Assassination Rogue DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1.5

1. Talent Choices for Assassination Rogue

Level	Choices
15	✓ Master Poisoner	✓ Elaborate Planning	✓ Blindside
30	✗ Nightstalker	✓ Subterfuge	? Master Assassin
45	✓ Vigor	✓ Deeper Stratagem	? Marked for Death
60	? Leeching Poison	✓ Cheat Death	? Elusiveness
75	✗ Internal Bleeding	? Iron Wire	✓ Prey on the Weak
90	? Venom Rush	✓ Toxic Blade	? Exsanguinate
100	✓ Poison Bomb	? Hidden Blades	? Crimson Tempest

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Tranquil Mind and Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

2. Talent Cheat Sheets for Assassination Rogue

2.1. Poison Build

The build is the standard choice for most encounters, focusing on dealing high and sustained single target damage.

• Level 15: Elaborate Planning
• Level 30: Subterfuge
• Level 45: Vigor
• Level 60: Cheat Death
• Level 75: Prey on the Weak
• Level 90: Toxic Blade
• Level 100: Poison Bomb

3. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Assassination Rogue

✔ Master Poisoner

✔ Elaborate Planning

✔ Blindside

• Master Poisoner increases your poisons' damage by 30% and their non-damaging effects by 20% (does not affect Poison Bomb or Envenom).
• Elaborate Planning grants 10% damage for 4 seconds after using a finishing move.
• Blindside is an active ability that can only be used against targets that have 30% or less health. It costs 30 Energy and deals Physical damage. Using Mutilate has a 25% chance to make your next Blindside free of cost and usable regardless of target health.

Master Poisoner is the simplest choice, and able to compete for top spot in some builds.

Elaborate Planning can be useful on AoE, as you get much higher uptime on it due to the increased frequency of finishers.

Blindside is a fun talent, but not very good for performance. This talent competes with Mutilate and does not synergize with Azerite traits that would be used.

4. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Assassination Rogue

✘ Nightstalker

✔ Subterfuge

? Master Assassin

Tier 2 talents improve your Stealth functionality.

• Nightstalker increases movement speed by 20% and damage by 50% while Stealth is active.
• Subterfuge allows abilities requiring Stealth to be used for an additional 3 seconds after Stealth breaks. Garrote also has no cooldown when used from Stealth and deals 100% additional damage while Subterfuge or Stealth is active.
• Master Assassin grants you 50% increased Critical Strike chance for 3 seconds after breaking stealth.

Nightstalker falls behind Subterfuge in damage.

Subterfuge is the best option for virtually all situations. Can be combined with Vanish to quickly multi-DoT enemies with Garrote.

Master Assassin is great for AoE damage potential, and results in higher burst potential than Subterfuge.

5. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Assassination Rogue

✔ Vigor

✔ Deeper Stratagem

? Marked for Death

• Vigor increases your maximum Energy by 50 and your Energy regeneration by 10%.
• Deeper Stratagem increases your maximum Combo Points to 6, allows finishing moves to consume 6 Combo Points, and increases the damage of finishing moves by 5%.
• Marked for Death marks a target and instantly generates 5 Combo Points. The cooldown is reset if the marked target dies.

Vigor is the best choice when using a default build and offers great ease and flexibility of play.

Deeper Stratagem can be very useful in sustained many targets AoE, as it reduces the waste of Combo Points, and makes each cast more efficient.

Marked for Death is useful for fights with a large number of short-lived adds, as it allows you to quickly get resets. It is also fairly useful if you need a bit more of very quick burst.

6. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Assassination Rogue

? Leeching Poison

✔ Cheat Death

? Elusiveness

Tier 4 talents improve your personal survivability.

• Leeching Poison improves your Deadly Poison and Wound Poison, causing them to also grant 10% leech to your damage.
• Cheat Death causes fatal damage to instead reduce you to 7% of your maximum health and grant 85% reduced damage taken for 3 seconds. Cheat Death cannot save you from damage greater than double your maximum health. It has a 6-minute cooldown.
• Elusiveness causes Feint to also grant 30% reduced damage taken from all sources.

Leeching Poison is great for daily content or leveling up, though it is not used at all in dungeons or raids (you can use Leeching Poison and Crippling Poison at the same time now).

Cheat Death is the default choice for most encounters. The extra safety net will often be invaluable and can even be used to soak certain mechanics.

