Assassination
When Cataclysm arrived in December 2010 it changed a lot of things about the world and about how certain classes actually worked. Rogues were one of the classes that didn’t change much, other than the new talent system that every class had to deal with.
Essentially, top level characters now have 41 talent points to play with, instead of 71, and every build of every class now gets some unique new abilities to use. Rogues are still the sneaky, poison using, back-stabbing ninja types that are easy to play and not quite so easy to master. The Assassination Rogue, in particular, rewards calculating gameplay while being easy enough for anyone to play.
The great strengths of this build are the damage that it can generate and the way all the abilities work with your poisons. The big weakness is in the lack of mobility. Other classes can charge, travel, fly, leap, blink, teleport, and so on, while the Assassination Rogue has to jog from place to place. This requires a certain amount of positioning ability.
You have to pick your fights and keep a close eye on when your abilities are available. This is especially important in Player Vs Player (PvP) combat. Once your opponent dashes away or stuns you and then runs away, if he does, there’s little you can do to catch up. Crippling poison is a big help here and is actually applied, automatically, with the “Deadly Brew” talent. This goes a long way towards keeping your opponents close. Well placed stuns, such as “Kidney Shot,” will keep him in place while you stab him in the back.
Energy Use
All Rogues need “energy” to use their abilities. Assassination Rogues get much of theirs from the “Venomous Wounds” talent. It’s because of this talent that you always want to be sure that your Garrote and/or Rupture is on the opponent. Every time these abilities do damage there is a chance that they will return some energy to your energy pool. If your opponent dies while Rupture is still up you will get a larger return of energy.
Poisoning the Opposition
While all Rogues use poisons, Assassination rogues, in particular, need to keep their weapons poisoned at all times. With other types of Rogues (Combat and Subtlety) the poison is a nice addition. With Assassination it’s essential since a major chunk of the damage you will do comes directly from the poisons, not to mention that energy return.
Envenom is one such talent. It’s a strong “finishing” attack that relies on your having several doses of “deadly poison” working on the opponent. If those doses aren’t applied, or if, for some reason, you don’t have deadly poison on your weapons, then Envenom won’t even be available for you to use.
Weapons
Typically all Rogues want to use a faster weapon in their “off-hand” and a slower one in their “main-hand.” For Assassination this is especially true. The faster off-hand weapon allows more applications of deadly poison than does a slower weapon and this greater application makes talents such as Envenom work that much better. This means that the off-hand weapon will be a dagger, since they are faster than the other weapons.
The slower “main-hand” weapon hits harder than the faster one, but less often, and so applies less poison. “Instant poison” is a good choice here. Also, your main attack, Mutilate, requires daggers.
Another ability, “Backstab,” requires a dagger in the main hand. This pretty much means that you will be using daggers in both hands.
Even with the dagger requirement and the lack of mobility the Assassination Rogue is still a formidable opponent capable of keeping up with almost anyone in PvE combat and also capable of laying down some real hurt in PvP. If Blizzard were to give them a real movement capability (eg: Shadowstep, a Druid’s faster movement, extra sprints, etc.) then they’d probably be really over-powered.
