Forever Assassination Rogue Melee DPS Guide

Assassination Rogue remains the king of all things poisonous in World of Warcraft Forever thanks to a reworked talent tree that really puts an emphasis on dealing damage with all kinds of dirty tricks and on damage-over-time effects that will lead you to the top of the DPS meters.

The focus of this guide is to cover your gameplay experience through Level 20, the first level cap of the World of Warcraft Forever beta. This is written primarily with leveling and PvE in mind, so if your goal is to PvP it is likely to be useful but not optimized specifically for that experience.

Listed below are some rough scores as to how Assassination Rogue will perform in some specific categories with the level 20 cap in mind. Please remember that Assassinations strengths and weaknesses will change significantly in later levels.

Overall Performance Leveling Dungeon Utility Mobility

Relatively Simple With Considerable Damage Output

During the early stages of Rogue leveling, it is difficult to really differentiate the specializations. It is good to know that regardless of what you decide you will be dealing tons of damage. Assassination is likely to be very strong especially in this level bracket due to the potency of talents like Remorseless Attacks.

Chain Killing Mobs Made Easier

Highlighted in the previous statement, Remorseless Attacks helps tremendously with your kill speed and heavily incentivizes pulling multiple mobs or quickly re-engaging in combat as soon as you vanquish one enemy. Rogue has some of the highest damage in the game at this level so any kind of buff to your already potent attacks like Backstab will only make things easier.

Struggles to Offer Anything Unique

Outside of being one of the few early game classes with a true interrupt in the form of Kick, Rogue struggles at this level to offer anything unique in a group setting. You are likely to offer competitive DPS and the ability to apply short form crowd control but do not provide the same kind of buffs and utility as some other melee DPS at this level.

Lacks Many Late Game Tools

While abilities like Gouge and Kick are incredibly useful, your personal utility at this level struggles. Later levels see highly impactful abilities like Sap and Blind, but in the early level ranges you will not offer much outside of your ability to do considerable damage.

Powerful Cooldown, Lack of Consistent Boost

Sprint is one of the very few mobility cooldowns available to any class at this early stage of the game. It is incredibly powerful at not only traversing the map, but quickly allowing you to disengage from unfavorable encounters. Rogue does however lack a consistent mobility boost like travel form from Druids, but it is hard to discount how powerful of a tool Sprint is, especially at these early levels.

Please keep in mind that the leveling tips and information listed below is assuming that you are participating in the level 20 capped version of the World of Warcraft Forever beta, so we are missing a considerable amount of abilities and talents that will later greatly impact the way Assassination is played.

If you decide to play Alliance for your Assassination Rogue, Gnome is likely to be the default choice. Eureka offers a massive boost of damage for your next three abilities allowing you to quickly deal with enemies. Escape Artist is also an incredibly powerful tool especially at lower levels when we are lacking abilities like Vanish. Being able to remove and gain a brief immunity to slowing/snaring effects will make a massive difference in sticking to your target in both PvE and PvP.

If Horde is more your preference, then Orc is likely the best choice for your Assassination Rogue. Nearly every racial ability for Orc does something to make your experience smoother as a Roguem and especially as an Assassination Rogue. As Assassination especially, it is unlikely we will find ourselves using an Axe. If you do end up using an Axe, Axe Specialization provides a nice little boost with some extra crit chance. Blood Fury provides an on demand increase to our Attack Power making it even easier to quickly deal with enemies. Shatter Curse grants a brief immunity to Curses and Banes while also reducing our incoming Magic damage taken allowing for even more up time. Hardiness reduces the duration of Stun effects allowing us to remain active on our target.

Up time is king. The biggest mistake people make while leveling is focusing too heavily on what the optimal way to gain experience is. Your focus at all times should be to be constantly gaining experience, so maximizing your up time is your absolute number one priority.

In agreement with the first point, do not hesitate to use cooldowns. Abilities like Evasion are great to save for difficult monsters or elites, but it is important to make sure you are trying to use your cooldowns on cooldown. Doing so allows you to more quickly either defeat your opponent or minimize time you have otherwise spent having to eat food to regain your health.

Keep your poisons active. This may seem like a silly or obvious point, but do not forget to keep your poisons active. In World of Warcraft: Forever poisons both have a duration and an amount of charges, so if you are consistently fighting enemies you are a lot more likely to run out of charges of poisons on your weapon than you are to reach the end of their duration. This is critically important as Assassination, though we do not have full access to the talents that make your poisons potent. You will deal more damage with Poisons as an Assassination Rogue than any other specialization.

You can have two Primary Professions in WoW Forever, with the two ideal picks especially at this point should be Skinning and Leatherworking.

Skinning is a relatively simple profession; pick up a skinning knife and use it to harvest leathers and materials from all types of beasts and monsters you find throughout Azeroth. These materials you gather are a key component to many of your crafts with Leatherworking, so being able to find your own supplies will greatly reduce the cost to make many of the new and exciting recipes added in World of Warcraft Forever.

Leatherworking is a bit more in-depth. Leatherworking allows you to make leather gear that can help strengthen your character for your journey through this new version of Azeroth. One of the largest differences we have learned about World of Warcraft Forever is the inclusion of hundreds of new crafting recipes so there are undoubtedly going to be many great items you can craft throughout your leveling journey that will not only bolster your characters performance but likely be able to add utility to your groups.

