Assassination Rogue Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Shadowlands 9.2.5
Legendary Powers are targetable, unique effects that you can imbue certain base items with through the Runecarving system. In Shadowlands, these enable you to customize your Assassination Rogue, drastically improving your performance, and are arguably the most important aspect of your gear.

The purpose of this page is to help you pick the right legendary powers (and item slots for them) for your character, depending on the content you are interested in.
Introduction: Legendaries in Shadowlands
Legendary Powers are bonus effects you can craft onto certain items in Shadowlands by visiting the Runecarver in Torghast. If you are not yet familiar with this process, feel free to check out our comprehensive Runecarving Guide.
The Legendary Powers we list on this page are ranked by performance and usefulness. Sadly, not all Legendary Powers are strong enough to make the list. If you are interested in learning more about all Legendary effects that are available to Rogue, regardless of spec, you can do so in our Rogue Legendary Power overview.
New Legendary Power in Patch 9.2
Shadowlands Patch 9.2 introduces a new Legendary Power, Unity,
which grants you the bonus of your corresponding Covenant Legendary power.
These Covenant Legendary powers are:
Obedience for Venthyr Rogues. It is very solid on single-target and will consistently lower your
Flagellation CD to ~60 seconds.
Deathspike for Necrolord Rogues. It will shoot a second
Serrated Bone Spike on a different target and apply the bleeding effect, but it will not generate additional Combo Points.
Toxic Onslaught for Night Fae Rogues. It will grant you access to
Adrenaline Rush and
Shadow Blades for 10 seconds after
Sepsis expires. While this is a noticeable benefit, it is not comparable to the damage gains that other Legendary choices provide.
Resounding Clarity for Kyrian Rogues. Using it changes all your Combo Points to be anima-charged, allowing for multiple 7 Combo Point finishers in a row when you play around the mechanic properly. However, Assassination's Combo Point generation is still very unreliable and random at times, due to
Seal Fate, so this Legendary feels very clunky and awkward to play around.
The choice of Covenant will change as you continue to venture deeper into
Sepulcher of the First Ones and start acquiring the new set bonuses,
Assassination Rogue 2-Piece and
Assassination Rogue 4-Piece.
As the Unity Power will be unavailable for a few weeks after Patch 9.2
releases, you will still be using your old Legendary for the time being. The
ability to craft Unity and use two Legendaries will be unlocked after
you finish Chapter 7 of the new Quest Campaign in Patch 9.2.
Best Overall Legendary for Assassination Rogue
Depending on whether or not you have acquired the new set bonuses yet, and whether or not you can already equip two legendaries, you will have different priorities for your Legendary Power.
Zoldyck Insignia is a very strong overall Legendary, but it is not the
strongest for pure single-target.
Doomblade and
Dashing Scoundrel
are likely to outperform it on pure single-target, but they are less effective
both on cleave and AoE. Coupled with the talent
Blindside, you can
become quite the powerhouse whenever you and your group need heavy execute
damage when using Zoldyck. This can be particularly helpful on raid
encounters that have a difficult final phase, although the current raid tier
has no such encounter.
Depending on Covenant choice and your current gear, your Legendary Power choice changes as follows:
Venthyr Covenant
- No Set, No 2 Legendaries:
Obedience
- 4-Set, No 2 Legendaries:
Duskwalker's Patch
- No Set, 2 Legendaries:
Unity and
Dashing Scoundrel
- 4-Set, 2 Legendaries:
Unity and
Duskwalker's Patch
Necrolord Covenant
- No Set, No 2 Legendaries:
Doomblade
- 4-Set, No 2 Legendaries:
Duskwalker's Patch
- No Set, 2 Legendaries:
Unity and
Doomblade
- 4-Set, 2 Legendaries:
Unity and
Duskwalker's Patch
Night Fae Covenant
- No Set, No 2 Legendaries:
Doomblade
- 4-Set, No 2 Legendaries:
Duskwalker's Patch
- No Set, 2 Legendaries:
Unity and
Doomblade
- 4-Set, 2 Legendaries:
Unity and
Duskwalker's Patch
Kyrian Covenant
- No Set, No 2 Legendaries:
Dashing Scoundrel
- 4-Set, No 2 Legendaries:
Duskwalker's Patch
- No Set, 2 Legendaries:
Unity and
Dashing Scoundrel
- 4-Set, 2 Legendaries:
Unity and
Duskwalker's Patch
Legendaries for Assassination Rogue
Zoldyck Insignia is among the strongest single-target and multi-target Legendaries. It is particularly useful on any fight that has a much more difficult final phase, where execute damage becomes more important. It should be crafted on legs if you do not already need the tier legs for a 2pc or 4pc bonus. If you do, or do not want to recraft it again later, put it on boots instead.
