1. [PvE Guide] Assassination Rogue - The sneaky stabber


    Ola, I am Fluffybully/FluffyInsect, and I do happen to play around with assassination rogue from time to time.

    The purpose of this topic is trying to teach new rogue players or oldies on how to rogue the best way. And by that I mean telling you everything that I do and know.
    If you wish to see my armory, you may look here: Fluffyinsect <-- Armory link.
    Also if you are interested in my current talent build, glyphs and gear, that is where you should look or find me somewhere in WoW and inspect me.
    Please keep the discussion clean from trolling and flames. Constructive criticism is appreciated but only if it's legit.

    From time to time I am also streaming:
    Follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/fluffybully

    And please. Make sure to read everything before you ask me a question that might be answered already in this guide. It gets annoying to repeat the same stuff 100x over and over again, cause people're too lazy to read. Also beware that Spreadsheets and sims do not accurately calculate the output. You should take them with a grain of salt and more of a "guideline" just like this guide is.

    P.S most of the things're the same as in the combat guide. But differences nonetheless that should be respected when playing an assassination rogue
    P.p.s the reason that I made my own assassination guide is that this one'll be up to date

    Content

    1. Rogue
      1. The 10 Commandments of Rogue DPS
      2. Energy Management and Pooling
      3. Know your enemy to avoid death
      4. Weapon Selection and Specialization
    2. Stats
      1. Basic mandatory stats to play the assassination spec:
      2. End game
    3. Talents, Glyphs, Poisons and rotation
    4. Enchants, Gems, Consumables, Professions and Races
    5. Useful macros
    6. BiS list and spreadsheets
    7. Rogue's arsenal of buffs, debuffs and utility
    8. Useful addons for rogues
    9. What's still broken


    1. Rogue
    Spoiler: Show


    So the question is why one should play an assassination rogue?
    - It's super easy to learn and to play
    - Easy to get gear
    - One of the best "sustain" DPS classes, tons of CC and tons of survival abilities
    - Proper talent choices, gear selection, and ability usage are all crucial to maximizing damage output in a raid situation


    a. The 10 Commandments of Rogue DPS

    Success as a raiding rogue results from adherence to the 10 commandments of rogue DPS. If you do not follow these guidelines, the DPS optimizations in the remainder of this article will be of little worth to you.

    1# Don't die.
    2# Don't do anything that risks wiping the raid.
    3# Maximize your time on target or multiple targets
    4# Don't let your energy cap out.
    5# Don't let SnD drop.
    6# Maximize the up-time of Envenom buff.
    7# Use the spreadsheets under BiS section to figure out your best gear combination, gems and rotation
    8# Use your cooldowns.
    9# Do proper boss tactics as ordered by your leaders unless you know better
    10# Failing any of the previous rule will result you becoming a laughing stock


    b. Energy Management and Pooling

    As a rogue, energy is your lifeblood. Proper energy management means the difference between 85+% Envenom up-time and ~50% up-time. There are several basic tactics to keep in mind, and then there are some more advanced techniques which you can work in on more DPS-sensitive fights.

    You begin any fight with 100 energy and regenerate energy at a rate of 20 every 2 seconds.Overkill provides an extra 30% energy regeneration for 20 seconds per use, or 26 energy every 2 seconds. It is vital to note that your energy will always cap at your original base of 100. If you gain more energy at any time than it takes to reach this cap, the remaining energy will go to waste, effectively costing you DPS. Thus, it is very important that you never let your energy surpass the cap. The safest way to avoid this situation is to simply spend all of your energy as you receive it. If you never have more energy than the amount required to Mutilate, then you are theoretically immune to capping your energy.

    However, it is not always necessary or optimal to spend your energy immediately as you receive it. As long as your energy doesn't tick over 100, it is not wasted and can be used at your convenience. The technique of intentionally allowing energy to accumulate without spending it is called "energy pooling" (also known as "energy queuing") and has many applications. For assassination rogues, energy pooling is most commonly used when you reach enough CP to refresh your Envenom, but still have a bit of left on your previous Envenom buff. Pooling at this time effectively gives you more energy to spend on the next iteration of your cycle. This is useful particularly for assassination rogues because most cycles count on Focused Attacks to provide a certain amount of extra energy per cycle. In the event that you have bad luck on Focused Attacks procs during your cycle, the energy you pooled before your Envenom helps you complete the cycle without letting Envenom drop.

