Assassination Rogue DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.1.5

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 2 page below.

You will want to grab these 4 Anima Powers:

• Dagger of Necrotic Wounding
• The Stone Ward
• Vial of Desperation
• Champion's Brand

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.

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+.

For your Conduits you will want to play the following setup:

• Potency: Lethal Poisons and Poisoned Katar. Lashing Scars if you are Venthyr, Sudden Fractures if you are Necrolord.
• Finesse: Quick Decisions and Fade to Nothing.
• Endurance: Recuperator and Cloaked in Shadows.

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. The Necrolord Covenant has the strongest active ability for Mythic+, but is still only ahead by a few percentage points under ideal conditions.

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.

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.

This is what your regular opener on any mid to large-sized pack should look like:

1. Make sure you have 2 or more excess Combo Points from the previous pack.
2. Use Garrote on 3 different targets, ideally the ones with the highest health.
3. Use Crimson Tempest with 5 Combo Points.
4. Use Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points.
5. Apply Rupture to your priority target.
6. Continue building Combo Points with Fan of Knives.
7. Maintain Slice and Dice by using Envenom with 4+ Combo Points.
8. Maintain Crimson Tempest with 4-5 Combo Points.
9. Maintain 3-4 Rupture by the time your initial Garrotes have run their full duration.
10. Use excess Combo Points to cast Envenom on your priority target.

• 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.
• Shiv can be used to dispel Enrage effects. Keep in mind that this means you will not be able to use Shiv for single-target damage.

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+. These talents are recommended for all groups and keys at the current time.

Level	Choices
15	✗ Master Poisoner	✓ Elaborate Planning	✗ Blindside
25	✗ Nightstalker	✓ Subterfuge	✗ Master Assassin
30	✓ Vigor	✗ Deeper Stratagem	? Marked for Death
35	✗ Leeching Poison	✓ Cheat Death	✗ Elusiveness
40	✗ Internal Bleeding	✓ Iron Wire	✗ Prey on the Weak
45	✗ Venom Rush	✓ Alacrity	✗ Exsanguinate
50	? Poison Bomb	✗ Hidden Blades	✓ Crimson Tempest

Marked for Death is a viable alternative to Vigor. It provides slightly more AoE damage, at the cost of single-target damage. The differences are very small, however, so you can play either choice very comfortably.

Currently, you will want to prioritize secondary stats as follows:

1. Critical Strike up to around 30-35%;
2. Haste;
3. Versatility;
4. Mastery.

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 Lethal Poisons as your go-to Potency Conduit. Lashing Scars is best when you are playing a Venthyr Rogue. Poisoned Katar can be used as your second Potency Conduit, as it smooths out your AoE rotation due to the 5% Critical Strike bonus to Fan of Knives.

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

You can remove the Melt Soul debuff with Cloak of Shadows, allowing your healer to dispel a different player instead.

After killing Arkolath, you will want to pick the Champion's Brand Anima Power.

Cloak of Shadows removes the Biting Cold debuff.

After killing Oros, you will want to pick the Vial of Desperation Anima Power. Alternatively, Regenerative Fungus can be a good choice if the dungeon has a lot of sustained damage encounters left when you get to this Tormentor.

You may want to move out of Massive Smash on higher key levels, even with Feint active. Evasion lets you avoid the hit completely.

After killing Soggodon, you will want to pick The Stone Ward Anima Power.

You can avoid the Carnage bleed DoT by running a short distance away from the boss and using Vanish while he is charging toward you. Using it too early will instead make him re-cast the ability. Using Evasion also avoids both the hit and the bleed.

After killing Varruth, you will want to pick the Dagger of Necrotic Wounding Anima Power. You can choose to pick Volcanic Plumage instead, if your group prefers having multiple of these to disrupt trash mobs more regularly.

Whenever the Legion Timewalking is active, you will be able to venture into a specific set of Legion dungeons that have pre-set affix combinations, as well as a new Affix called Infernal. It functions similarly to the current seasonal Affix of Tormented, as you will find Infernal Beacons that you can interact with. These Beacons are close to regular dungeon bosses, and engaging the boss without triggering the beacon first will force you to fight both at the same time.

Clicking a beacon will spawn one of multiple Legion Commanders, and all of them have their own individual mechanics that require you to deal with soaking mechanics as well as a constant stream of smaller adds that can quickly overwhelm the tank if the corresponding Commander is still alive.

If you would like to learn more about these seasonal affixes or any others, please consult our Mythic+ Affix Guide below.