It is also critically important to pick up First Aid, which is a secondary profession. As a Rogue of any specialization, you lack the ability to heal yourself so being able to bandage can sometimes be the difference of surviving an encounter or not.

This build focuses on dealing as much damage as possible as quickly as possible and maximizing our Combo Point generation. A few choices are made in this tree to avoid talents like Improved Slice and Dice largely due to the fact mobs and even bosses in this level bracket are unlikely to survive long enough to warrant the points spent in the extra duration.

Remorseless Attacks provides a buff after killing an enemy that would yield honor or experience that increases the critical strike chance of your next Sinister Strike, Mutilate, Backstab, Ambush or Ghostly Strike. This talent focuses on getting you either quickly back into combat or rewarding you with some bonus damage for killing an enemy before moving onto the next target.

Malice is just a flat increase to our critical strike chance. Critical strikes are 200% the damage of a normal attack so any extra crit will be incredibly beneficial.

Next we choose Ruthlessness which gives our finishing moves a chance to add an extra combo point to the target. The biggest limiting factor as a Rogue is how much energy you have and because of this our combo point generation is limited, so any extra combo points we can generate will greatly increase our output of finishing moves.

Last we choose Relentless Strikes. Similar to Remorseless Attacks, the added energy will allow us to cast more spells and thus generate more combo points and cast more finishing moves.

The Rogue DPS rotation at this level is incredibly simple, begin each encounter in Stealth and open with Ambush, then your primary focus is casting Backstab if you are able to position yourself behind the enemy, if not cast Sinister Strike to generate combo points to eventually spend on Eviscerate or Slice and Dice once we have reached 5-combo points, listed below is a rough order of priorities to take into consideration for each encounter.

It is incredibly important to understand Energy. Energy is your primary resource as a Rogue to use abilities, you have a set amount of energy that is constantly regenerating. In World of Warcraft Forever your energy bar is constantly refilling so your goal is to never allow yourself to remain at a full energy bar, thus wasting the opportunity to be gaining more energy.

Combo Points are another important system to understand, as a Rogue you have abilities that generate combo points like Sinister Strike and abilities that spend combo points like Eviscerate. Abilities that spend combo points become stronger based on the amount of combo points that are spent on them. In World of Warcraft Forever your combo points will persist on a target even if you swap to another but you cannot at this point transfer your combo points from an existing target to a new one.

1. Make sure Instant Poison is active on both of your weapons before entering combat.
2. Enter Stealth, use Ambush to exit stealth and begin the encounter.
3. Cast Backstab to generate combo points if you are able to get behind your target, if not cast Sinister Strike.
4. If your target is able to survive its full duration, at 5 combo points cast Slice and Dice.
5. If Slice and Dice is active, or your target will not live long enough for the duration of Slice and Dice and you have 5 combo points cast Eviscerate.

And it is crucial to remember even though they are not true damage dealing abilities spells like Gouge and Kick have massive impacts on combat, being able to incapacitate your target or interrupt spell casting will do a massive part in both mitigating incoming damage but also improving your groups odds of survival.

There is at this moment in time not much information on what gear will be available in World of Warcraft Forever, so it is impossible to compile a true list of things to look for. Listed below is a stat priority to help you decide what to look out for to optimize your damage.

Weapon damage is king as a Rogue. Many of your abilities have multipliers directly based off of your weapons damage so your primary focus when deciding on if an item is an upgrade or not should be the weapons damage. A massive part of your damage is also your auto attacks so having a harder hitting weapon will also amplify each auto.

Hit Chance is crucial especially while leveling because your attacks do zero damage if they do not land. In a leveling context, hit chance is even more valuable as the level difference between you and your target has significant implications on your chance to hit. Being able to consistently land your attacks can be the difference between being able to kill a higher level monster or not.

Agility is your primary source of Attack Power which increases all of your damage dealt by not just abilities but also auto attacks. Agility also gives a slight increase to your Critical Strike chance.

Critical Strike greatly increases your damage, dealing 200% of a normal attack, which makes this an incredibly valuable stat.

Strength increases your Attack Power, but unlike Agility does not improve your Critical Strike chance. This makes it a great stat, but not something we will prioritize.

Stamina increases your health. While being able to survive is very important, it is not a focus in gearing as your primary role in most content will be dealing as much damage as possible. We only need as much health as it takes to survive, so we will not focus on maximizing our stamina.

It is impossible at this time to know what all consumables will be available to us in World of Warcraft Forever but this section will quickly be updated as the Information becomes available.

There are however a few key things that we know you will need in your adventures through Azeroth. As a Rogue you lack the ability to self-heal, so it is important to have at least a couple of stacks of food in your inventory to regain your health between encounters. Bandages from First Aid will also help to both mitigate downtime between fights or even save you mid encounter.

Sellin

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Sellin, a former top 10 US raider and current season and several time Gladiator, long time WoW Player and passionate about all things Warcraft and Theorycrafting. You can follow him on Twitter and watch him on Twitch.

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