    For that same reason we get Expertise Capped. A dodged Ability will burn only 20% of the energy, but in that meantime the waste GCD might get you Energy capped.

    c. Know your enemy to avoid death

    One of the advantages rogues have over other melee DPS classes is a high degree of survivability. Putting Sprint, Evasion, Cloak of Shadows and Feint to rigorous use separates good rogues from those who spend most of the fight eating cobblestone. Your use of each ability will depend heavily on the fight in question, and you should make every effort to figure out the optimal way to use these cooldowns to maximize your survival.

    Cloak of Shadows, for example, should be used as much as possible to negate incoming magic damage and harmful debuffs. When learning a new fight, one of the first things you should do is to learn which of the boss's spells/debuffs may be and when they should be Cloaked.

    Evasion is much more situational; however, it can and should be used where possible, since most raid targets are likely to kill you if they land a melee swing.

    Sprint may be activated any time you need to cross a significant distance to get back into melee range, thus reducing your time off the target and increasing your overall DPS. It may also be used to escape AoE effects, or to cross any distance quickly to accomplish a non-DPS objective.

    And lastly Feint may help reduce the pressure from your healers when the raid is already taking a lot of AoE damage. It can also be used to maximize your DPS on fights where others need to run away(Sindragosa).

    d. Weapon Selection and Specialization


    Main hand weapon:
    Should be your slowest and highest DPS dagger that you have. The main reason for that is Instant Poison. The slower your weapon is the more chance it has to proc the Poison itself(Only base weapon speed counts not hasted via talents, haste gems etc..)
    Table click below
    Spoiler: Show




    Off hand weapon:
    This should be your fastest hitting dagger. Anything between 1.2-1.5 speeds. The main reason here is once again poison to be more precise Deadly Poison. Once your Deadly Poison reaches 5 stacks on a target then you every next Deadly Poison refresh'll have a 30% chance(up to 50 with talents) to also apply your Main hand poison once again. So what you get is both MH and OH weapons to apply Instant Poison.


    2. Stats
    Spoiler: Show


    Quick References
    Stat Conversions
    Stat Rating per 1%
    Agility 83.116(for 1% crit)
    Crit chance 45.864
    Hit rating 32.786
    Experise 32.790
    Haste rating 32.850
    Armor Penetration 13.986
    Hit Table
    Base boss Hit table Percent Chance
    Crit Conversion Physical -4.8%
    Crit Conversion Magical -3%
    Dodge 6.5%
    Parry 14%
    Special Miss 8%
    Poison Miss 17%
    Dual Wield Miss 27%
    Glancing hits 24%

    Strength
    One point of strength gives you 1 point of attack power and nothing else. Therefore we rogues consider this stat more or less worthless

    Attack Power
    Attack Power is the basis of the size of all your attacks. The more AP you have, the harder every strike hits. Attack power increases the DPS of your main hand and off hand damage ranges, the direct damage of normalized weapon-based special attacks, and the direct damage of straight AP-modified attacks.Slower weapons scale better with AP.

    Agility
    Agility gives us 1 AP per 1 point of Agility. It also increases our chance to critically hit an opponent, just like critical strike rating does but with a different conversion. For every 83.116 points of agility, our critical strike chance is increased by 1%.
    Agility also increases your chance to dodge attacks which can help somewhat in survival situations.

    Critical strike
    Critical strike rating increases your chance to critically hit an opponent. You need 45.864 points of critical strike rating for a 1% increase in critical strike chance. Your critical strikes have a basic damage bonus of 100%. However this is further increased by the meta gem and talents. From 50% to up to 193%. Rogues's damage scales very well with critical strike.

    Hit Rating
    Your hit rating decreases your chance to miss a target with your attacks and abilities. For every 32.786 points of hit rating, your chance to miss with your attacks is reduced by 1%. Hit rating reduces the miss chance of white, yellow and green hit tables simultaneously. After the miss chance of the yellow table reaches 0%, hit rating continues to remove miss chance of the white table dat being 27% for us dual wielders.
    For white attacks, hit rating increases the Crit Cap. This is explained in the Crit cap section beneath.
    Hit rating also helps with energy due to our talents. And lastly since our damage comes mostly from melee hits it's the most important stat for a rogue.

    Yellow no miss Hit: 99 with Precision
    Poison no miss Hit: 315 with Precision 237 with a Shadow Priest or Boomkin + Precision. But there won't be always one in party/raid.
    White no miss Hit: 722 with Precision

    Haste
    Haste rating increases the rate of your auto melee attacks. For every 32.850 points of haste rating, your attack rate is increased by 1%. Contrary to a common misconception, this does not decrease your swing timer by the hasted percentage but rather increases the frequency of your strikes. Consequently, with 20% haste, you cannot simply take 20% off your swing speed to calculate its effects. Rather, you are performing 20% more swings in the same amount of time, effectively granting you a swing speed reduction of 16.67%.
    Haste rating does not decrease your GCD since we're a melee class.
    Haste is very important for us since once again most of our damage comes from auto hits. It also helps us with energy regeneration via talents.

