Season of Discovery Assassination Rogue DPS Talents and Runes

Your talent build as an Assassination rogue is largely set in stone due to the strength of talents found towards the bottom of the Assassination talent tree such as Vile Poisons and Cold Blood which make it difficult to branch into other specializations. Opportunity is the main exception to this as the damage multiplier found on it scales incredibly with our main generating ability, Mutilate.

Gloves — Mutilate

Pants — Envenom

Chest — Deadly Brew

Waist — Shadowstep

Feet — Master of Subtlety

Helm — Combat Potency

Wrist — Cut to the Chase

Mutilate is an incredibly strong ability and thanks to the changes in its Energy cost it will be our default ability in the Gloves slot. Saber Slash is another great option but unfortunately just deals less damage compared to Mutilate. Mutilate also synergizes incredibly well with the other Runes we have recommended such as Deadly Brew and Envenom.

Envenom deals by far the most damage of the options found on your Pants with Between the Eyes being much more focused on control and acting as a ranged finisher we default to Envenom as our primary way to spend excess combo points and apply additional poisons.

Deadly Brew applies a stack of Deadly Poison anytime you inflict any kind of a poison to a target, this synergizes incredibly well as Mutilate and Envenom deal additional damage to targets effected by poisons.

Shadowstep will be our default as the added uptime from both the teleportation effect of Shadowstep and additional movement speed will greatly improve your ability to hit your target. Shuriken Toss is another Rune to consider in AoE situations as Rogue has unfortunately very limited choices when it comes to AoE situations.

Master of Subtlety increases your damage by 10% after leaving Stealth just generally strengthening our opener against enemies but also allowing for Vanish to be used as a small DPS cooldown.

Combat Potency greatly increases your energy generation and will allow you to use considerably more abilities both generators and finishers. Combat Potency relies heavily on having a quick off-hand weapon. Honor Among Thieves is another great choice here but can be very dependent on what other classes you find yourself in a party with as it relies on others critically striking.

Cut to the Chase causes your Eviscerate and Envenom to refresh the duration of your Slice and Dice which frees up both a considerable amount of combo points throughout a fight but also talent points you would otherwise spend in Improved Slice and Dice. Carnage is another strong option but at this point the added finishers you will be able to cast with Cut to the Chase currently outweighs the flat damage increase.

More engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps, so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Rogue.

Relentless Strikes Your finish moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy. This talent is huge as Energy is your largest limiting factor and any chance to restore additional energy will translate immediately into additional damage.

Vile Poisons increases the damage dealt by poisons by 20% and makes them 40% resistant to dispels. While the Dispel aspect of this does not impact us much in PvE the additional 20% damage is massive as it synergizes incredibly well with Runes like Deadly Brew that is constantly applying poisons.

Improved Poisons Similar to Vile Poisons this talent just synergizes incredibly with the Runes we have chosen as Mutilate and Envenom deal additional damage to targets that are poisoned and Deadly Brew will proc more Deadly Poison as a result of the increased application rate.

Cold Blood a guaranteed crit that not only deals additional damage but also gives a chance at regenerating additional energy thanks to our Relentless Strikes talent.