Assassination Rogue PvP Talents and Builds (The War Within Pre-Patch)
Choosing the right PvP and PvE talents is a prerequisite to proper performance in PvP. This guide goes through the various talent choices available to you as an Assassination Rogue and gives you the best combinations you can take.
This page is part of our Assassination Rogue PvP Guide.
Regular Talents for Assassination Rogues
There are two ways you can play your Assassination Rogue. You may choose to play a
build focused maximum cleave damage, just like in Dragonflight Season 4, or to play a
build with more single-target damage since the cleave is likely to be a bit weaker
than in the past due to the loss of Shadow Dance and
Acrobatic Strikes
extra range.
As a reminder, Heroic Talents are not included because they are not available on the Prepatch. Rest assured, what to choose and how it impacts the gameplay will be added to the guide as soon as the expansion launches!
AoE Cleave Build
Build Highlights
With this build, the goal is to deal as much damage as possible to every enemy. You will want to have all of your bleeds on every single enemy in the arena as much as possible so that you can win the game through pure damage. With a little bit of CC at the right time when one or several enemies are low on health due to your cleave damage, you will be able to secure victory.
The talents Thrown Precision and
Deadly Precision combined with
Seal Fate
make
Fan of Knives your preferred Combo Point builder if you can hit several targets, and allow
you to deal a lot of AoE damage while building Combo Points.
The talents Tiny Toxic Blade and
Arterial Precision greatly contribute to your cleave
pressure, but also to your burst damage. With this build most of your damage will be Bleeds, so you will
increase your damage output by 30% when using
Shiv and talented into Arterial Precision. If
you manage to hit several targets with your Shiv while they are bled up you will immediately notice the
increase in damage on all your targets.
The talent Indiscriminate Carnage allows your Rupture and Garrote to hit 3 enemies for 6s
after your opener or after your
Vanish.
Serrated Bone Spikes will apply an additional
bleed on your targets when you apply Rupture to a target, and generate Combo Points. With all of these
talents you will easily bleed multiple targets, and cleave with your Combo Point builders as well. If
all your enemies are taking high sustained damage it will be difficult for the enemy healer to keep up.
The talents Deeper Stratagem and
Sanguine Stratagem combined together greatly
empower your finishing moves. That makes
Rupture and
Crimson Tempest much stronger
than in the past.
Single Target Build
Build Highlights
With this build, the goal is to kill one target with a little bit of cleave damage on their team.
You want to bleed at least two enemies for your energy regeneration, and beyond that your efforts
will go towards hitting your designated kill target with as many Envenom as possible.
The talent Dragon-Tempered Blades is important for your single target pressure. It lets
you use both
Deadly Poison and
Wound Poison. Combined with
Slice and Dice
and the new version of
Acrobatic Strikes you will be able to have a high attack speed,
which means many poison procs.
The talents Deeper Stratagem and
Sanguine Stratagem combined together greatly
empower your finishing moves. With
Improved Shiv,
Rapid Injection and
Poison Bomb on top, if you manage to hit your target with several Envenoms during a
Shiv window you will deal serious damage
The bottom left of the tree is a better pick than the right one because Arterial Precision
will make your kill attempts more powerful. You will always use Shiv when you try to kill your target,
and with this talent it will increase all your damage, not only Envenom.
Last but not least, Kingsbane. This is a very powerful single-target ability, especially
paired with
Dragon-Tempered Blades. The initial hit may not be too powerful, but if you manage
to hit your target during the entire effect you will increase the damage of the DoT by a lot, and deal
serious damage to your target. To optimize, you want to use Kingsbane a bit before your kill attempt so
that the last seconds of the DoT happen during your kill attempt, as this is when the spell will deal
the most damage.
PvP Talents for Assassination Rogues
You can choose three of the following PvP talents; each has its uses, but some are better for certain strategies than others. The top three choices are the most useful but can be replaced with other PvP talents, depending on your team's goal.