    How weapon attack speed is calculated?
    Attack speed = "current attack speed" / (("Percent increase or decrease" / 100) + 1 )

    Example
    Weapon speed = 2.6
    Slice and Dice = 40%
    Blade Flurry = 20%
    Icy Talons = 20%
    Attack speed = 2.6 / ( (40 / 100) + 1 ) = 1.85
    Attack speed = 1.85 / ( (20 / 100) + 1 ) = 1.54
    Attack speed = 1.54 / ( (3 / 100) + 1 ) = 1.28

    Expertise Rating
    Expertise rating reduces the chance an opponent will dodge or parry your attacks. For every 32.79 points of expertise rating, your opponent’s chance to dodge or parry your attacks is reduced by 1%. Please note that expertise rating actually increases your expertise points. 32.79 points of expertise rating grant you 4 points of expertise which in turn grants you a 1% dodge/parry reduction. As you should not stand in front of a mob, the parry reduction is irrelevant.
    For white attacks, expertise rating increases the Crit Cap as long as there's still a chance for the NPC to dodge.

    Armor Penetration Rating
    Armor Penetration Rating effectively increases the damage dealt by most of your attacks by reducing the damage reduction incurred from a target’s armor. Every 13.986 points of armor penetration rating grants you 1% armor penetration. This percentage reduction is not applied to your target's total armor, but rather a part of it. Due to game balancing mechanics, a certain amount of a target's armor cannot be affected by the reduction. The maximum affected armor that can be removed is referred to as the "ArP effectiveness cap".

    Armor Values and Damage Scaling
    Debuffs Boss Armor Damage done 0% ArP Boss Armor with 100% ArP Damage with 100% ArP
    None 10643 58.87% 2017.83 88.30%
    5SA/Expose Armor 8414.4 64.42% 498.77 96.83%
    5SA/Expose Armor,FF 8088.68 65.32% 314.95 97.97%
    5SA/Expose Armor,FF,ST 6470.94 70.18% 0 100%
    SA = Sunder Armor
    FF = Faerie Fire
    ST = Shattering Throw

    From what buffs and debuffs does a rogue benefit from? Well tl;dr pretty much everything that is not spell power.
    Buff/Debuff Talent/Ability
    Major Armor Debuff Sunder Armor, Expose Armor
    Minor Armor Debuff Farie Fire, Farie Fire(Feral), Curse of Weakness
    Physical Vulnerability Debuff Savage Combat, Blood Frenzy
    Melee Haste Buff Improved Icy Talons, Windfury Totem
    Melee Critical Strike Chance Rampage, Leader of the Pack
    Attack Power Buff Blessing of Might, Battle Shout
    Attack Power Percentage Buff Unleashed Rage, Abomination's Might, Trueshot Aura
    Bleed Damage Debuff Mangle(cat,bear), Trauma
    Spell Critical Strike Chance Buff Moonkin Aura, Elemental Oath
    Spell Critical Strike Chance Debuff Improved Scorch, Winter's Chill, Improved Shadow Bolt
    Spell Damage Debuff Ebon Plaguebringer, Earth and Moon, Curse of Elements
    Spell Hit Debuff Improved Faerie Fire, Misery
    Haste Buff (All types) Improved Moonkin Form, Swift Retribution
    Damage Buff (All types) Arcane Empowerment, Ferocious Inspiration, Sanctified Retribution
    Critical Strike Chance Debuff (All types) Heart of the Crusader, Totem of Wrath, Master Poisoner
    Percentage Stat Buff Greater Blessing of Kings
    Additive Stat Buff Mark of the Wild
    Strength + Agility Buff Strenght of Earth Totem, Horn of Winter

    a. Basic mandatory stats to play the assassination spec:

    Hit rating --> Expertise --> Attack Power --> Haste --> Critical Chance --> Armor Penetration

    Hit rating: at least 315 w/o talents!!
    Expertise: 26/26 w/o a question to get rid of the dodged hits.
    Attack Power: As much as you can. Get it to 4000 as soon as possible.
    Haste: As much as you can via gear.
    Crit: As much as you can via gear.
    Armor Penetration: The ARP that you get from the gear it self is more than enough. And no ARP is far from the worst stat for an assa rogue. Your melee auto-hits still do the most damage after all.

