate with your group when this is best
utilized.
Changelog
- 31 May 2025: Guide created.