Assassination Rogue Dragonflight Leveling Guide From 1 to 70 (Dragonflight 10.1)

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level, but 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.

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Talents are passives or abilities that you can choose from to optimize your character or change how some of your regular abilities work. Many of these are only passive abilities that do not alter the way you play the game or the order in which to use your abilities. Some, however, are big milestones on your way to max level, and you should aim for these talents as soon as possible.

At Level 10, you can allocate your first Talent Point into your Class Talent tree.

At Level 11, you can allocate your first Talent Point into your Assassination Talent tree.

At Level 12, you can allocate a second Talent Point into your Class Talent tree. This process alternates every level, and you will be able to spend 26 Talent Points in your Class tree and 25 Talent Points in your Assassination Talent tree by the time you reach Level 60.

There are certain milestone talents that you should try to reach as quickly as possible. These allow you to better deal with enemies, speeding up your leveling process.

The first such Milestone happens around level 34, as you can pick up Vigor in the class tree to increase your energy regeneration, while simultaneously being able to pick up Deathmark and Master Assassin in your Assassination tree. You will also want to pick up Crimson Tempest by pathing through Thrown Precision, as it is your only AoE damaging finisher available.

There are only a handful of important talents on your way there, with Venomous Wounds being of particular importance in the Assassination tree. You will want to learn it as soon as possible, as once you gain access to Garrote and Rupture at Levels 15 and 17, it will greatly increase your Energy regeneration and speed up the flow of your rotation. Internal Bleeding deals a large amount of damage whenever you use Kidney Shot, allowing you to take less damage while still dealing damage over time to your enemy.

Shadowrunner and Improved Sprint in the Class tree are going to speed up your ability to move around, which can be a big time saver throughout your journey to max level.

Your next major Milestone will be around level 54, as you are finally able to talent into Seal Fate on the Class tree, which allows you to generate extra Combo Points whenever your generators deal a critical strike. At the same time you will be able to pick up Shrouded Suffocation and Serrated Bone Spike, both of which will significantly boost your multi-target damage output and speed up the path through the last few levels.

The most important talents to pick up on you way there are Shadowstep and Improved Sprint in the Class tree, to further increase your mobility to speed up your journey. Iron Stomach can help limit the amount of times you have to sit down to regenerate health, by improving the efficacy of your Crimson Vial.

You can fill out the rest of the tree however you want, as long as you end up having talented into Doomblade with your 20th Talent Point.

Once you get past the Level 54 milestone, you will want to path straight towards Indiscriminate Carnage in the Spec tree, with the rest of the points being fairly flexible. At this point, you have selected all the important leveling talents in the Spec tree.

We recommend using this Import String for your journey from Level 60 to 70:

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Once you get past Level 60, you will want to pick up Indiscriminate Carnage immediately at Level 61. The remaining points are not nearly as impactful, but you should try and pick the talents in the order we suggested. In the Class Tree, you should grab Recuperator for additional healing, and then pick up Echoing Reprimand and Resounding Clarity. The last two points can go into Lethality for additional damage.

Your leveling rotation and gameplay is fairly simple. Open with Garrote, ideally on 3 targets that are close to each other. Apply Crimson Tempest and spread Rupture, either individually or by utilizing your new AoE cooldown. Bleed up your targets, and then run around as they bleed out. We recommend using Crippling Poison while you level, to minimize the amount of damage you take. You do not have to be in melee range to deal damage, as you can still hit enemies with Fan of Knives while they are not able to hit you.

Make sure to utilize Serrated Bone Spike often, as it allows you to pull in enemies that are further away. Once they are close enough, you can spread additional bleeds on them. You have many short-cd abilities that allow you to deal additional damage to individual targets. Make use of them whenever a mob happens to be a bit late to the party or a high HP elite stands in your way.

If you play with War Mode on, we recommend Creeping Venom, System Shock and Veil of Midnight as your War Mode talents.

Once you reach the maximum level it is recommended to switch to one of the suggested Talent builds from our Talents section of the guide.

