Assassination is a timing based spec where the principle decision-making process is when to use abilities.  This timing based design lends Assassination a slower pace, often with more than 30% of GCDs unused.  Assassination is generally considered the most new player friendly and forgiving spec however Assassination does offer a number of places to optimize damage, especially in multi-target scenarios.  Assassination’s central mechanic is Envenom and pooling energy to squeeze as many abilities as possible into the Envenom buff.  Assassination excels on fights with a major dps check when the target is below 35% or if the target will spend a greater than normal amount of time below 35%.

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Talents

Tier 15: Stealth Talents

The tier 15 talents provide a small dps increase when using vanish.  The dps difference between Shadow Focus and Nightstalker is generally less than 0.2%.

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Nightstalker is slightly weaker than Shadow Focus so it is generally not used however the difference is negligible on most boss encounters.

Subterfuge allows the player to use stealth abilities for a longer duration however at their full energy cost stealth abilities are strictly weaker than their non-stealth counterparts making Subterfuge useless.

Shadow Focus is the numerically best talent on the tier however the gap between it and Nightstalker is very small.

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Tier 30: Utility Talents

The tier 30 talents are in general quite situational and in most scenarios not particularly useful.  There is no general recommendation for this tier.

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Deadly Throw can be used for dealing damage from range when paired with the tier 90 talent Shuriken Toss however this is quite rare.  Deadly Throw can also be used as a backup interrupt on “interrupt-or-die” fights such as Fallen Protectors.  Using Deadly Throw as an interrupt requires 3 combo points and is a dps loss; a multi-person interrupt rotation is generally preferable.

Nerve Strike can be useful on fights with a dangerous add that needs to be stunned till death, for example the large adds during the Tsulong day phase.  Nerve Strike provides a very powerful buffer on an add that needs to be stunned till death by substantially reducing the target’s damage output after the stun fades.

Combat Readiness can be useful on fights where you expect to take melee swings from a non-boss attacker such as Dark Animus.  Since the damage reduction applies to all sources of damage but only stacks from melee attacks this can be a very powerful defensive cooldown if allowed to stack.

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Tier 45: Survivability Talents

All tier 45 talents can be useful depending on the damage profile of the fight.  Cheat Death is a strong general purpose choice for progression raiding but the other talents on the tier can be situationally better.

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Cheat Death allows a lethal mistake to not waste a battle res.  In a progression raiding environment this can be invaluable even if you don’t expect to make mistakes since mistakes from other people in your raid group can be lethal to you.  Cheat Death is best on fights with spikey, unpredictable damage where mechanics will kill you if you are not topped off.

Leeching Poison is considered the weakest talent on this tier however it can still be useful on fights with moderate constant damage where most of the healing will not overheal.  On fights with spikey damage much of the healing provided will be overhealing.  Leeching Poison is also somewhat weaker for Assassination since a majority of its damage does not come from weapon strikes.

Elusiveness is very powerful on fights where you will need to soak a high damage mechanic with high regularity.  Elusiveness adds an additional 15% damage reduction on AoE which can be enough to make certain mechanics such as Sparks on Heroic Will of the Emperor soakable.  Certain mechanics such as Violent Gale Winds on Lei Shen are not considered AoE damage and on those Elusiveness grants a 30% damage reduction.

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Tier 60: Mobility Talents

Both Burst of Speed and Shadowstep can be useful in a raiding environment.  Shadowstep is generally preferred if there isn’t a specific need for Burst of Speed since it does not cost energy.

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Cloak and Dagger is rarely used in a raiding environment since players rarely enter stealth during boss fights.

Shadowstep is the strongest general purpose talent on this tier, the 24 second cooldown is enough for most boss movement if planned appropriately and unlike burst of speed it does not cost energy to use.  Shadowstep can also be useful to attack enemies you would not otherwise be able to reach such as the Siege Engineers on Garrosh.

Burst of Speed while not generally the best talent for general mobility has a number of situational uses where it can be better than Shadowstep.  Burst of Speed is powerful on fights that have sustained mobility requirements such as the kite phase of Thok or fights where a snare break may be needed such as Heroic Malkorok.

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Tier 75: Crowd Control Talents

As with Tier 30 talents the tier 75 talents are highly situational and there is no general recommendation on this tier.

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Prey on the Weak is quite powerful on fights with adds that need to be stunned to death and provides a useful damage boost to the rest of the raid that will generally make up for the personal damage loss from using Kidney Shot instead of Envenom.

Internal Bleeding

Dirty Tricks is generally not useful in a raiding environment since even if your dots will not break Gouge and Blind, other people’s dots will.  Gouge and Blind are rarely used so the energy reduction is not particularly useful.

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Tier 90: Combo Point Talents

Both Anticipation and Marked for Death are useful in a raids. Anticipation is generally considered the stronger talent since it provides substantial quality of life benefits.  On add heavy fights Marked for Death is the stronger talent.

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Shuriken Toss allows you to dps from range to a limited degree, this is rarely useful since the damage from Shuriken Toss and the ranged auto attacks is less than that of a full ranged dps.