Elusiveness is situational, however it can offer unparalleled damage reduction on the right encounters. However, Feint has a cooldown, and thus cannot simply be spammed for constant damage reduction.

7. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Assassination Rogue

✘ Internal Bleeding

? Iron Wire

✔ Prey on the Weak

Tier 5 talents improve your crowd control utility.

• Internal Bleeding causes your Kidney Shot to also apply a bleed to target.
• Iron Wire increases the duration of Garrote's silence effect, and causes enemies silenced by it to deal 15% reduced damage for 8 seconds.
• Prey on the Weak causes enemies disabled by Cheap Shot, Dismantle, or Kidney Shot to take 10% increased damage from all sources for 6 seconds.

Internal Bleeding is fairly weak, as it gets outperformed by Prey on the Weak when it comes to damage in group content.

Iron Wire is very situational, but can be helpful in reducing the tank's damage taken when fighting mobs that can be silenced.

Prey on the Weak is the best choice if your raid needs to incapacitate and eliminate a priority add quickly.

8. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Assassination Rogue

? Venom Rush

✔ Toxic Blade

? Exsanguinate

Tier 6 talents alter your playstyle significantly.

• Venom Rush causes Mutilate to refunds 5 Energy when used against a poisoned target.
• Toxic Blade stabs the enemy, dealing heavy Nature damage and increasing the damage your poisons do against the target by 30% for 9 seconds. Generates 1 Combo Point.
• Exsanguinate causes your bleed effects to bleed out 100% faster when activated.

Venom Rush greatly loses its effectiveness if you are fighting more than one enemy. Furthermore, it has a negative synergy with Blindside, as you do not use Mutilate when Blindside is available.

Toxic Blade is the go to choice, due to increasing all poison damage (it affects Poison Bomb and Envenom), and generally providing consistent damage, letting you get at least two Envenoms into each window.

Exsanguinate results in slightly higher burst than Toxic Blade, and helps with Energy regeneration. It is useful if there are priority adds that need to die quickly.

9. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Assassination Rogue

✔ Poison Bomb

? Hidden Blades

? Crimson Tempest

Tier 7 talents offer some additional damage utility.

• Poison Bomb causes your Envenom and Rupture have a 4% chance per Combo Point spent to smash a vial of poison at the target's location, creating a pool of acidic death that deals Nature damage over 2 seconds to all enemies within it.
• Hidden Blades increases the damage for your next Fan of Knives by 20%, every 2 seconds, stacking up to 20 times.
• Crimson Tempest is a finishing move that slashes at all enemies within 10 yards, dealing instant damage and causing victims to bleed for additional damage; bleed duration scales with the number of Combo Points used.

Poison Bomb is the best choice in on single target, and easiest on AoE, as long as enemies are stacked together.

Hidden Blades has good synergy with Nightstalker when it comes to reliable AoE burst. Due to taking 40 seconds to get maximum stacks, it does not perform as well in long-term sustained AoE.

Crimson Tempest is good in spread out sustained AoE (given that Poison Bomb will not hit all the targets), but it does not proc Venomous Wounds.

10. PvP Talents (War Mode)

In Battle for Azeroth, there will be the option to go into "War Mode". Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open world PvP, and the possibility to be "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

10.1. Assassination Rogue War Mode Talents

In this section we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Assassination Rogue-specific PvE talents.

10.1.1. General PvP Talents

1. Adaptation is likely your most passive choice since it will automatically remove loss of control effects over 5 seconds. It is recommended for leveling to take this PvP talent.
2. Gladiator's Medallion is an on-use ability that removes all movement impairing effects and all loss of control effects.
3. Relentless is also a passive ability but it does not automatically remove crowd control abilities, but instead reduces the duration.

10.1.2. Assassination Rogue PvP Talents

1. System Shock deals nature damage and slows enemy's movement speed by 90% for 2 seconds, when you use Envenom on targets afflicted with your Garrote, Rupture, and Lethal Poison . It is fairly good as it is a passive damage gain, and can be useful if you need to run away, without having other crowd-control options available.
2. Creeping Venom adds a 4-second Nature damage DoT to Envenom casts, the duration of which is refreshed when the target moves. It is another good talent, as it also passively boosts damage, and can be easily refreshed by simply side stepping.
3. Flying Daggers causes Fan of Knives to have 50% greater radius and damage, when it hits 3 or more enemies. This can be very effective when combined with Fan of Knives and Nightstalker, as it greatly increases your burst capabilities.

11. Changelog