Cast Stealth if you want to get to a quest objective without fighting all enemies or before engaging enemies.

Starting at Level 1, you only have one main attack ability: Sinister Strike.

1. Cast Eviscerate once you have 4+ Combo Points to spend them.
2. Use Sinister Strike to build up Combo Points.

1. Make sure you always have Instant Poison applied.
2. Make sure you always have Deadly Poison applied.
3. Make sure you always have Numbing Poison applied.
4. Use Deathmark on bosses or elite enemies.
5. Use 4+ Combo Points to keep up Slice and Dice at all times. You can use this ability while stealthed.
6. Cast Garrote from stealth. If there are multiple enemies, use Garrote on 3 different targets.
7. Cast Ambush once from Stealth if there is only one target.
8. Spend your Combo Points to maintain Rupture on multiple targets.
9. Use Garrote to maintain the debuff on as many enemies as possible.
10. Cast Eviscerate to spend excess Combo Points.
11. Use Kidney Shot to spend excess Combo Points against enemies you want to stun. Watch out for enemies that are immune to stuns.
12. Use Shiv on bosses and enemies with very high health.
13. Use Envenom to spend excess Combo Points.
14. Use Sinister Strike unless you have 4+ Combo Points.
15. Use Mutilate unless you have 4+ Combo Points.
16. Use Fan of Knives instead of Mutilate when fighting 4 or more targets.

Assassination Rogues have a few tools at their disposal that make fighting multiple enemies easier or that allow you to avoid debilitating effects.

• Kick allows you to interrupt an enemy that is casting a spell. Use this frequently to avoid the damage you would otherwise be taking if the spell cast finishes.
• Crimson Vial lets you heal 20% of your max Health over 4 seconds. Use this whenever you need the healing or between pulls.
• Sap lets you control any Humanoid, Beast, Demon, or Dragon for up to 60 seconds. Use this to keep a single enemy from joining the fight before you open on a group of enemies from stealth. This crowd control breaks when the enemy takes damage. Try to avoid hitting it with any of your abilities that hit multiple targets or it will join the fight.
• Kidney Shot can be used to stun a single opponent for up to 6 seconds. Use this to interrupt a dangerous cast or simply not take damage from an enemy. Some NPCs might be immune to stuns.
• Evasion increases your chance to dodge incoming melee and ranged attacks by 100% for 10 seconds. Use this whenever it is available to you while you are fighting multiple enemies. You can only dodge enemy attacks when facing them.
• Vanish removes you from sight. This essentially resets all enemies you are in combat with. If you happen to be close to death and you do not feel that using any other defensive or offensive ability might let you finish off all the enemies you are engaged with, use Vanish to survive.
• Blind allows you to control an enemy for up to 60 seconds. This can be used from stealth or outside of it. The crowd-control effect breaks when the target takes damage, so make sure to not hit it with any of your AoE abilities or use Blind when the enemy is afflicted with one of your damage over time effects.
• Cloak of Shadows removes and makes you immune to magical effects for 5 seconds. This allows you to potentially remove damage over time effects that could break your Stealth, allow you to take less damage, or simply avoid certain crowd control or damaging effects.

In this section we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Assassination Rogue-specific PvE talents.

1. System Shock - Casting Envenom with at least 5 Combo Points on a target afflicted by your Garrote, Rupture, and lethal poison deals Nature damage, and reduces their movement speed by 90% for 2 sec. While not incredibly useful, it is extra damage and can help with the enemies that are coded to run away. Make sure to always use Envenom with 5 Combo Points when using this PvP Talent.
2. Creeping Venom - Your Envenom applies Creeping Venom, dealing Nature damage over 4 sec. The duration is refreshed when the target moves. This is another passive damage increase, which can also be easily maintained by side stepping, causing the enemies to move with you.
3. Control is King - Cheap Shot will grant 15 seconds of Slice and Dice and Kidney Shot will restore Energy when used. Both of these allow you to use these abilities instead of Ambush or Envenom if need be, while still providing DPS benefits.

Congratulations on reaching Level 70! Now that you have hit Level 70 we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level.