Marked For Death grants a similar number of combo points per minute to Anticipation on a single target however it is generally considered harder to play and so is rarely used on single target.  On add heavy fights such as Spoils of Pandaria where the cooldown reset is utilized it is a very powerful talent.  Marked for Death is also useful on fights where an add must be stunned very rapidly since you do not need to build combo points on that target.

Anticipation is generally considered the standard talent on tier 90 since it provides comparable damage to Marked for Death and a significant quality of life increase.  Anticipation provides a combo point buffer that allows greater control over ability timings such as an additional combo point builder during the Envenom buff to prevent Envenom clipping.

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Tier 100: Damage Talents

Shadow Reflection is the numerically best talent on this tier and has strong synergy with assassination’s primary cooldown vendetta.

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Venom RushLemon Zest is a theoretically strong AoE talent however since assassination AoE tends to create energy capping it is less useful in AoE situations.  Venom Rush can be beneficial on fights with incidental AoE.

Shadow Reflection has strong synergy with vendetta and is the numerically strongest talent on the tier.  Shadow Reflection should be macroed with vendetta making sure that shadow reflection is cast before vendetta.

Death from Above is a weak talent for assassination, while the additional damage from envenom the high energy cost results in slightly lower envenom buff uptime.

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Glyphs

Damage Increasing Glyphs

Glyph of Vendetta increases the duration of Vendetta but reduces the damage bonus.  If you can stay on the target for greater than 24 seconds (20 without glyph) this is a dps increase.  If a fight requires burst you may want to replace this glyph.

Glyph of Disappearance – Increases overall combo point generation through vanish, generally ~1% dps increase.

Glyph of Energy – Allows you to pool to higher energy before using envenom.  Generally a small dps increase (<0.2%) since sufficient pooling can be done without the glyph.

 

Utility Glyphs

Glyph of Cloak of Shadows makes Cloak of Shadows useful against physical damage.  On fights with low amounts of magical damage to mitigate or physical damage that aligns with magical damage this glyph makes Cloak of Shadows even stronger.

Glyph of Feint increases the duration of Feint.  On pulsing aura fights where you are attempting to keep high Feint uptime, this glyph reduces the amount of energy needed for Feint.

Glyph of Smoke Bomb increases the duration of Smoke Bomb by 2 seconds.  If Smoke Bomb is being used to mitigate more than a single AoE pulse this glyph is very powerful.  Additionally your raid leader, when planning cooldowns, may expect you to have this glyph; talk to your raid leader if you don’t plan to use this glyph.

Glyph of Sprint makes sprint a 100% speed boost (mount speed).  This can be useful on fights where you utilize Sprint heavily.  Additionally the greater run speed can be very useful to combat pushback mechanics which have been very common this expansion.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Poisons makes poisons apply faster.  This is a useful, albeit minor, quality of life glyph.

Glyph of Safe Fall can be useful on fights with knock up mechanics.  It can be also be useful to defeat the deadly elevator boss in most raid instances.

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Rotation

Assumptions

The majority of this section assumes you are using Shadow Focus (Tier 15 talent), Anticipation (Tier 90 talent), and Shadow Reflection (Tier 100 talent).  If you are not using any of these, check out the “Alternative Builds” subsection.  This guide also assumes 120 maximum energy, so keep in mind that pooling to 100 energy is not a suggestion to energy cap.

Poisons

The best lethal poison is Deadly Poison.  As for non-lethal poisons, if you are running Leeching Poison then use it, otherwise Crippling Poison is the only option.  It is worth noting that Crippling Poison is highly situational, while Deadly is completely essential.

Single Target

The basic assassination priority is:

1. Keep Rupture up on the target (note that Slice and Dice no longer needs to be used, thanks to the Draenor perk Improved Slice and Dice)
2. Use Envenom at 5 combo points if the Envenom buff is not up OR if you are going to energy cap
3. Use Dispatch when available for combo points
4. Mutilate for combo points

Assassination’s central mechanic is the Envenom buff which increases your poison application chance.  The goal of Assassination dps is to maximize Envenom buff uptime and maximize the number of special abilities which you use during the Envenom buff.  Note that capping energy is worse than clipping the Envenom buff, in cases of energy overflow such as during Bloodlust you should clip the Envenom buff instead of energy capping.

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Envenom pooling is a technique to maximize the number of special abilities used during the Envenom buff.  When you have enough combo points to use an Envenom, pool energy until you are at approximate 80% of your total energy pool then Envenom and immediately follow it with Mutilates or Dispatches.  With sufficient energy regen this will move most of your combo builders into the Envenom buff.

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Cooldowns:  Assassination has two major cooldowns,  Vendetta and the talent Shadow Reflection  These cooldowns should be macroed together with Shadow Reflection cast first so the reflection casts its own vendetta.

