Assassination Breakdown

I made the following post in the rogue thread of my guild forum after getting some grief when I said that Knife of Incision (1.8-speed dagger) wasn't an upgrade over my dual-wield Librarian's Paper Cutters. Turns out I actually about 1% increased DPS, but given the overall shock at the idea that a slow main hand weapon was a bad thing, I felt the need to post. I pretty much just regurgitated everything you can find on Elitist Jerks, but I thought it was a nice summation.

Recently it came to my attention that there's some confusion about how the Assassination spec works in comparison to Combat, especially with respect to weapon choices. I thought I'd post a few points to clear up some of the misconceptions. All of this info was gathered from regularly reading the Elitist Jerk forums, which I highly encourage any current or aspiring rogue player to do on a regular basis.

- Assassination is all about Crits. Focused Attacks gives you +3 energy for every crit - this includes either hand's attack on Mutilate, Instant Poison, and of course your regular attacks. +3 doesn't seem like much, but if you combine it with fast weapon speed and a high crit percentage, it adds up very quickly.

- Assassination is also all about poisons. Instant Poison, when spec'd with the Vile Poisons talent, does more damage than any other poison. It scales with Attack Power and is affected by spell hit rating (hence the 310 hit cap to poisons becoming a major figure in rogue gear checks). Further more, Envenom is buffed by several talents, and on a 5-CP, 5 DP stack Envenom crit, I've done anywhere between 6k-8k damage when buffed. You want your poisons hitting on an almost constant basis.

These two elements combined result in theorycrafting results that show that weapon speed plays a vital role in your damage output. The current understanding is that given the choice, a faster dagger should be equipped in your Main Hand, and the slower dagger should go in the offhand. This flies in the face of standard combat builds that favor the slower weapon in the mainhand for bigger Sinister Strike numbers, but it comes down to the fact that the damage you do by rapidly applying poisons (and the benefits to your other specials that come from them) outshine your standard combo-building damage numbers by leaps and bounds.

Prior to 3.0.8, there is a bug with Mutilate where you have a chance to apply your OH poison twice (as well as your MH poison). Based on this, you can put Instant Poison on your OH (and Deadly on your MH) and will occasionally see 2 attacks from Mutilate, and 2 Instant Poison procs - when all 4 attacks crit, it is a beautiful thing. However, this is a known bug that Blizzard will be fixing in the patch, so afterwards, Instant Poison should be going on the main hand (so that it can proc on Envenom and Rupture) and Deadly Poison goes on the offhand. The preference of a faster mainhand than slow still remains, however.

Currently there's some speculation as to whether Blizzard "meant" to do this. In Burning Crusade, Mutilate was widely understood to be the only reason you would want to equip two slow daggers - you get a big burst of damage every 60 energy. Combat was the spec to go for if you want to see rapid-fire attacks. While this is still true in some respects, the overhaul of Assassination to focus on utilizing poisons to provide a huge chunk (over 50% if my memory serves) has changed the mechanics significantly.

A note on Hunger For Blood:
A lot of rogues have mixed feelings about the 51-point Assassination talent. It certainly lacks the flair of Killing Spree (or even Shadowdance), being a relatively lackluster buff vs. an awesome new move. However, 9% extra damage applied to everything you're doing is nothing to scoff at. This is mitigated, however, by the fact that it only lasts 30 seconds, and if it runs out, you have to apply 3 stacks again to get your full potential. So many rogues are frustrated with having to keep an eye on the timer (along with the timers for Slice and Dice, and Rupture) and the constant finger-dancing that results.

I struggled with HfB for awhile, and while I enjoyed the variety of the spec in terms of having to make split-second decisions for which timer to refresh (and still do), I definitely wasn't keeping it up as often as I should. However, I've found a rotation that takes advantage of Overkill (previously thought to be a dump talent) that makes keeping track of everything much easier:

- Begin combat in Stealth.
- Get Hunger for Blood up to 3 stacks. Try to do this about 5 seconds before the fight starts so that you're at full energy again.
- Mutilate out of stealth - don't bother with Rupture or Ambush.
- Mutiliate again - the first two Mutilates only cost 50 energy so you can do them in rapid succession. With a high enough crit rating, you're pretty much guaranteed to have 5 combo points.
- Slice and Dice - you'll have the necessary 15 energy (Overkill's still active) before the GCD comes up so you can do this immediately.
- Mutilate again. The 5-CP Slice and Dice, with Relentless Strikes, ensure that you'll get +25 energy afterwards, and then it's just a split-second wait to get another 25 energy (less if you get any crits in this process)

You may want to either use Tricks of the Trade, or wait for the tank to build threat, as you'll be putting out a ton of damage in a 6-second window and can easilly pull aggro if you're not careful.

Once you're established in combat, it's just a question of priorities. Here's the basic flow:

- Mutilate to 4+ CP
- If Hunger for Blood has less than 6 seconds, refresh. Never let it expire.
- If Slice and Dice has less than 6 seconds, Envenom, then start over.
- If Rupture is down or has less than 6 seconds, refresh. You may have to let it expire depending on your current CPs. Repeat.
- If Rupture, SnD and HfB are all up, hit Cold Blood and Envenom. Repeat.

You can also Vanish and repeat the opening rotation to get a nice boost.

Remember that HfB can be refreshed regardless of whether you're engaged with the mob or not, so in fights like Grobbulus with a lot of running, it can be good to try and refresh it while you're moving around so that it doesn't expire. Typically I'll see that if I let either HfB or SnD drop, my DPS takes a nose dive until I get back into the swing of things again. This is another reason to do a Vanish and start over.

I hope this helps people understand the Assassination spec a little better. Combat still has its value, although it typically does a little less DPS than Assassination right now. Blizzard is looking into making Armor Penetration a better stat for Combat in the future, so we may see it coming back on top sooner or later.

And HAT-spec discussion deserves its own post, so I'll hold off on that for now.

- Aidnan