Mandatory PvP Talents
Smoke Bomb creates a smoke cloud around you. Enemy players who are
outside the cloud will not be able to target anyone inside it. This talent
is mandatory for multiple reasons. Firstly, it can help you land a kill by
stunning a target when they have no trinket. By using Smoke Bomb right after
a stun, you will prevent the healer from saving their teammate. Secondly, you
can use it defensively to save yourself or an ally from a lethal cast
about to go off, such as
Greater Pyroblast. And lastly, you can use it
to prevent incoming crowd control on you or your team if such crowd control
would result in you losing a game, such as a
Polymorph or
Repentance on your healer when they have no trinket, and you are low on
health. As you can see, this talent is helpful in many different situations,
which is why it is so powerful. In every 3v3 scenario, this talent is
a must-have, but in a few 2v2 match-ups, you will not pick it as you will mostly
attack the enemy healer.
Situational PvP Talents
Dismantle is a strong PvP talent that allows you to disarm an enemy
for 6 seconds every 45 seconds. Disarming an enemy can delay their next kill
attempt or stop it entirely if they have pulled the trigger. It is a great
pick against Warrior, Rogue, and
Marksmanship Hunter. It is also
helpful against other Hunter specs. However, they can still use many
threatening
abilities while disarmed, and the same goes for Retribution Paladin
and Death Knight.
One thing to note is that you can use Dismantle offensively against Death Knight
and Warrior, as being disarmed prevents the use of
Death Strike and
Die by the Sword.
Veil of Midnight has become a decent defensive option in some specific
scenarios since it was recently nerfed. It allows Cloak of Shadows
to cleanse physical debuffs on top of magic ones. It is very useful against
Feral Druid, other Assassination Rogues, or even Arms Warrior.
Control is King is a nice talent that gives you a lot of Energy
back when you use
Kidney Shot. It can be a nice pick if you don't
need other talents, as it allows you to be certain you will always have
Energy to spend on your burst windows.
Hemotoxin causes
Shiv to reduce the target's healing
received by 30% for 9 seconds. This used to be a very powerful talent, but
after multiple nerfs, it is barely more powerful than
Wound Poison.
Therefore, you will only pick it if you do not need other utility talents, such
as
Dismantle or
Maneuverability.
Death from Above is an interesting PvP talent. The interesting
things about this talent are that it makes you immune to crowd control when you
use it and is usable from range. It will make you land at your target
location. It can be considered in 2v2 against an enemy that is hard to reach,
such as a Frost Mage, or against a setup comp that relies on stuns
on you to
kill you and will kite you in between stuns, such as Rogue/
Mage.
Unfortunately, there will often be three better options, so you will end up not
picking this
PvP talent much.
The first PvP talent will almost always be Smoke Bomb. To fill the
last two slots, you will need to look at what you are facing. If there is a DPS
that can be disarmed, such as a Warrior, Rogue, Death Knight
or a Marksmanship Hunter, you will pick
Dismantle. If there
is a DPS that will apply Physical debuffs to you that you would like to cleanse,
such as another Assassination Rogue or a Feral Druid, you will pick
Veil of Midnight. In other scenarios, you may pick any other optional
talent as long as it fits your needs.
Changelog
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Prepatch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updqted for Dragonflight Season 4.
- 18 Mar. 2024: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.5.
- 30 Apr. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7.
- 25 Jan. 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.0.5.
- 12 Dec. 2022: Updated with the Hemotoxin nerf.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 28 Jul. 2022: Reviewed for Shadowlands Season 4.
- 01 Jul. 2022: Updated Tier 7 Talents.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 21 Feb. 2022: Updated for Patch 9.2.
- 10 Nov. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.5.
- 21 Jul. 2021: Updated Tier 1 Talents.
- 14 Jul. 2021: Updated Honor Talents.
- 03 Jul. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
- 06 Apr. 2021: Rewritten by Shadenox and further updated for Patch 9.0.5.
- 10 Mar. 2021: Updated Tier 6 Regular Talents.
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch.
Other PvP Guides
This guide has been written by Shadenox, an experienced Gladiator player who has achieved over 3,000 rating on Rogue. You can find him on his YouTube channel, where he creates guides and other informational content regarding Arenas.
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