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Assassination’s cooldowns do not substantially change the rotation so the primary consideration is using the cooldowns optimally within the fight timing.  Since assassination has a strong execute mechanic under 35%, cooldowns should ideally be used during that execute phase and aligned with bloodlust whenever possible. The key idea is you can freely delay cooldowns if that delay will not cost you an additional use of the cooldown.  For instance on a 5:30 minute fight assassination will get at most 3 cooldown uses and so vendetta can be delayed up to a full minute without losing a cooldown use, this additional minute of timing can be used to align cooldowns with bloodlust and/or execute phase.

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Multiple Target

Assassination has a number of different approaches to AoE depending on the scenario. 

Sustained AoE/Cleave: Rupture Multi-dotting

Since Assassination gains energy from Rupture ticks due to Venomous Wounds applying Rupture to multiple targets grants substantial energy.  In a 2 target cleave scenario use Mutilate and Dispatch as your primary combo builders and apply Rupture to both targets.  Remember that Venomous Wounds requires Deadly Poison on all targets, use Fan of Knives to keep Deadly Poison up on one target while building combo points on a different target. 

On 3 or more targets, replace Mutilate and Dispatch with Fan of Knives as your primary combo builder and get Ruptures up on as many targets as possible, typically 3-4.  Instead of using full 5 point Ruptures on these targets, use 2-3 point ruptures, this will allow you to get more Ruptures out simultaneously.

Incidental AoE/Cleave

Unlike multi-dotting for other specs, Rupture multi-dotting is not a single target dps increase, so if the goal is a single primary target with incidental cleave or AoE do not Rupture mutli-dot.  Instead simply do your single target rotation as normal on the primary target and use Fan of Knives to spread Deadly Poison when it is about to fall off on your other targets.

Burst AoE: Envenom+Fan

For burst AoE, Lei Shen’s Ball Lightning for example, instead of spreading Ruptures to targets that will die shortly, attempt to maximize poison damage on the adds.  Before the AoE begins, generate 5 combo points and pool energy, if timed correctly the adds should spawn just before max energy.  When the adds spawn use Envenom and spam Fan of Knives. The Envenom buff will increase the number of poison procs you get from the Fan of knives spam.

Gaming Venomous Wounds Energy Refund

Venomous Wounds refunds energy based on the duration of the Rupture remaining on the target.  On add heavy fights such as Horridon or Spoils of Pandaria, you can game this mechanic, especially with the tier 90 talent Marked for Death.  Use Marked for Death to apply 5 point Ruptures to adds that will die shortly and then continue damaging your primary target.  When the add dies you will get a full energy bar which can should be used to apply another 5 point Rupture to another short lived add.  This is beneficial because the net energy gain from Venomous Wounds should be greater than the net energy cost of applying a 5 point Rupture using Marked for Death.

Alternative Builds

Marked for Death:  Use finishers at >4 combo points rather than 5 combo points to prevent combo point waste.

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When using the tier 90 talent, Marked for Death, instead of the tier 90 talent, Anticipation, you should use a “4+ finisher rotation” rather than a 5 finisher rotation.  In a 4+ finisher rotation if you are at 4 combo points and Dispatch is not available, use a finisher (or pool for your next Envenom) rather than using another Mutilate.  This is because the combo point lost from Mutilate, since it generates 2 combo points, is worth more than the additional damage from Envenom and Envenom buff time.  Additionally if you have a Blindside proc at 5 combo points you should use a finisher before you use Dispatch.

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NOTE (2/27):  The bug where Glyph of Vanish can provide extra Subterfuge buffs is back, so that is now a recommended DPS glyph. 

Subtlety is a resource management spec based on juggling several timers and short cooldowns.  Subtlety is paced somewhere in between Assassination and Combat with about 20% of GCDs unused.  Subtlety is often considered a more challenging spec with a number of mechanics that require precise execution.  Subtlety excels on fights with high regularity burst where it can exploit its primary Find Weakness mechanic.

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Talents

Tier 15: Subterfuge

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Nightstalker– While extra damage on Ambush is nice, the biggest part of Ambush’s damage comes from Find Weakness and the extra Combo Point, which this does not buff.

Subterfuge– This allows us to use a second Ambush from stealth, increasing our Find Weakness uptime.  This talent tends to be slightly ahead of Shadow Focus and significantly ahead of Nightstalker.

Shadow Focus– Having Ambush cost only 15 energy is quite significant, although it is not quite worth the hit to Find Weakness uptime that you get by not taking Subterfuge.

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Tier 30: Your Choice

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Deadly Throw- Useful as a ranged interrupt or in fights where you will be spending a lot of time at range such that you might overflow on Combo Points, however these situations are quite rare in today’s raiding scene.

Nerve Strike– Useful when dealing with big adds that can be stunned, although like the other talents in this tier, such situations are rare.

Combat Readiness- Good when taking steady, reasonably small amounts of physical damage.

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Tier 45: Cheat Death

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Cheat Death- This is the most consistent talents on this tier as what amounts to an extra life is useful on all fights, which is why we suggest it.