Obedience is the best option for any Rogue that chose the Venthyr covenant. Exclusive to Venthyr Rogues, it offers the highest single-target benefit out of all Legendary choices, and can even compete with Zoldyck during execute.
Doomblade is only worth using on pure single-target encounters, where it outperforms any other Legendary choice. It synergizes well with our
Well-Placed Steel Potency Conduit, and can be quite potent when you prepare your
Shiv windows properly by pooling Energy beforehand. It is not recommended for any encounter that has multiple targets, or where
Zoldyck Insignia's execute damage might be of higher value. It should be crafted on a cloak.
Dashing Scoundrel is your second-best option. It is very powerful on both single-target and AoE, albeit slightly worse than
Zoldyck Insignia. You can play this on any fight that has a more difficult phase where Zoldyck does not yet provide any damage bonuses.
Mark of the Master Assassin is the best option out of all the Legendary Powers that are not specific to Assassination. It can be used for on-demand burst, due to the high Critical Strike chance it provides after using
Vanish.
Duskwalker's Patch allows for a fairly strong cooldown reduction to
Vendetta. This might be a very situational pick if the lowered cooldown allows you to line up Vendetta with certain bonus-damage phases. It should be crafted on a ring.
Essence of Bloodfang is our only Legendary effect that provides a bit more than just raw DPS. However, the healing is incredibly minor, and the performance difference too high to justify using it for a bit more self-healing. It should be crafted on a ring.
Best Mythic+ and Torghast Legendaries for Assassination Rogue
This section covers the best Mythic+ and Torghast Legendaries. While you will be engaging in a lot more single-target scenarios inside dungeons and the halls of Torghast, single-target damage is still important to take down the most difficult elites and bosses.
Zoldyck Insignia remains the best choice due to its strong benefits on both AoE and single-target.
Dashing Scoundrel is your second best option here as well. Sustaining high levels of Energy on AoE is much easier with this Legendary, and it allows for a smoother rotation as well as requiring fewer bleeds that generate Energy for you via
Venomous Wounds. Poisons dealing high damage is also very beneficial if you are forced to kite enemies within Torghast.
Essence of Bloodfang becomes very powerful whenever you start using
Fan of Knives as your Combo Point generator. It is a solid Legendary in all multi-target situations, but lacks a bit of strength against bosses or when fighting elites.
Mark of the Master Assassin is very powerful whenever you can re-Stealth frequently. However, our openers generally consist of casting
Garrote multiple times to ramp up our energy generation, "wasting" a large part of the bonus of this Legendary.
Vanishing for DPS is also very unreliable within Torghast, to the point where enemies might reset and you have to start the fight all over again. It is still very potent in Mythic+ however, since the high Critical Strike chance allows for consistent Combo Point generation through
Seal Fate.
Changelog
- 31 May 2022: Page reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 22 Feb. 2022: Updated for Patch 9.2.
- 02 Nov. 2021: Updated Toxic Onslaught description for Patch 9.1.5 and rephrased Legendary recommendations.
- 25 Aug. 2021: Updated to better reflect current Legendary rankings.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Updated single-target Legendary rankings for Patch 9.0.5.
- 20 Nov. 2020: Page added.
More Rogue Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written and reviewed by Seliathan, who has been playing Rogue since the first day of Classic. He currently raids in Familiar with Drama, and is one of the foremost Mythic+ Rogue players. You can often find him streaming on Twitch, or follow him on his personal Discord server.
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