    When you start gearing up your assassination rogue, you'll want to gem either Hit rating, expertise rating or Attack power.

    b. End game

    Haste --> Hit rating --> Attack Power --> Crit chance --> Armor pen

    Haste: As much as you can get via gear and gems.
    Hit rating: push it above 400 w/o talents
    Attack Power: As much as you can to get the past 4000 mark.
    Crit: As much as you can via gear.
    Armor Penetration: The ARP that you get from the gear it self is more than enough.

    For end-game stats you need to pick a % between 20 and 30% for haste. You kinda need to chose between haste and hit rating.

    Beware of the crit cap, assa rogue'll have a lot of crit as well.

    Critical chance and the CRIT CAP

    Spoiler: Show

    What is crit cap?"

    "When we use the term critical strike cap (hereon referred to as "crit cap") we are actually referring to one of several crit caps the Rogue has. The one that interests us the most is the white crit cap, which is the point when white hits no longer benefit from additional crit. This means that the value of crit is severely reduced relative to other stats."
    TL;DR: Crit cap is when your critical strike rating starts to become worthless for auto attacks

    Knowing how to deal with the crit cap is one of the many things that separates a newbish rogue versus the good one. Be it with gear, gems or even consumables.

    So how do I know my crit cap?
    Well it's just a simple formula: 100% - 24%(Glancing hits) - X(Dodge chance) - X(Miss chance) +4.8% CRIT SUPPRESSION
    You may as-well use this macro ingame. It'll print out your crit cap:(It assumes you got 2/2 Weapon expertise and 5/5 Precision)
    [b][color=white]/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage ("White Crit Cap: "..(0.808-(math.max(136-GetCombatRating(24),0))*0.000305-(722-GetCombatRating(6))*0.000305)*100)

    CRIT SUPPRESION: Every boss has a 4.8% crit suppression meaning that the actual HARD CRIT CAP is not 100% but actually 104.8%. If you're a rogue did you ever wonder where did the 3% paladin crit debuff get lost? Exactly it gets lost here.

    As we can see having low hit rating and expertise does effect our DPS in a big way.

    That's why I always said: Hit rating is useful, always was and always will be on a rogue. It's a stat above all others as it affects your effective critical chance, talent procs and poison procs.


    3. Talents, Glyphs, Poisons and rotation
    Spoiler: Show


    Glyphs
    Mandatory Glyph Explanation Situational Glyphs Explanation
    Mutilate This is one of your main Glyphs. 5 less energy on Mutilate. From 60 to 55. In fact it's a lot.
    Hunger for Blood +3% DPS. It's a no brainer glyph
    Glyph of Tricks of the Trade You should go this glyph, if the raids hunters won't slack and you have another rogue to trade Tricks.
    If you trade tricks non-glyphed tricks on CD'll give you approximately 3% damage boost. Gylphed TotT on the other hand'll give you 5% damage boost it's like a free Hunger for Blood. If the tanks are having trouble maintaining aggro, this Glyph'll help them a lot.
    Fan of Knives Plus 20% Damage to Fan of Knives. Extremely good on AoE fights. Such as Physical realm 25H Halion
    Rupture Plus 2 extra ticks of Rupture. Extra damage is extra damage. A glyph for 4x Tier 10 Set

    Talents

    Those're the best talents, that you can go for. There's no point of having Lightning Reflexes. We go for 5/5 Relentless Strikes to maximize energy gain for Mutilate in order to keep up Envenom buff as much as we can.

    Low gear


    I hef gear but i still energy and CP starve




    Poisons
    - MH Instant Poison IX, Wound Poison VII Use it at boss fights such as Anub'Arak, Champion Factions
    - OH Deadly Poison IX
    Situation based;
    - OH Anesthetic Poison IIFor Lich King, Saviana Ragefire --- Use that only, if you got no hunters or those hunters're complete imbeciles.

    Why not double Instant?
    Because the faster you hit the less chance you get to proc instant poison and also once Deadly Poison stacks get to 5, each next OH hit that reapplies it will also proc the other weapon's hand poison. Therefore double Instant poison would require you to equip a slow OH weapon but we don't want that.
    To get the idea: Does the NPC have 5 stacks of Deadly Poison on it? If yes your every next OH auto hit that DOES NOT miss has a 50%(30%flat +20% talents) chance to proc Instant Poison. You get both your MH and OH hand to proc Instant Poison.

