Assassination Rogue DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.2.5

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.

Once you have acquired the new set bonuses, Assassination will be a very strong class for priority and single-target damage. You will be expected to carry a lot of the damage on bosses, especially on Tyrannical Weeks and dispatch of high priority targets by using your cooldowns on them.

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 on AoE.

With the new Assassination Rogue 4-Piece bonus, Duskwalker's Patch can be a very strong alternative that instead helps boost your priority-target and single-target damage. You can switch between either of these depending on dungeon, group composition or Affix.

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

• Potency: Well-Placed Steel and your Covenant ability Conduit. If you can run a third Potency Conduit, Lethal Poisons will be your third choice.
• 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 ultimately their impact is 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 Shiv if you have the Assassination Rogue 2-Piece equipped.
5. Use Fan of Knives to generate Combo Points.
6. Apply Rupture to your priority target.
7. Continue building Combo Points with Fan of Knives.
8. Maintain Slice and Dice by using Envenom with 4+ Combo Points.
9. Maintain Crimson Tempest with 4-5 Combo Points.
10. Maintain 3-4 Rupture by the time your initial Garrotes have run their full duration.
11. 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.

• 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 better single-target and priority target damage you will want to run Duskwalker's Patch. Duskwalkers only becomes viable once you have gained access to Assassination Rogue 4-Piece.

You will want to run Well-Placed Steel and your Covenant specific Conduit as your go-to Conduit choices for every Covenant. If you get to run a third Potency Conduit, Lethal Poisons is the best choice for it.

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.

As you venture into Mythic Keystone Levels of Level 10 and higher in Season 3, you will occasionally encounter enemy trash and bosses that are surrounded by three Relics - Urh, Vy and Wo. These all buff the enemies they are spawned with with different effects. Once you have killed your first Relic, you will spawn an Automa which will have a few abilities which are easily dealt with. Killing the Automa will grant the entire group a buff. The type of buff you will get depends on the Automa you killed, which in turn corresponds to the first Relic you killed.

Groups will have different priorities depending on the pull, Boss and situation you find yourself in during the Dungeon. None of these buffs significantly alter our gameplay choices, and it will be a group decision which ones to priotize and kill.

We will update this section with more specific advice as the new Mythic+ Season starts. Based on PTR experiences, none of the Automa posed any significant threat.

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.