Assassination Rogue DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.0.2
In this guide, you will find tips and advice to tackle Mythic+ dungeons with your Assassination Rogue in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.0.2.
Assassination Rogue in Mythic+
The playstyle of Assassination in Mythic+ stays almost the same in Shadowlands. It revolves around setting up your bleeds on multiple targets, ramping up your Energy regeneration until you become global cooldown locked, and then continuing to cycle bleeds between targets. A key feature of Assassination AoE is that while it is most optimal in evenly multi-dotting across a number of targets, you can still channel it more into single target damage, at the cost of overall damage.
If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Shadowlands Mythic+ Season 1 page below.
Rogue Shroud Skips
While at this stage many groups do different pulls, due to different composition or preferences, some of the shroud skips in dungeons are still more common than others. As such, the most popular skips have been compiled in a Shroud of Concealment Mythic+ guide for Rogues with diagrams showing each of the skips.
Mythic+ Legendary
Zoldyck Insignia is still the best legendary for your overall damage output.
Mark of the Master Assassin is very competitive on trash, in particular
due to the frequent re-stealths you will be getting between packs. As you will
spend most of your opener applying damage over time, you cannot benefit from
the increased critical strike chance as much as other specs and due to the much
smaller benefit on priority target and single-target damage, Zoldyck is
still your best choice for Mythic+.
Mythic+ Covenant and Conduits
For your Conduits you will want to play the following setup:
- Potency:
Lethal Poisons and
Poisoned Katar.
- Finesse:
Fade to Nothing and
Quick Decisions.
- Endurance:
Cloaked in Shadows and
Recuperator.
There is no Covenant that outperforms all the others in Mythic+. While there are certain benefits to individual Soulbinds or Covenant abilities, they are all highly situational and their impact is ultimately very small. DPS differences are usually within a margin of 2-4% and can shift quickly based on the type of fight you find yourself in.
It is, therefore, recommended to just pick whatever Covenant you prefer, whether it is for thematic or cosmetic reasons, or because you prefer the way a certain Covenant Class ability plays. For more information on each individual Covenant and a general recommendation, you can head over to our dedicated Covenant section to find out more about each individual covenant.
Night Fae and Korayn's First Strike
There is one exception to this, that will not occur until very high Renown
levels. As it currently stands, Night Fae will have a significant
advantage at higher Renown levels, in particular due to the Korayn
Soulbind and her First Strike ability. It vastly outperforms any other
Covenant or Soulbind choice. It is widely believed that there will be a
tuning pass that will adjust this Soulbinds power. As it is still multiple
months until you can gain access to Korayn and this ability, it is not
recommended to base your Covenant choice on its current implementation.
Assassination Rogue Mythic+ Rotation
For the most part, Assassination Rogue's rotation is the same as referred in the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page.
The key point for high sustained AoE DPS in Mythic+ is to maintain enough
bleeding effects to sustain energy via Venomous Wounds while using almost
all of your global cooldowns on
Fan of Knives and
Crimson Tempest
to generate and spend Combo Points. Applying 3
Garrotes in your opener
and one additional
Rupture is enough to keep the correct energy
equilibrium, while on longer fights you will want to maintain 3-4
Rupture.
Sample Opener for Assassination in Mythic+
This is what your regular opener on any mid to large-sized pack should look like:
- Make sure you have 2 or more excess Combo Points from the previous pack.
- Use
Garrote on 3 different targets, ideally the ones with the highest health.
- Use
Crimson Tempest with 5 Combo Points.
- Use
Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points.
- Apply
Rupture to your priority target.
- Continue building Combo Points with
Fan of Knives.
- Maintain
Slice and Dice with 4+ Combo Points.
- Maintain
Crimson Tempest with 4-5 Combo Points.
- Maintain 3-4
Rupture by the time your initial
Garrotes have run their full duration.
- Use excess Combo Points to cast
Envenom on your priority target.