    Rotations:

    There are 2 rotations or cycles: Normal rotation, Bonus finisher rotation

    Normal rotation relies on keeping Slice and Dice, Hunger for Blood without any downtime and Envenom buff up for as long as possible.
    Bonus finisher rotation is quite similar to normal rotation. The main difference is the extra Rupture or Eviscerate finisher.

    Normal rotation

    You start off by going into Stealth. Proceed Tricks of the Trade on the tank/random dps guy followed by Potion of Speed then Mutilate followed by Slice and Dice and Hunger for Blood. After that you spam Mutilate till you get 3+ CP for Envenom. You use Cold Blood on the 1st 4+ CP Envenom.Vanish is used once Overkill wears off. Maintain Hunger for Blood all the time.


    If there's no class that puts a bleed debuff, then you'll need to do it yourself. Instead of opening with Mutilate you'll open with Garrote. You'll also need to use Rupture every now and then in order to refresh Hunger for Blood.


    Refresh Envenom when it has ~0.2-0.5 sec before it goes off.

    The reason for going 3+ CP Envenom is to maintain Envenom buff for as long as possible. There's no reason to go for another Mutilate for the 5 CP Envenom just to get bigger Envenom numbers. Auto hits be your bread while poisons being the butter. No Envenom buff equals to a big loss of DPS.

    Bonus finisher rotation. Works only for 4x tier 10 gear

    You start off by going into Stealth. Proceed Tricks of the Trade on the tank/random dps guy followed by Potion of Speed then Mutilate followed by Slice and Dice and Hunger for Blood. After that you spam Mutilate till you get 3+ CP for Envenom. You use Cold Blood on the 1st 4+ CP Envenom.Vanish is used once Overkill wears off. Maintain Hunger for Blood all the time.

    So the rotation is same as the normal one except this part. You'll want to burn your Mayhem proc on Rupture and if you already have Rupture up then you go for Eviscerate. Note if you get 2x in a row the Mayhem proc, you use the 2nd one for Envenom.



    4. Enchants, Gems, Consumables, Professions and Races
    Spoiler: Show



    Regarding alternatives. Pick w/e you need. If you lack hit go get hit enchants and so on.

    Gems

    - Red socket: Bright Cardinal Ruby, Birght Dragon's Eye, Precise Cardinal Ruby, Precise Dragon's Eye
    - Yellow socket: Rigid King's Amber, Rigid Dragon's Eye, Accurate Amertine, Quick Dragon's Eye, Quick King's Amber, Pristine Ametrine, Stark Ametrine
    - Blue socket: Nightmare Tear
    - Meta socket: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond
    Don't go for socket bonuses with silly random blue gems. But always keep either a Nightmare Tear or 1 blue + 1 yellow gem for the meta-gem bonus.
    You gem like this:
    I got enough Hit rating and Attack power ---> Thrown in Haste gems
    I need AP --> Throw in AP gems
    I need hit rating --> Throw in Hit gems
    I need expertise --> Throw in expertise gems

    Consumables

    - Scroll of Agility VIII
    - Potion of Speed, Haste Potion
    - Fish Feast, Great Feast, Rhinolicious Wormsteak, Snapper Extreme, Imperial Manta Steak
    - Flask of Endless Rage, Elixir of Lightning Speed, Elixir of Expertise, Elixir of Mighty Fortitude
    - Dragonbreath Chili
    - Global Thermal Sapper Charge, Saronite Bomb
    - Flame cap

    You should always bring your own food. Hit rating food would be the best followed by haste and AP.
    If you need hit rating bring hit rating food, for crit agi food, for expertise expertise food and so on. Same goes for flasks/elixirs

    Professions


    Primary professions:

    Jewelcrafting + Engineering
    Engineering + Tailoring
    Tailoring + Jewelcrafting

    Engineering and Jewelcrafting are the best professions for a PvE rogue.

    Secondary professions:

    Cooking
    Fishing
    First Aid

    Races

    From the best to worst. But in the end it doesn't really matter so just play w/e you like.


    Best on the horde side: Orc --> Troll --> Everything else
    Alliance side: Nelf --> Everything else
    Orc and troll do up to 100 DPS(No icc buff) more than other classes.
    BASE STATS
    Note: those're just lvl 1 stats. Stat gains're the same for each race. It's just that some races got higher starting base stats than others
    Races Night Elf Gnome Human Dwarf
    Agility 28 26 23 19
    Strength 18 16 21 23
    Races Blood Elf Troll Undead Orc
    Agility 25 25 21 20
    Strength 18 22 20 24
    Spoiler: Show

    Human
    Every Man For Himself This racial removes all movement impairing and control-losing effects on your character, and is on a 2 minute cooldown. A prime example of this is on Northrend Beasts in Trial of the Crusader when you are targetted with Frost Breath on Icehowl. Use this ability after you become stunned, and you will be freed from it. You can also use it to remove slowdowns like Frostbolt Volley. Some encounters have the control loss scripted where you cannot get out of it, like Putricide's Tear Gas.