Leeching Poiso– Generally considered our weakest survivability talent, this is still useful on fights where you will take continuous but not particularly threatening amounts of damage.  While this is the least likely to save you on its own, it can save you healers a lot of mana.

Elusiveness– This is very strong on encounters where you will be taking large amounts of damage and can predict when.  It is worth noting that this stacks multiplicatively with feint’s main effect, so your total AoE damage reduction will be 65%.  If you are not taking Cheat Death, this is probably the strongest option as when it does work it does a LOT.

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Tier 60: Shadowstep

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Cloak and Dagger- This talent is pretty terrible, do yourself a favor and don’t use it.

Shadowstep– Widely considered our best mobility talent, teleporting behind a target is extremely useful for swapping to/from adds and getting into position for Backstabs.  Just make sure you don’t kill yourself with it and you’ll be fine.

Burst of Speed– Useful for fights that involve a lot of frequent movement, however the energy cost and the fact that we already have Sprint make this talent rarely worth it.

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Tier 75: Your Choice

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Prey on the Weak– Extremely good for dealing with stunnable mobs that need to be killed by your raid.  Unfortunately, that situation almost never comes up.

Internal Bleeding

Dirty Tricks- This talent is just not useful in group PvE content.

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Tier 90: Marked for Death / Anticipation

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Shuriken Toss– Only good in fights where you will be spending an inordinate amount of time at range, which in today’s raiding scene is quite rare.

Marked For Death– Our best talent for single target DPS as well as fights with periodic adds.  Using this on adds for the cooldown reset is ideal however if that is not possible than try to use it during Find Weakness.

Anticipation– Greatly simplifies the rotation by making wasted combo points a thing of the past.  This is our best talent for fights with important AoE and prolonged cleave as the talent will catch the extra Combo Points obtained through Empowered Fan of Knives.

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Tier 100: Shadow Reflection

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Venom RushLemon Zest – Strong for fights with important AoE phases.

Shadow Reflection – Has great synergy with Shadow Dance.  This is our biggest DPS talent and can just be macro’d in with Shadow Dance.

Death from Above – As fancy as this talent is, Shadow Reflection’s synergy with Shadow Dance is currently too good to pass up.  If used well, it is about as good as Venom Rush on a single target.  NOTE:  There is some disagreement on this talent between ShadowCraft and SimulationCraft on how much of an impact this talent makes.  It is generally considered worse than Shadow Reflection currently, but the buffs slated for 6.1 might change this.

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Glyphs

Damage Increasing Glyphs

Glyph of Hemorrhaging Veins – Allows you to quickly apply Sanguinary Veins.  Extremely useful for fights with adds.

Glyph of Energy – Lets you pool more energy before using cooldowns, as well as waste less energy during prolonged periods of downtime.

Utility Glyphs

Glyph of Cloak of Shadows – Useful if you are taking infrequent, predictable, and heavy bursts of physical damage and don’t have anything better to Cloak.

Glyph of Feint – Similar to Glyph of Smoke Bomb, this is useful for fights with heavy sustained AoE damage where you will want to use Feint as soon as it expires.

Glyph of Deadly Momentum – Useful for fights involving adds that you have a high chance of dealing the killing blow on. 

Glyph of Smoke Bomb – Typically useful on fights with heavy sustained raid damage where Smoke Bomb will be useful for its entire duration.

Glyph of Sprint – An all-around solid choice, although our mobility is such that this is often unnecessary.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Safe Fall can be useful on fights with knock up mechanics.  It can be also be useful to defeat the deadly elevator boss in most raid instances.

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Stats and Gearing

As a general rule, use whatever items have the most agility.  While it is tempting to give a straight stat priority for the secondary stats, their values change quite a bit depending on gear.  Instead, we suggest you go straight to the source of numbers and use ShadowCraft.  

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Rotation

Assumptions

The majority of this section assumes you are using Subtefuge (Tier 15 talent), Anticipation (Tier 90 talent), Shadow Reflection (Tier 100 talent), and Glyph of Hemorrhaging Veins.  If you are not using any of these, check out the “Alternative Builds” subsection.  This guide also assumes 120 maximum energy, so keep in mind that pooling to 100 energy is not a suggestion to energy cap, but rather to pool as much energy as possible without capping.

Poisons

The best lethal poison is Deadly Poison.  As for non-lethal poisons, if you are running Leeching Poison then use it, otherwise Crippling Poison is the only option.  It is worth noting that Crippling Poison is highly situational, while Deadly is completely essential.

Single Target

Opener:  Premeditation or Marked for Death > Prepot+Slice and Dice > Follow Your Heart

(If you have the tier 18 4-piece bonus, your heart should probably tell you to pop all cooldowns and go ham.)

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Subtlety’s opener is all about getting Find Weakness, Slice and Dice, and Sanguinary Veins started as soon as possible, which is why despite Garrote not actually doing damage it is our best opener. Keep in mind that Premeditation > Slice and Dice can (and probably should) be used slightly before the fight.  The opener is the only time you will want to clip Find Weakness, as Dancing during prepot, bloodlust, and trinket/enchant procs is huge.

