Assassination Rogue DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.3

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.

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

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

? Master Poisoner

✔ Elaborate Planning

✘ Blindside

• Master Poisoner increases your weapon poisons' damage by 30% and their non-damaging effects by 20%.
• 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 mostly used in situations that require a strong slowing effect. This talent boosts the slow of your Crippling Poison to 60%.

Elaborate Planning is the best choice for raw DPS.

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.

✘ 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 and deals 80% additional damage if cast while Stealth or Subterfuge are active.
• Master Assassin grants your Rogue abilities 50% increased Critical Strike chance for 3 seconds after breaking Stealth.

Nightstalker falls behind Master Assassin in damage.

Subterfuge can be combined with Vanish to quickly multi-DoT enemies with Garrote. This has the potential to out-perform Master Assassin, depending on your Azerite traits, and also allows you to apply its silencing effect to three different targets.

Master Assassin allows for higher burst than Subterfuge. This is the go-to talent choice for single target damage.

✔ 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 perform very well at higher gear-levels but ultimately falls behind Vigor in every category.

Marked for Death is too clunky to use reliably. Playing this talent is not recommended.

? 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 non-AoE sources.

Leeching Poison is great for daily content, leveling up or island expeditions but it is not recommended to play 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 offers unparalleled a strong damage reduction to all types of damage at the cost of 35 energy. However, Feint has a cooldown, and thus cannot simply be spammed for constant damage mitigation.

✘ Internal Bleeding

? Iron Wire

✔ Prey on the Weak

Tier 5 talents improve your crowd control utility. All three talents only take effect when your target can be afflicted with the associated stun or silence.

• Internal Bleeding causes your Kidney Shot to also apply a strong bleed to your 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. It generates energy via Venomous Wounds which allows for more burst.

Iron Wire is very situational, but can be helpful in reducing the tank's damage taken when fighting mobs that can be silenced. It is also the best choice for m+.

Prey on the Weak is the best choice if your raid needs to incapacitate and eliminate a priority add quickly. The duration of the damage increase is not related to the duration of your Kidney Shot

✘ Venom Rush

✔ Toxic Blade

? Exsanguinate

Tier 6 talents alter your playstyle significantly.

• Venom Rush causes Mutilate to refund 5 Energy when used against a poisoned target.
• Toxic Blade stabs the enemy, dealing heavy Nature damage and increasing the damage your poisons deal 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 is the worst option in this tier and performs much worse than both Toxic Blade and Exsanguinate.

Toxic Blade is the go to choice, due to increasing all poison damage (it affects Poison Bomb and Envenom), and generally providing consistent damage.

Exsanguinate is currently a weaker version of Toxic Blade in terms of performance.

✔ Poison Bomb

✘ Hidden Blades

? Crimson Tempest

Tier 7 talents offer some additional damage utility.

• Poison Bomb causes your Envenom and Rupture to 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 of 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. The amount of CP used increases both the initial damage as well as the duration of the bleeding effect.

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

Hidden Blades can provide decent AoE burst when it has reached max-stacks. However, even with heavy investment it performs worse than Crimson Tempest.

Crimson Tempest is good in sustained AoE situations at the cost of spending fewer Combo Points on Envenom, lowering your damage to the main target. It is not used at all when fighting a single enemy.

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.

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.

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.

1. System Shock deals nature damage and slows enemy's movement speed by 90% for 2 seconds, when you use a 5 Combo Point 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 Hidden Blades and Nightstalker, as it greatly increases your burst capabilities.

Patch 8.2 introduced an Essence, Conflict and Strife, which gives Rogues access to Maneuverability. This essence is not a DPS gain and currently does not appear to have a use anywhere outside of possibly PvP.