    Sword SpecializationMace Specialization: Increases your expertise points by 3 when wearing a sword or mace in that particular hand. Simply put, this racial reduces the amount of expertise rating required to reach the cap which has the benefit of allowing a Human to acquire additional stats in place of expertise or to allow to have different best item combinations when using maces or swords. These 3 points contribute to 25 of the 214 required rating for the expertise cap, allowing you to only wear 189 rating and be capped on that hand. Note, that the bonus only effects the hand that the weapon is in. For example if your sword or mace is in the offhand, you will not get that expertise bonus for your main hand and special attacks if you are wearing an axe there. Sometimes you will be in a situation where your best weapon is not a mace or sword and the racial bonus in the main hand will not makeup the difference. Most of the time it's still best to use your best weapon in the main hand if it is an axe, since the DPS increase will overcome the 25 potential rating loss.

    Night Elf
    Shadowmeld: This is a useful tool to have in an aggro-sensitive environment. It temporarily removes you from all aggro-tables of all targets. Shadowmeld lasts indefinitely and is canceled upon any XYZ axis displacement, personal action, or if you take damage or become affected by a debuff. Once Shadowmeld is canceled, your will reappear on the aggro-tables where you once were with the same threat before you Shadowmelded. This ability does not reduce or remove your threat! Also, mobs will only ignore you if you are high enough level compared to the mob, and if you are far enough away from the mob. Shadowmeld is very useful if you are being targetted by a spell cast as well. If your Shadowmeld is successful before the cast has finished, your attacker will stop casting and target the appropriate player (or pet) based on the new aggro table. This also works if you are being melee'd or being hit with ranged attacks.

    Quickness: Your chance to be hit by ranged or melee is reduced by 2%. This ability does not work for spells. It might make you lucky if by chance you are targetted by a deadly physical attack.

    Nature Resistance: Your chance to be hit by nature spells is reduced by 2%. It helps to offset that if the incoming damage is frequent and small enough. It may also make you lucky if by chance you are targetted with a deadly nature attack.

    Orc
    Axe Specialization:Increases your expertise points by 5 when wearing an axe in that particular hand. Simply put, this racial reduces the amount of expertise rating required to reach the cap which has the benefit of allowing an Orc to acquire additional stats in place of expertise or to allow to have different best item combinations when using axes. These 5 points contribute to 41 of the 214 required rating for the expertise cap, allowing you to only wear 173 rating and be capped on that hand. Note, that the bonus only effects the hand that the weapon is in. For example if your axe is in the off hand, you will not get that expertise bonus for your main hand and special attacks. Sometimes you will be in a situation where your best weapon is not an axe and the racial bonus in the main hand will not makeup the difference. Most of the time it's still best to use your best weapon in the main hand regardless if it is an axe, since the DPS increase will overcome the 41 potential rating loss.

    Blood Fury: This ability increases your attack power by 322, Lasts 15 seconds, and is on a 2 minute cooldown. This buff scales with level, increases your attack power by (Level*4)+2 = 322 at Lvl80. Use it on cooldown.

    Hardiness: This reduces stun duration by 15%. Not a huge deal, but it is what it is.

    Troll
    Berserking: This increases your attack speed by 20% for 10 seconds, and is on a 3 Minute cooldown. Use it on cooldown.

    Beast Slaying: This increases your damage to beasts by 5%. An extremely overlooked racial, this acts as a multiplicative damage increasing modifier against any beast mob including bosses. Some boss examples include Maexxna and Icehowl.

    Da Voodoo Shuffle: This reduces the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 15%. Some bosses have slowing effects like Frostbolt Volley, so it helps a little if you have to move around when those are present.