Openers make up a tiny portion of your overall DPS and are very often in one of the least critical parts of the fight.  Generally speaking, as long as you are starting in Stealth and getting your Sanginary Veins, Find Weakness, and Slice and Dice up quickly you will be doing very close to optimal DPS.  While there are some people who enjoy fiddling around with SimulationCraft to create the perfect opener, the margins for these openers are extremely small to the point where you’d do better off to simply not mess up later in the fight.  The exception to all this is if you have the tier 18 four-piece bonus, which appears to make it beneficial to pop all cooldowns immediately in order to stack the damage buff.

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Generators:  Ambush > Backstab > Hemorrhage

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Ambush is by far your best CP generator, yielding both the most damage per energy and the most Combo Points per energy.  If it is time to use a generator and you can use Ambush, you should use Ambush.  When Ambush is not available use Backstab.  Hemorrhage should be used when facing the target and at high energy so as to avoid capping.  It can also be used for its bleed which combined with Glyph of Hemorrhaging Veins adds redundancy to Sanguinary Veins.  Using Hemorrhage instead of Backstab to keep up the bleed has almost no effect on DPS and what little it theoretically does depends on gear.  At this point it should be noted that Sinister Calling, which causes your Backstab and Ambush multistrikes to speed up your bleeds by 2 seconds, does not actually have any impact on our optimal rotation.  Hemorrhage’s other use comes from Glyph of Hemorrhaging Veins, as it is our quickest and cheapest way to apply Sanguinary Vein outside of Stealth.  This makes it exceptionally useful for target swapping.

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Finishers:  Slice and Dice > Rupture > Eviscerate

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Ignoring Sanguinary Veins, the damage you gain from Slice and Dice is far greater than the damage of either Rupture of Eviscerate, and therefore it should have 100% uptime.  However, with Rupture as the only source applying Sanguinary Vein to your target, it becomes much less clear which is better.  Thankfully, the Pandemic mechanic solves this by allowing us to refresh our buffs and debuffs when they only have 30% of their normal duration remaining.  This means a 5 Combo Point Slice and Dice can be refreshed as long as it has fewer than 12 seconds left in its duration, and a 5 Combo Point Rupture can be refreshed as long as it has fewer than 8 seconds left in its duration.  Because Backstab and Ambush multistrikes advance Rupture, it is usually best to refresh Rupture as early as possible without losing ticks.  If neither Rupture nor Slice and Dice need to be refreshed, then use Eviscerate as filler.  It should be noted that Eviscerate does less damage than Rupture even during Find Weakness, and as such the debuff does not change our finisher priority.

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Cooldowns:  Shadow Reflection + Shadow Dance > Vanish, also there’s Preparation and Shadowmeld

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Before using any cooldown, make sure you pool energy as much as possible without capping.  This ensures you will be able to fit the most damage into the upcoming Find Weakness buff, as well as Spambush more.  Shadow Dance is by far our best Cooldown, and it should be used as close to on-cooldown as possible without clipping Find Weakness or having your target run off/die on you.  Because Ambush is great, Shadow Reflection should be used in conjunction with Shadow Dance.  After Shadow Dance comes Vanish on the priority list, which with Subterfuge is basically just Shadow Dance’s slightly disappointing cousin, complete with a longer cooldown, shorter duration, and more expensive Ambush.  At least it applies Master of Subtlety though, which is something Shadow Dance could never do.  During both of these cooldowns you’ll want to be trying to fit as many Ambushes as possible into them, making sure to both begin and end with an Ambush to maximize Find Weakness uptime.  You’ll also want to throw Premeditation somewhere in there if it is ready, although be careful not to use it when you have more than 3 Combo Points because it does not add Anticipation charges.  Preparation can be used to reset the cooldown of Vanish.  In short fights where you can only get one Preparation in, try to save it for Heroism.  For longer fights, try to use it early so you can get a second one in later.  For anyone playing a Night Elf, Shadowmeld can be used to get an extra Ambush.

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Multiple Target

Subtlety has many different ways of dealing with the various types of multiple target scenarios we encounter.  Below is what we suggest for the most common situations, although it is important to use your best judgment in deciding how you should be doing damage.

AoE:  When dealing with large packs of mobs (5+) that all need to die, your best bet is to use Fan of Knives as your generator and replace Rupture/Eviscerate with Crimson Tempest.  Still keep up Slice and Dice.

Cleave:  In situations where you have 2-4 high priority targets that need to die, you should replace Backstab with Fan of Knives as the extra Combo Points it applies makes up for its weaker damage and the lack of Sinister Calling procs.  It is also optimal to spread Rupture to all targets and keep up Crimson Tempest for its bleed.  It should be noted that Crimson Tempest does not eclipse Rupture in this scenario.  Cooldowns should still be used as normal unless mechanics dictate otherwise, and during Find Weakness Eviscerate becomes better than Crimson Tempest against two targets, but not against three.  As always, keep up Slice and Dice.

