Preface
I’ve been playing WoW on and off since Vanilla. Throughout Dragonflight, I constantly cycled through new “mains” in a quest to find a class, race, and perhaps even spec to call “home” as I adventure through Azeroth. I’ve optimized the fun out of many classes and specs simply because I was foolishly looking for one character “that could do everything”.
It wasn’t until I began to adjust my thinking to focus on fantasy and fun that I’ve eventually landed on the Rogue class. Stealth, Pick Pocket, and Pick Lock just add so much flavor to the game experience, even if they’re undeveloped for the sake of making “all content accessible for all classes and specs”. Assassination currently plays the smoothest of all 3 specs, particularly since it relies on Slice and Dice the least.
Although the Hero Talents for Rogue may feel incredibly lackluster compared to other classes, I kind of like that it’s a more subtle “low fantasy” approach. That’s part of what draws me to the Rogue in the first place. Yes, Rogue could use a lot of improvements, but it’s still shaping up to be the most fun I’ve had in WoW in a long time. And I don’t even PvP.
Assassination Talents I Like The Most
- Indiscriminate Carnage - This does so much to help alleviate the ramp-up concerns for Assassination Rogues vs. multiple targets. It would be kind of nice to also have a choice node which only spread to 1 additional target but didn’t have the stealth requirement. I’d probably still pick the stealth option though, since I don’t raid much.
- Serrated Bone Spikes - I love that this became a passive ability. The combo points it generates in conjunction with Indiscriminate Carnage allow my “opener from stealth” on packs of 3 or more to look like “Ambush → Garrote → Rupture → Crimson Tempest”, where both Rupture and Crimson Tempest utilize full combo points. It’s such a satisfying opener on a pack of mobs. Unfortunately, Serrated Bone Spikes don’t seem to work with Sudden Demise, but I haven’t thoroughly tested it out yet. I would assume that “24 seconds worth of Serrated Bone Spikes is calculated for Sudden Demise”, but I don’t know.
- Sudden Demise - The effects of this can be difficult to notice when you’re fighting mobs that are noticeably stronger than you (due to the differences in bleed damage vs. enemy health), but it feels incredible when you’re overgeared (an easy feat in the final stretch of an expansion). Rupture feels like an execute mechanic, and it’s hilarious to just watch stuff evaporate despite having over 50% of their health remaining. I really like the mechanics of this ability, particularly since it helps every bleed “damage over time” ability feel worthwhile regardless of how much longer the enemy is actually going to be alive. It really helps to smooth out the gameplay and the decisions made therein.
- Blindside - The fact that the proc also remove the energy cost of Ambush really saves this talent and solidifies it as one of my absolute favorite, particularly during single-target encounters. It also helps to provide a “burst” damage profile in a spec that is otherwise dominated by “damage over time” mechanics, helping the spec to feel really well balanced depending on the buttons you want to press and how long you think the fight might last. This talent adds a tremendous amount of depth to the “gameplay loop” of Assassination Rogues, and I really appreciate that. Vicious Venoms makes this all that much better too.
- Arterial Precision - While not completely amazing all on it’s own, it synergizes really well with Lightweight Shiv, Tiny Toxic Blade, Zoldyck Recipe, and Sudden Demise. Altogether, it turns Shiv (an otherwise uninteresting ability all on its own) into a really dynamic cleave damaging tool which blends in really well with the “opener from stealth onto multiple targets” that I mentioned earlier. It’s just really fun to synergize abilities together like this, and it’s damage is no joke either.
- Crimson Tempest - I appreciate its new lowered energy cost. The fact that this ability deals about as much damage as a buffed up Rupture and even more when hitting multiple targets is just incredible. The ability is even worth using in single target much of the time. However, I really wish that Thrown Precision, Venomous Wounds, and Flying Daggers also benefitted Crimson Tempest since the talent really doesn’t feel like it synergizes with much of anything else in the tree.
- Venomous Wounds - This talent alone makes leveling Assassin significantly more tolerable than the other two Rogue specs, by far. The energy refund is an incredible way to incentivize the use of Rupture without having to worry about “wasting combo points on a target that may die soon anyway”, and it seems as though the energy refund scales with increases to maximum energy such as those provided by Path of Blood and Vigor.
Assassination Talents I Like The Least
- Dragon Tempered Blades - I want to like this talent. It feels thematically cool to the Rogue class fantasy. It feels like it should open up a lot of utility options. It feels like it should double my poison damage output or something. But in reality, it’s just not that good and it competes with too many other way cooler talents. It boils down to, “I want Crippling Poison at the same time as Numbing/Atrophic Poison, and I want the instant damage from my Deadly Poison to proc a little more often”. That’s it, aside from maybe using Wound Poison instead of Instant Poison to get a healing debuff in scenarios where that might be useful.
In my opinion, the following changes should be made:- Move Dragon Tempered Blades into the Class tree and alter it to only allow for 1 additional non-lethal poison.
- Add more non-lethal poison options. Excellent candidates would be an effect identical to the Demon Hunter’s “Chaos Brand” and the Monk’s “Mystic Touch”.
- Make Wound Poison a non-lethal poison and remove it’s damage component.
- Have the Deadly Poison talent replace Instant Poison altogether when acquired.
- Replace Dragon Tempered Blades (in the Assassination tree) with something cooler.
- Improved Poisons - Application chance by itself is boring, especially if poison damage is under-tuned. This talent would be much more interested if it also included the effects of Dashing Scoundrel (and Fatal Concoction). On that note, Fatal Concoction is pretty lackluster by itself too.
- Intent to Kill - It feels like a version of this talent should exist on the Class tree instead. I can understand having it compete with Iron Wire though… but I might also argue that Iron Wire might also belong on the Class tree as well.
- Twist the Knife - Only 2 extra seconds just doesn’t feel cool. Since Cut to the Chase is baseline now, it’d way cooler if this talent caused Slice and Dice to also apply Envenom’s buff for Slice and Dice’s duration. That would feel much better and create a lot more “uptime opportunity” for players to really lean into their poison damage, if that’s the way they wanted to focus on building their Assassination Rogue.
- Amplifying Poison - Literally unusable without the current iteration of Dragon Tempered Blades (which allows more than 1 lethal poison to be used at a time). It’s position in the tree is counter-intuitive, there’s too many other critical talents that rely on Deadly Poison to be in use (such as Venomous Wounds), and its benefits just don’t feel exciting to engage with. This would feel better if it simply added an additional effect onto Deadly Poison, especially if the above-mentioned suggested changes to Twist the Knife were made.
- Rapid Injection - I feel like this was just a hastily made talent to replace Cut to the Chase, since Cut to the Chase was wisely redesigned as a baseline effect for all Rogues after a certain level. I also dislike that such an uninteresting talent “blocks” access to Crimson Tempest. Simply swapping this talent’s position with Seal Fate would “solve” it’s problem simply because players would no longer have to pick it up at all. In addition to swapping spots with Seal Fate, I would still want this talent to be reworked or replaced with a something more thematically interesting.