    5. Useful macros
    Spoiler: Show



    Tricks of the Trade for Focus target
    Spoiler: Show

    #showtooltip
    /cast [target=focus] Tricks of the Trade

    Tricks of the Trade on mouse over
    Spoiler: Show

    #showtooltip
    /cast [help,exists] [target=mouseover,help,exists] [target=player] Tricks of the Trade

    Auto attacks fix for target switching
    Spoiler: Show

    #showtooltip Mutilate
    /startattack
    /cast Mutilate
    /startattack
    /use 10
    /run local f = CreateFrame("frame",nil, UIParent); f:SetScript("OnUpdate", CombatLogClearEntries);

    Swiching weapons for Fan of Knives spam
    Spoiler: Show

    /startattack
    /cast Fan of Knives
    /equipslot 17 Slow_hard_hitting_wep_name
    /startattack

    Poisoning weapons
    Spoiler: Show

    #showtooltip
    /use [button:1] Instant Poison IX; Deadly Poison IX
    /use [button:1] 16; 17
    /click StaticPopup1Button1


    Vanish and start attacking immediately
    Spoiler: Show

    /startattack
    /cast Vanish
    /startattack



    6. BiS list and spreadsheets
    Spoiler: Show


    Weapons:
    - Slow Dagger + Fast dagger
    - Highest DPS dagger + fast dagger



    Use the following spreadsheets to tinker your DPS via gear and gemming. Note: Spreadsheets and sims do not accurately calculate the output. You should take them with a grain of salt and more of a "guideline"
    Click me to download




    2x T10


    4x T10

    Having both full BiS 2set and 4set properly gemmed they're close in terms of DPS. The difference is only RNG. Who ever is more lucky'll pump more dps that's it.
    Differences between BiS 2set and 4set:
    2 pieces T10
    - The choice to go either more hit, haste or agi gems
    - Better energy regain
    - More talent/poison procs (Combat Potency)
    - Higher crit Cap

    4 pieces T10
    - 4set bonus
    - More raw Crit chance for abilities and poisons
    - Gets off more finishers


    7. Rogues's arsenal of buffs, debuffs and utility
    Spoiler: Show




    What buffs and utility do we rogues bring into a raid?

    - Tricks of the Trade - TotT = +15% and Threat Redirection for the duration
    - Master Poisoner = +3% crit chance to any enemy that's affected by your Wound Poison, Crippling Poison or Deadly Poison
    - Crowd control
    - Ability to dispel Enrages via Anesthetic Poison II
    - Our own good arsenal of defensive/survival abilities
    - Mass AoE control via either a lot of damage, healing reductions, enrage dispells or even slows.

    Weapon Swapping
    We rogues can and should weapon swap for various reasons.
    - To do even more AoE damage
    - To do mass AoE slows
    - Switch to weapons to quickly apply some Healing reduction or even remove a Enrage effect.
    There fore having 2 additional weapons in the bags 1 slow and 1 fast can be very helpful.

    For more AoE damage swap your OH with a preferably slow weapon enhanced with Instant Poison.
    For quick enrage dispels with Shiv have a OH weapon coated with Anesthetic Poison.


    8. Useful addons for rogues plus my UI
    Spoiler: Show


    As a rogue it's recommended to have some addon to track your buffs and debuffs on the boss, unit frames, threat meter and a boss encounter addon. Everything else is not necessary. I just got other addons to make stuff more pretty lol.

    Unitframes addons:


    Buff/debuff tracking addons:

    Threat meters:


    Boss encounter addons:


    Misc:


    My UI:
    As per some requests and for all the lazy roggs. U can download my UI. It has all u need more or less.

    Download
    How to install my UI:
    Funky's tutorial
    Or just copy everything and rename the folders YOURACCNAME and Yourcharactername to that what you've got.
    Preview:


    9. What's still broken
    Spoiler: Show



    If you want to ask/add anything contact me in game or here.
    A Fluffyinsect
    A Fluffybully
    A Fluffyfloff
    Credits to Gnimo for being my personal lab rat

    Well those're my 2 cents for assassination rogue.

    Sources: My own mind, other players, various websites, Elitist Jerks

    Cheers
    Edited: September 10, 2020

  2. Nice work! Did you do much comparison with trinkets such as WFS, Herkumi, DV ?

    OT: glyph of fan of knives on halion? :D

  3. Nice work! Did you do much comparison with trinkets such as WFS, Herkumi, DV ?

    OT: glyph of fan of knives on halion? :D
    Assuming we're using the BiS gear.
    Taij -- > War Token --> WFS --> DV. The difference comes in around 50 DPS between each trinket.

    If you use any other gear apart from BiS then, well then it depends on the most useful stat to you at this moment.

    Yes FoK glyph for Halion, if you're being outside of course.
    Edited: July 11, 2017

  4. wtb Vigor in "Medicore - End game gear" spec!
    (or atleast 1/3 Turn the Tables, 5/5 Cut to the Chase is useless in raids)

    Refresh Envenom when it has ~0.2-0.5 sec before it goes off.
    >>>
    Refresh Envenom ~1-2 sec after it goes off.
    (unless u are near the Energy cap)

    Its ok to use 2nd Mutilate to reach 5cp Envenom if u are on 80+ energy.
    (u will never be on 80+ energy if u refresh Envenom when it has ~0.2-0.5 sec before it goes off)

    Overall i love the guide. ggwp.

    p.s. Can u make my guides this pretty???