Incidental Cleave:  This is the situation where Subtlety truly shines.  When dealing with an enemy with lots of health while surrounded by relatively low priority adds, your job as a Subtlety rogue is to abuse the Empowered Fan of Knives perk and pump out massive amounts of single target DPS into your foe all the while hoping that the hunter who is trying to kill the adds around you has a sudden attack of the sniffles and can no longer do their job.  Fan of Knives should completely replace Backstab while you do your single target rotation otherwise normally. At three targets it becomes optimal to use Ambush only for Find Weakness and fill the rest of your Shadow Dance with Fan of Knives.

 

Alternative Builds

Marked for Death:  Get the most uses out of this as possible, using it during Find Weakness when possible.  Also, try not to waste Combo Points.

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Marked for Death can be an incredibly powerful talent if used well.  In general, you should try to get the most uses out of it as possible.  This means using it against things that will die quickly whenever possible in order to reset the cooldown.  At times when you won’t be able to reset the cooldown any time soon, say in a phase with no adds, use this ability during Find Weakness for maximum benefit.  This is also a good way to get a Rupture or Slice and Dice reset quickly if you are at risk of having one drop off.  Because taking this means you won’t have access to Anticipation, you’ll have to put actual effort into not wasting Combo Points.  The best way to accomplish this is by not using generators at 4 Combo Points and instead letting Honor Among Thieves fill in the 5^th.  It is better to use Eviscerate at 4 Combo Points than to overflow, so if it comes to a choice between using a 4 Combo Point finisher and sacrificing Find Weakness uptime or capping out on energy, the choice should be to take the 4 Combo Point finisher.

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Death from Above:  Replace Eviscerate with this as much as possible.

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Death from Above does good damage, but not as much as Rupture or Slice and Dice.  If possible, use this on cooldown, but don’t sacrifice uptime on any of your buffs/debuffs for this.  Keep in mind that this takes about 2.5 seconds to complete, so using it near the end of Shadow Dance or Find Weakness is risky.

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No Glyph of Hemorrhaging Veins:  Make sure you get Sanguinary Veins up on adds as soon as possible, even if it means using a short-duration Rupture or even Crimson Tempest.  Also, don’t mess up with Rupture.

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Alternatively, you can never swap targets unless they are going to be there long enough for that Rupture you had ready to apply as soon as you got in range to be worth it.

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Combat is a fast paced spec built around multiple cooldowns that can provide substantial burst damage.  Combat’s energy shifts from moderate with approximately 20% free GCDs to a fast paced GCD locked gameplay during cooldowns.  Some people dislike the spaminess of combat dps and find it painful to play.  Combat’s central mechanic is managing the multiple cooldowns and the cyclic damage buff Bandit’s Guile.  Combat excels at sustained AoE fights with its Blade Flurry mechanic and burst with its multiple, powerful, cooldowns.

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 Talents

Tier 15: Stealth Talents

The tier 15 talents provide a small dps increase when using vanish.  The dps difference between Shadow Focus and Nightstalker is generally less than 0.2%.

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Nightstalker is slightly weaker than Shadow Focus so it is generally not used however the difference is negligible on most boss encounters.

Subterfuge allows the player to use stealth abilities for a longer duration however at their full energy cost stealth abilities are strictly weaker than their non-stealth counterparts making Subterfuge useless.

Shadow Focus is the numerically best talent on the tier however the gap between it and Nightstalker is very small.

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Tier 30: Utility Talents

The tier 30 talents are in general quite situational and in most scenarios not particularly useful.  There is no general recommendation for this tier.

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Deadly Throw can be used for dealing damage from range when paired with the tier 90 talent Shuriken Toss however this is quite rare.  Deadly Throw can also be used as a backup interrupt on “interrupt-or-die” fights such as Fallen Protectors.  Using Deadly Throw as an interrupt requires 3 combo points and is a dps loss; a multi-person interrupt rotation is generally preferable.

Nerve Strike can be useful on fights with a dangerous add that needs to be stunned till death, for example the large adds during the Tsulong day phase.  Nerve Strike provides a very powerful buffer on an add that needs to be stunned till death by substantially reducing the target’s damage output after the stun fades.

Combat Readiness can be useful on fights where you expect to take melee swings from a non-boss attacker such as Dark Animus.  Since the damage reduction applies to all sources of damage but only stacks from melee attacks this can be a very powerful defensive cooldown if allowed to stack.

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Tier 45: Survivability Talents

All tier 45 talents can be useful depending on the damage profile of the fight.  Cheat Death is a strong general purpose choice for progression raiding but the other talents on the tier can be situationally better.

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Cheat Death allows a lethal mistake to not waste a battle res.  In a progression raiding environment this can be invaluable even if you don’t expect to make mistakes since mistakes from other people in your raid group can be lethal to you.  Cheat Death is best on fights with spikey, unpredictable damage where mechanics will kill you if you are not topped off.

Leeching Poison is considered the weakest talent on this tier however it can still be useful on fights with moderate constant damage where it will most of the healing will not overheal.  On fights with spikey damage much of the healing provided will be overhealing.

Elusiveness is very powerful on fights where you will need to soak a high damage mechanic with high regularity.  Elusiveness adds an additional 15% damage reduction on AoE which can be enough to make certain mechanics such as Sparks on Heroic Will of the Emperor soakable.  Certain mechanics such as Violent Gale Winds on Lei Shen are not considered AoE damage and on those Elusiveness grants a 30% damage reduction.

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Tier 60: Mobility Talents

Both Burst of Speed and Shadowstep can be useful in a raiding environment.  Shadowstep is generally preferred if there isn’t a specific need for Burst of Speed since it does not cost energy.

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Cloak and Dagger is rarely used in a raiding environment since players rarely enter stealth during boss fights.

Shadowstep is the strongest general purpose talent on this tier, the 24 second cooldown is enough for most boss movement if planned appropriately and unlike burst of speed it does not cost energy to use.  Shadowstep can also be useful to attack enemies you would not otherwise be able to reach such as the Siege Engineers on Garrosh.

Burst of Speed while not generally the best talent for general mobility has a number of situational uses where it can be better than Shadowstep.  Burst of Speed is powerful on fights that have sustained mobility requirements such as the kite phase of Thok or fights where a snare break may be needed such as Heroic Malkorok.

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Tier 75: Crowd Control Talents

As with Tier 30 talents the tier 75 talents are highly situational and there is no general recommendation on this tier.

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Prey on the Weak is quite powerful on fights with adds that need to be stunned to death and provides a useful damage boost to the rest of the raid that will generally make up for the personal damage loss from using Kidney Shot instead of Eviscerate.

Internal Bleeding

Dirty Tricks is generally not useful in a raiding environment since even if your dots will not break Gouge and Blind, other people’s dots will.  Gouge and Blind are rarely used so the energy reduction is not particularly useful.

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Tier 90: Combo Point Talents

Both Anticipation and Marked for Death are useful in a raids. Anticipation is generally considered the stronger talent since it provides substantial quality of life benefits.  On add heavy fights Marked for Death is the stronger talent.

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Shuriken Toss allows you to dps from range to a limited degree, this is rarely useful since the damage from Shuriken Toss and the ranged auto attacks is less than that of a full ranged dps.

Marked For Death grants a similar number of combo points per minute to Anticipation on a single target however it is generally considered harder to play and so is rarely used on single target.  On add heavy fights such as Spoils of Pandaria where the cooldown reset is utilized it is a very powerful talent.  Marked for Death is also useful on fights where an add must be stunned very rapidly since you do not need to build combo points on that target.

Anticipation is generally considered the standard talent on tier 90 since it provides comparable damage to Marked for Death and a significant quality of life increase.  Anticipation provides a combo point buffer that allows greater control over ability timings such as shifting finishers into the next level of Bandit’s Guile.

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Tier 100: Damage Talents

Venom Rush is the strongest talent for single target and AoE for combat.  Shadow Reflection has strong synergy with both of combat’s cooldowns and is useful on fights with moderate length burst windows.

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Venom RushLemon Zest is the numerically strongest talent for combat for both AoE and single target.

Shadow Reflection has strong synergy with both of combat’s cooldowns but unlike the other two specs it cannot guarantee that the cooldowns will line up with each other.  On fights with a major burst component that last long enough for the clone to do damage (minimum 8 seconds, realistically >12 seconds) such as Siegecrafter Blackfuse shadow reflection may be stronger than Venom Rush.

Death from Above  is a weak talent for combat, while the additional damage from envenom the high energy cost results in slower cooldown and bandit’s guile cycling.

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Glyphs

Damage Increasing Glyphs

Glyph of Energy – Helps avoid energy overflow during Adrenaline Rush with a string of combat potency procs, generally ~2% dps increase.

Glyph of Disappearance – Increases overall combo point generation through vanish, generally ~1.5% dps increase.

 

Utility Glyphs

Glyph of Cloak of Shadows makes Cloak of Shadows useful against physical damage.  On fights with low amounts of magical damage to mitigate or physical damage that aligns with magical damage this glyph makes Cloak of Shadows even stronger.

Glyph of Feint increases the duration of Feint.  On pulsing aura fights where you are attempting to keep high Feint uptime, this glyph reduces the amount of energy needed for Feint.

Glyph of Smoke Bomb increases the duration of Smoke Bomb by 2 seconds.  If Smoke Bomb is being used to mitigate more than a single AoE pulse this glyph is very powerful.  Additionally your raid leader, when planning cooldowns, may expect you to have this glyph; talk to your raid leader if you don’t plan to use this glyph.

Glyph of Sprint makes sprint a 100% speed boost (mount speed).  This can be useful on fights where you utilize Sprint heavily.  Additionally the greater run speed can be very useful to combat pushback mechanics which have been very common this expansion.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Killing Spree makes you end in the same place you started Killing Spree.  This can be deadly on some boss fights if the place you started from is no longer safe however on some fights this can be required to use Killing Spree successfully.

