PvE Assassination Rogue Talents, Builds & Glyphs

PvE Assassination Rogue

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Stat Priority

Best Races

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Rotation & Cooldowns

Best Professions

Best in Slot (BiS) & Pre-Raid Gear

Addons & Macros

There are generally two talent builds that Assassination rogues will use throughout the whole expansion, the ”early game build” and the ”mid/end game” build, listed below.

Notable Talents

• Ruthlessness – Gives your melee finishing moves a 60% chance to add a combat point to your target. Assassination rogues rely on combo points rather than pure energy regeneration like combat rogues do, so this is naturally quite valuable. We need combo points fast to keep envenom up even if our combo points are not maxed out — the most important part of an Assassination rogue is to keep the actual envenom buff up (for extra poison damage procs).
  
• Cold Blood – When activated, increases the critical strike chance of your next offensive ability by 100% (a guaranteed crit). Use it when you have a high amount of combo points for Envenom, as mutilate does not do enough damage to be worth using it on.
  
• Seal Fate – Your critical strikes from abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add another combo point (20% chance per point). One of the reasons why crit is still a decent stat for assassination rogues, this adds extra combo points, which is often overlooked when comparing gear.
  
• Overkill – Energy regeneration is increased in stealth, this effect lasts for 20 seconds once you leave stealth. This is the reason you open a boss fight in stealth, and when appropriate you should vanish and re-enter instantly again to gain this buff. (Use it as a cooldown that you can preferably utilize for 20 seconds).
  
• Mutilate – Our combo point producer, generating anywhere from 2-3 combo points per use. The damage from the ability is lackluster but the damage it gives other abilities is what really makes it good — this is the ability you will be spamming most often.
  
• Cut to the Chase – Probably the reason why assassination is such an easy spec to learn. You don’t ever have to worry about Slice & Dice because it automatically refreshes it when you use your main ability envenom. The buff will last 30 seconds, so as long as you envenom in those 30 seconds you will never have to worry about slice and dice.
  
• Hunger for Blood – Should always be up, as it’s just a straight damage increase, I would advise getting a Weakaura for it so you don’t forget about it being up. It lasts a full minute, which is plenty of time to forget about it.

Talent Builds

Click a build to see talents and explanations!

Standard Build (Phase 1)

Ideal for early game assassination, this is the build you will likely use during Phase 1. It relies less on stats and more on getting your actual abilities and combo points rolling.

Stat-Focused Build (Mid-Late Phase)

A more mid/late game-focused build, gaining pure stats over the comfort of extra combo points. The build relies more on raw stat gain/scaling and movement better used in later phases of the game

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Mutilate makes you able to spam this ability more often, creating more combo points.
• Glyph of Hunger of Blood increases the passive damage done by this buff, simply making you do more damage to everything while it is up.
• Glyph of Tricks of the Trade – Because you are a team player, it buffs the duration of the buff, giving your tank more threat or your teammate a longer duration for the damage buff portion. The threat portion is cancelable via a macro — these are noted in the Macros & Addons section.

Minor Glyphs

Some of these glyphs are pure quality of life features, however, some may prove useful in combat as well — so those will be the first ones listed.

• Glyph of Vanish speeds you up when you use vanish and are slowed down by being in stealth. If you were in a sticky situation, this glyph will make sure you can get back in action ASAP.
• Glyph of Distract is not used during combat but is a great tool to skip unwanted trash packs more efficiently.
• Glyph of Safe Fall helps you survive jumps from… unsafe heights.