  5. Unless you're a rogue like Gnimo who happens to have the worst energy management ever, don't bother with Vigor.

    We go 5/5 Cut to the chase to rip off the stupid RnG.

    Then there's no point to refresh envenom after it goes off. The moment it's off the % of poisons getting applied goes from ~65% to ~35, which comes to definite DPS loss.

  6. U will lose it eventualy, unless u are god of RnG and have 101% uptime on Envenom.
    The best way should be to track ur Melee Hits and refresh it right before they happen, but anyway, i dont feel like refreshing it while its not over is a good thing, but i guess u know better... :D

  7. I've played rogue 7 years ago and I have to say your guide is really fantastic , also 2 questions that came to mind :
    1 - have you experimented with Thistle Tea in terms of dps ?
    2 - moongose vs berserk ? are 2 berserk really that necessary?
    Edited: July 13, 2017

  8. I've played rogue 7 years ago and I have to say your guide is really fantastic , also 2 questions that came to mind :
    1 - have you experimented with Thistle Tea in terms of dps ?
    2 - moongose vs berserk ? are 2 berserk really that necessary?
    - 20 energy once per fight. You might prevent Envenom buff drop once. No DPS difference imo
    - 400 AP vs 120 Agility(120AP + 1.44 crit) +30 haste. Agility does not affect poison crit chance. So yes it's worthless on assassination more or less.

  9. For those who want to sim their gear,here's the link for downloading the spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...HBJUmtUREIwdUE .

  10. fak combat, we muti bois!
    Spoiler: Show
    SoonTM

    hope I didnt sell my taj :/
    faking lungbreaker never drops either...
    Edited: July 14, 2017

  11. For those who want to sim their gear,here's the link for downloading the spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bz...HBJUmtUREIwdUE .
    I've already included spreadsheets in my post, so am not sure why ya did it as well.

  12. I've already included spreadsheets in my post, so am not sure why ya did it as well.
    Probably cos the one u linked is wrong.

    Am I right SilverFlash?

  13. I've already included spreadsheets in my post, so am not sure why ya did it as well.
    Sorry,my bad,i'm blind as a bat after night shift.Btw the spreadsheet uses 3/3 lightning reflexes,and from my experience it is better then 5/5 rs and 2/2 opportunity.
    A tip for engineers:you should throw saronite bombs while pooling energy.
    Edited: July 14, 2017

  14. Hello!

    There are some incorrect calculations in the Armor Values and Damage Scaling part of the guide. These are the right values:

    Debuffs Boss Armor Damage done 0% ArP Boss Armor with 100% ArP Damage with 100% ArP
    None 10643 58.87% 1550.33 90.76%
    5SA/Expose Armor 8514.4 64.15% 131.27 99.15%
    5SA/Expose Armor,FF 8088.68 65.32% 0 100%

    This is because the cap for reducable armor is: (Armor + C)/3
    C = 16635 for raid bosses.

    So with 100% arpen the correct calculation is: Armor - (Armor + C)/3
    With FF and 5 stack SA, you can reduce the armor of bosses to 0.

    Sources: Wowwiki, TrinityCore source files, in-game test on lvl83 dummy(Warmane Icecrown)

    Btw, very nice guide, thank you for it! :)
    Edited: July 16, 2017

  15. Hello!

    There are some incorrect calculations in the Armor Values and Damage Scaling part of the guide. These are the right values:

    Debuffs Boss Armor Damage done 0% ArP Boss Armor with 100% ArP Damage with 100% ArP
    None 10643 58.87% 1550.33 90.76%
    5SA/Expose Armor 8514.4 64.15% 131.27 99.15%
    5SA/Expose Armor,FF 8088.68 65.32% 0 100%

    This is because the cap for reducable armor is: (Armor + C)/3
    C = 16635 for raid bosses.

    So with 100% arpen the correct calculation is: Armor - (Armor + C)/3
    With FF and 5 stack SA, you can reduce the armor of bosses to 0.

    Sources: Wowwiki, TrinityCore source files, in-game test on lvl83 dummy(Warmane Icecrown)

    Btw, very nice guide, thank you for it! :)
    ^Those values go for warmane only. My values're taken for retail (ElitistJerks).

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