Assassination Rogue DPS Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.0.2

The playstyle of Assassination in Mythic+ remains the same, and if you have played the spec in previous expansions you will feel right at home. 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 multi-dotting evenly across several targets, you can still channel your damage into a single target as well, at the cost of overall DPS.

While at this stage many groups do different pulls, due to different compositions 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.

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+. These talents are recommended for all groups and keys at the current time. Be sure to use the 'Copy Export String' button to import our build below!

For the most part, Assassination Rogue's rotation is the same as referred to 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 as many Rupture debuffs as possible.

There is a certain balance that needs to be kept for optimizing your damage, as there will be many situations where just doing the best for overall DPS might not save you the most time. Many packs have enemies with differing HP levels, and our kit allows us to ensure that most of our highest damaging abilities hit those targets.

Indiscriminate Carnage is a useful tool to quickly get a lot of bleed effects out. Keep in mind that all your Garrotes cast this way will benefit from Improved Garrote and Shrouded Suffocation if you cast Garrote from stealth.

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

1. Cast Indiscriminate Carnage in stealth.
2. Use Garrote once. If the pack is smaller than 8 targets, all of them should have the debuff now. You can re-cast Garrote two more times on targets that did not get the DoT, or that are priority targets.
3. Cast Crimson Tempest with 5+ Combo Points.
4. Cast Echoing Reprimand.
5. Use Rupture with 5+ Combo Points.
6. Use Exsanguinate on your priority target.
7. Use Deathmark on your priority target.
8. Cast Shiv on your priority target.
9. Cast Kingsbane on your priority target.
11. Use Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points.
12. Continue building Combo Points with Fan of Knives.
13. Maintain Slice and Dice by using Envenom with 5+ Combo Points.
14. Maintain Crimson Tempest with 5+ Combo Points.
15. Maintain 3-4 Rupture by the time your initial Garrotes have run their full duration.
16. Use Garrote on cooldown on targets that do not yet have the debuff active.
17. Use excess Combo Points to cast Envenom on your priority target or keep applying more Rupture to additional targets as long as they run for the full duration.

• Gouge can be used to disrupt enemies from casting otherwise uninterruptible spells. This requires you to stand in front of the enemy, but can be used in many situations to keep enemies from using some of their most lethal abilities. Many of these abilities go on cooldown once used, so disrupting them with Gouge, Kidney Shot or Blind will keep these mobs from re-casting these abilities for a while.
• Sap and Blind can be useful to hard-crowd control multiple mobs in a single trash pack. You can also use it right before the tank is pulling, as Blackjack applies a damage reduction debuff to the target when Sap breaks.
• 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 set 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.
• Numbing Poison and Atrophic Poison are both useful in Mythic+, but with the heavier emphasis on trash mobs, Numbing Poison is likely to win out.

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

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

The way Mythic+ affixes are tiered in Dragonflight has changed quite a bit since their launch in Legion.

There are three weekly affixes and one seasonal affix. The first affix is available instantly at levels 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 can 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.
• 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.
• Storming can be avoided by using Cloak of Shadows.

As you venture into Mythic Keystone Levels of Level 10 and higher in Dragonflight Mythic+ Season 1, thunder will strike the area you are fighting in on occasion. This will leave behind a bunch of blue swirlies you have to avoid, while 4 of the players will receive either Mark of Wind or Mark of Lightning. These marks increase damage and healing by 30% while they last, but if you do not get rid of the debuff before it expires, you will receive a large amount of damage and get stunned. You will want to remove the debuff, while still maximizing the uptime of it, by running to a player with the opposite Mark. This will clear the debuff from both players.

If you want to find out more about the Thundering affix, make sure to check out our more comprehensive guide is below: