Assassination Rogue DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Dragonflight 10.1

With the start of Season 2, Aberrus is opening up its gates, and you are once again able to acquire gear from the raid. Mythic+ is also starting, same as the new PvP season, and this serves as a soft-reset for most of the gear you acquired during the first Season of Dragonflight.

The Valor Upgrade system is gone in Season 2 and has been replaced with a new system that allows for item upgrades to be obtained from a wider variety of content.

This reworked upgrade system introduces two new currencies: Flightstones and Shadowflame Crests are both obtainable from practically all forms of content in the game. Almost all items you acquire in the game can be upgraded with these new currencies up to a certain limit. Some Heroic raid gear and gear from Mythic+ 16 and higher can be upgraded all the way up to 441, the equivalent of entry-level Mythic raid gear. Crafted gear can be upgraded all the way up to item level 447, and only the final bosses of Aberrus drops slightly better loot!

The major upside of this new system is that you are free to engage with any content you prefer and still have meaningful gear progression over the course of the patch.

We recommend that you check out our dedicated page for more information on this new gear upgrade system:

Great Vault is back as well, of course, and it will once again provide you with a selection of items each week based on which type of content you engaged with.

With all the different layers of gearing currently available to players, it is impossible to cover all edge cases and individual recommendations in a guide. We therefore highly recommend simming your own character by using Raidbots. This website allows for precise and individualized recommendations that consider your exact talents, gear, trinket, and all the other layers of gearing that the game has to offer. Learning to use this tool is essential to maximizing your potential, as it is the only reliable way to get information on which piece of gear, enchant, gem, or trinket is the best for your character.

The Droptimizer feature from Raidbots lets you identify which dungeons and Raid Bosses offer the highest DPS upgrades to you. It simulates all of the potential upgrades in a raid or a dungeon and lists the bosses/dungeons by rank order of how much DPS you can expect to gain from each of the items it drops. We have a guide for it that you can access using the link below.

These are some of the items you should prioritize on upgrading as high as possible early into the season:

• Any weapon, like Primal Molten Shortblade or Fang of the Sundered Flame
• A powerful trinket like Dragonfire Bomb Dispenser, Neltharion's Call to Suffering or Irideus Fragment
• Embellished Items like Toxic Thorn Footwraps

These are not the only items worth upgrading, of course. They simply offer the highest DPS gain early into the tier when you are limited by the weekly cap of the Crests.

Aberrus once again offers us the choice of 5 tier-set items that grant powerful bonuses once you wear 2 or 4 pieces of the set.

If given a choice, try to prioritize the Shoulder, Chest, Gloves, and Leg slots for this. However, getting the Helmet to complete one of the bonuses is still better than any other gearing choice.

Patch 10.0.7 introduced a new gearing layer to the game by adding Primordial Gemstones that can be socketed into the Onyx Annulet, a new ring you can receive after finishing a few quests in the new area, The Forbidden Reach.

The Onyx Annulet will remain BiS for most of the patch, and while Blizzard have announced that nerfs are in store for Patch 10.1.5, even the highest item-level Mythic raid rings will not be able to match the power of the Onyx Annulet.

For more information regarding the Onyx Annulet, the Primordial Gemstones, and how to obtain them, check out our dedicated guide for it below.

As for the effect of the gems themselves, many of them provide different procs or bonuses, with a few of them staying BiS even for all of Season 2. We have compiled a list of the most useful ones on our Enchants and Gem page.

Even the highest item-level Mythic raid rings will not be able to match the power of a fully optimized Onyx Annulet, and since it only takes anywhere from 2-4 hours to fully max it out, we highly recommend acquiring it for both regular and returning players.

Professions are a great way to gear up with your optimal secondary stats, as generating specific secondary stat combinations is now possible when adding special items to the crafting process. With the heavily reworked crafting system in Dragonflight, exploring the new professions will help you gear up throughout the expansion, as you will be able to craft some Mythic Raid item-level pieces further down the line.

If you want to find out more about professions, make sure to check out our Dragonflight Profession guide!

Up to two of your crafted items can be Embellished. This is a similar concept as Unique-Equipped, as you can only wear two items that have the Embellished status. Some crafted items, many of which have powerful procs or beneficial effects by default, are considered Embellished. You can also add Embellishments from a variety of professions to any crafted item, adding the effect to this item either when creating it or at a later stage.

As there is a lot of competition for Embellishments, you will have to pick and choose the two strongest ones for your overall DPS output. The two best choices for this are:

• Toxic Thorn Footwraps
• Flaring Cowl (only if you have Seal of Diurna's Chosen)
• Any crafted item with a Toxified Armor Patch

If you have a high item-level version of Seal of Diurna's Chosen, you will want to stick with Flaring Cowl as one of your embellishments until you get a high item-level ring to replace Diurnas, at which point you also replace your Cowl with the Boots. The exact item-level breakpoints for a swap need to be simmed.

You can add sockets to your necklace by using a Tiered Medallion Setting on it. Depending on the rank of the Medallion, you can add up to 3 sockets to any necklace you own.

You can also add sockets to Helmets, Belts, Bracers, Necks and Rings with Tokens of Merit, which are granted if you do not select any of the choices in your Great Vault. 6 of these tokens can be traded in for an item that allows you to add a socket to any piece of gear you acquired in Season 2.

Which gems and enchants to use heavily depends on your current stat priority. As previously mentioned, this priority can shift and change whenever you acquire new gear, so simming yourself to figure out the best use of your newly acquired socket is highly recommended. The general rule is to prioritize Critical Strike and Mastery on as many pieces of gear as possible, and prioritizing those stats for any consumables as well.

We highly recommend that you sim yourself to compare items of a lower/different item-level to one another.

These are the rankings for some of the trinkets available to you in Season 2. It is always recommended to sim yourself for the most accurate results.

1. Dragonfire Bomb Dispenser
2. Neltharion's Call to Suffering
3. Beacon to the Beyond
4. Irideus Fragment
5. Ominous Chromatic Essence
6. Harlan's Loaded Dice

These are the rankings for some of the weapons available to you in Season 2. It is always recommended to sim yourself for the most accurate results.

1. Fang of the Sundered Flame (450)
2. Primal Molten Shortblade (447)
3. Heart-Piercing Stalactite (441)
4. Hellsteel Mutilator (441)

These are the rankings for some of the rings available to you in Season 2. It is always recommended to sim yourself for the most accurate results.

1. Onyx Annulet (424)
2. Onyx Impostor's Birthright (450)
3. Any 447 crafted ring or Great Vault ring with good stats (447)
4. Seal of Diurna's Chosen (421)

Cataclysm Timewalking is back as of May 23rd, 2023, and introduces new Trinkets and other items from dungeons like the Stonecore, Lost City of the Tol'vir, Throne of the Tides, End Time, Blackrock Caverns, and the Firelands Raid. The Firelands Trinkets can be upgraded to Item Level 437. They will only be available this week until Cataclysm Timewalking hopefully comes around again later.

Sadly, or thankfully, none of the Firelands raid items seem to be worth chasing. The only item of interest, the Matrix Restabilizer, has a 105 second inner cooldown, which does not sync up with our cooldowns very well. As a result, it is unlikely to be an increase in DPS for us.

That being said, sims often do not work correctly for many of the old items and trinkets when Timewalking starts, and the SimCraft implementation isn't finishing until it ends. With Timewalking only being active for a single week, we still recommend trying to get your hands on some of the old items IF you have the time for it.