Mists of Pandaria Classic Assassination Rogue Stat Priority

The stat priority for Assassination Rogue is as follows:

1. Agility
2. Hit Rating to cap (7.5%)
3. Expertise Rating to cap(7.5%)
4. Mastery
5. Haste
6. Critical Strike

Hit and Expertise caps are your number one priority when gearing your Rogue. If an ability misses or is parried than you will not only not deal any damage but you will also not generate Combo Points and waste your Energy. Hit and Expertise are both soft capped at 7.5%, this soft cap meaning your abilities will no longer miss but any additional Hit rating will increase the chance of your Melee attacks hitting as you can still miss Auto Attacks at 7.5%, but reaching the Auto Attack hit cap of 27% is much less valuable than increasing our other secondary stats.

Agility increases the damage done by all of your damage dealing abilities as well as your auto-attacks. Each Agility equals 2 Attack Power and increases our Critical Strike chance. You will rarely have to choose Agility over any of the secondary stats listed here but generally speaking your goal while gearing is to maximize the amount of Agility available on your gear.

Mastery is our strongest secondary stat as an Assassination Rogue. The Assassination Rogue Mastey Mastery: Potent Poisons increases the damage dealt by your poisons and poison focused abilities like Envenom. There is no point that Mastery loses value compared to other secondary stats so your focus as an Assassination Rogue should be to stack as much Mastery and Agility as possible for the greatest increase to your personal DPS. 300 Mastery rating grants 1% Mastery.

Haste is our second most valuable secondary stat as an Assassination Rogue. Haste increases the rate at which our Energy regenerates allowing you to use more Combo Point generating abilities like Mutilate which will result in us being able to cast more of our Combo Point spending abilities like Envenom. Haste also increases your Attack Speed leading to more Deadly Poison procs. It is worth noting at higher gear levels Haste will lose some of its value as we will reach a point where you will have more energy than you can spend. Due to the randomness of some effects like Seal Fate and Relentless Strikes its impossible to say at exactly what point Haste will result in you energy capping. 425 Haste rating grants 1% Haste.

Critical Strike is our least valuable secondary stat as an Assassination Rogue as Haste and Mastery both have unique interactions with our resource generation and spending. Critical Strikes will proc our Seal Fate ability but the focus should still be on Mastery to increase the potency of most of our abilities and Haste to increase the frequency of our Combo Point generating and spending. Any Critical Strike rating you find on your gear will still increase your damage dealt but it is important to consider Reforging it towards another stat especially to reach Hit/Expertise caps and maximize your Mastery.