Glyph of Poisons makes poisons apply faster.  This is a useful, albeit minor, quality of life glyph.

Glyph of Safe Fall can be useful on fights with knock up mechanics.  It can be also be useful to defeat the deadly elevator boss in most raid instances.

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Stats and Gearing

As a general rule, use whatever items have the most agility.  While it is tempting to give a straight stat priority for the secondary stats, their values change quite a bit depending on gear.  Instead, we suggest you go straight to the source of numbers and use ShadowCraft.  

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Rotation

Assumptions

The majority of this section assumes you are using Shadow Focus (Tier 15 talent), Anticipation (Tier 90 talent), and Venom Rush (Tier 100 talent).  If you are not using any of these, check out the “Alternative Builds” subsection.

Poisons

The best lethal poison is Instant Poison (the Draenor perk Swift Poison changed your Deadly Poison to Instant as you leveled from 90 to 100).  As for non-lethal poisons, if you are running Leeching Poison then use it, otherwise Crippling Poison is the only option.  It is worth noting that Crippling Poison is highly situational, while Instant is completely essential.

Single Target

1. Keep Slice and Dice up
2. Keep Revealing Strike up on the target
3. Eviscerate on 5 combo points
4. Sinister Strike for combo points

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Combat relies heavily on auto attack damage for damage and energy regeneration through combat potency.  This makes maintaining 100% Slice and Dice uptime combat’s top priority.  The new pandemic mechanic in 6.0 allows Slice and Dice to be refreshed with up to 11 seconds remaining without losing any Slice and Dice uptime, this should be used to refresh Slice and Dice with 5 combo points.  It is also important to maintain high revealing strike uptime to increase combo point generation and finisher damage.  Like Slice and Dice Revealing Strike can be refreshed with less than 30% of the duration (7 seconds) without losing uptime however maintaining 100% revealing strike is not necessarily required.  If you are using sinister strike or a finisher you should have revealing strike on the target but if it falls off for a short period it is not a dps loss.  Eviscerate and Sinister Strike are the bread and butter of your rotation, simply build to 5 combo points and use eviscerate.  One their own neither eviscerate or sinister strike do a lot of damage however they allow you to cycle Bandit’s Guile and your damage cooldowns for strong overall dps.

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Cooldowns

Combat has two powerful cooldowns.  Adrenaline Rush substantially speeds up the rotation, increasing the rate of Bandit’s Guile cycling as well as cooldown cycling through combat’s Ruthlessness mechanic.  Killing Spree is a high burst damage cooldown however it takes away control of your character for the duration.  These cooldowns should be used seperately and if both cooldowns are up at the same time use killing spree first.  Only delay the cooldowns if a boss mechanic would prevent you from getting full use of the cooldowns.  Combat also has vanish as a dps cooldown like other rogue specs, vanish should be used as close to on cooldown as possible when other cooldowns are not up.

Adrenaline Rush

Adrenaline Rush synergizes very well with the Combat passive ruthlessness.  The additional energy regeneration and combo point generation grants substantial additional cooldown reduction.  During these cooldowns your goal should be to maximize GCD utilization so if possible avoid using abilities on the GCD other than Sinister Strike, Revealing Strike or Eviscerate.

Killing Spree

Killing Spree is a unique cooldown because it takes away control of your character for 3.5 seconds.  This means you should carefully watch boss timers before you use Killing Spree because mistiming it with a boss ability can be lethal.  Since you cannot use other abilities during Killing Spree you should try to dump energy before using the ability and you should not use Killing Spree during Adrenaline Rush because the energy regeneration of those abilities will be wasted.  Finally if both Killing Spree and Adrenaline Rush are off cooldown at the same time, use Killing Spree first so it can benefit from the additional cooldown reduction of Adrenaline Rush.

Multiple Target

Combat has a very simple multi-target rotation with the ability Blade Flurry which mirrors damage onto surrounding targets.  In general combat rogues should continue their single target rotation as normal but put Blade Flurry up.  If there are greater than 6 targets AND all targets will live long enough for the Crimson Tempest dot to tick full duration, 12 seconds, Crimson Tempest should be used instead of Eviscerate.

One consideration when using Killing Spree for multiple targets is if Blade Flurry is up Killing Spree will bounce between targets potentially dropping you in a damaging mechanic.  If this is a concern turn Blade Flurry off before using Killing Spree and turn it on after.

Alternative Builds

Marked for Death: Rotation proceeds as normal.

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Marked for Death can be a very strong talent for combat especially at low gear levels where combo point generation is slower however it can be a bit harder to play.  When using marked for death you should use sinister strike at 4 combo points even though a procced combo point may be wasted.  On single target fights marked for death should be used on cooldown ideally when both adrenaline rush and killing spree are on cooldown but don’t delay using marked for death too much to achieve this case.  On multi-target fights marked for death should be used on adds that are dying shortly to maximize the number of uses you get out of the talent.

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