Mists of Pandaria Classic Assassination Rogue Rotation and Cooldowns

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.

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.

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:

1. Keep Deadly Poison active;
2. Make sure to prepot using Virmen's Bite;
3. When exiting from Stealth open with Mutilate;
4. 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;
5. 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;
6. Use Vanish on cool down to take advantage of Shadow Focus for cheaper Mutilate;
7. With 5 Combo Points cast Envenom.
8. While the boss is above 35% Use Mutilate to generate Combo Points unless you get a Blindside proc, then use Dispatch instead;
9. While the boss is below 35% Use Dispatch to generate Combo Points;

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.

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.

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.

1. Keep Deadly Poison active;
2. Keep Slice and Dice active, casting Envenom will refresh its duration thanks to Cut to the Chase;
3. Apply as many Ruptures as possible with 3 or more Combo Points;
4. Use Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points

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.

1. Keep Deadly Poison active;
2. Keep Slice and Dice active;
3. Use Envenom to spend your Combo Points
4. Use Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points

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.