Assassination Rogue Utility
Sap and
Blind can be great for crowd controlling two targets during one pull.
Kidney Shot and
Blind can be used to disrupt enemies that cannot be interrupted with
Kick.
Shroud of Concealment projects AoE
Stealth around you. It is important to note, however, that in the current expansion there is a much greater number of enemies who can detect through Stealth or Invisibility, whom you will need to be on the lookout for.
Distract helps setting up Shroud-skips and keeps patrolling trash packs in place for 10 seconds.
Feint,
Cloak of Shadows,
Evasion,
Crimson Vial and
Cheat Death form a very powerful set of defensive cooldowns, and are one of the biggest reasons for Rogue's strength in Mythic+.
Tricks of the Trade is not exceptionally great normally, however any kind of support that helps your tank keep aggro on all enemies is encouraged.
Mythic+ Talents for Assassination Rogue
Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+. These talents are recommended for all groups and keys at the current time.
Level | Choices | ||
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15 |
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25 |
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30 |
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35 |
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40 |
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45 |
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50 |
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Mythic+ Stat Choice for Assassination Rogue
Currently, you will want to prioritize secondary stats as follows:
- Critical Strike up to around 45-50%;
- Versatility;
- Mastery;
- Haste.
Legendary and Conduit Choices for Assassination Rogue
For overall damage, you will want to play Zoldyck Insignia. For more
burst damage, you can run
Mark of the Master Assassin instead. Zoldyck
will be stronger on bosses, with Master Assassin being slightly more powerful
on trash fights.
You will want to run Poisoned Katar as your go-to Potency Conduit. It
is our only AoE Conduit.
Lethal Poisons should be used as your
second Potency Conduit, although its impact on AoE is very minor.
Mythic+ Affixes
The way Mythic+ affixes are tiered in Shadowlands has changed quite a bit since their launch in Legion.
There are now three weekly affixes and one seasonal affix. The first affix is available instantly at level two and three, the second affix starts at level four, the third affix is enabled at level seven, and finally the seasonal affix is at level ten.
Tier One Affixes
There is not much to say about Fortified and
Tyrannical.
The most important part is to ensure that you have all your single-target cooldowns
ready whenever you fight any boss.
Tier Two Affixes
Bolstering is a good affix for Assassination, since you do not have AoE burst and you are able to meticulously DoT them up, and dump excess Combo Points into high health targets.
Sanguine can cause a lot of movement from the group, and might make your
Poison Bomb miss some of the ticks.
Bursting debuff can be removed with
Cloak of Shadows which also negates new applications until it expires. This means that you generally want to delay Cloak of Shadows until the first few debuffs go out. Remember to not use
Shroud of Concealment until Bursting has expired on your group.
Sap and
Blind are useful tools to keep Inspired enemies controlled during
Inspiring weeks.
- Using
Fan of Knives or
Poisoned Knife can help to kite the adds that fixate you during
Spiteful weeks.
Tier Three Affixes
Quaking damage can be decreased by
Feint, helping the healer. Quaking during
Shroud of Concealment can break the Shroud if people overlap their Quaking. You can wait until Quaking occurs, then shroud safely after it happened.
Fan of Knives does not hit the Explosive Orbs from
Explosive, requiring them to be targeted directly.
- During
Skittish weeks your
Tricks of the Trade is extremely helpful in helping tanks manage aggro in AoE situations. Due to Assassination damage patterns, you will want to wait a few seconds into every pull before you use it, once you have ramped up your DoTs.
Storming can be avoided by using
Cloak of Shadows.
Season 4 Affix: Prideful
You can use Feint and
Cloak of Shadows to reduce incoming
damage from
Bursting With Pride.
Whenever you get the Belligerent Boast debuff, it is advised to just
stand still as everybody else positions themselves correctly to not get hit.
Changelog
- 07 Dec. 2020: Added Legendary and Covenant sections.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands release, added new Mythic+ affixes and opener sequence.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
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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