A buff to remember! The Assassination Rogue gets its long overdue buff. These buffs are to be combined with the cumulative buffs from a week or two ago acquired by Assassination which may make the spec viable.
With the recent update for the classes, Assassination Rogue received 8% damage buff. Prior to this, there were buffs for a variety of specs and Assassination received 5% tuning buff. Combining the 5% and 8% buffs forms a cumulative 13% buff for the spec since the beginning of Shadowlands. This is an Aura buff and Auras work by amplifying the damage output of a variety of Rogue abilities. Past the abilities like mutilate, corrode, rupture in venom, it does not buff auto attacks. It does not change the structure of damage either. It does not make DoTs or specific abilities stronger rather a whole toolkit is slightly stronger with a small tuning.
Assassination Rogues should be excited for this buff is significant. Over in Rogue discord, the Theory Crafters (TC) were looking at maybe getting Assassination 13% buff in order to be viable which puts it in a better position. Before this buff, Assassination as a play style and damage output in PVE was not feasible. It has a fun play style but did not amount to a competitive number at least in comparison with the other classes.
If you’re someone new to the spec, you know playing it feels a little different. The spec for the most part is the same, you have ruptures and venoms however slice and dice was one extra buff for you to manage and gives minor rotation complications. It feels like you do not have enough energy to maintain everything. At most you will have enough energy to maintain your DoTs, maintain slice and dice, but missing out on inventive windows. Better gear, stat your character better with more haste will definitely help but it will be a long journey thus you will need gear commitment. For single target raid fights, the spec is not terrible if you will be doing heroics. The spec can have some moments in mythic raids but will surely not take the place of Subtlety and Outlaw as the meta spec for the raiding environment. As for mythic pluses, Assassination could have many opportunities. While Rogues are not the top DPS, you will still have fire mages, tanks blasting people, and do a lot of AOE damage output.
Rogues are not in a bad set up. Assassination is in an interesting spot where you have the DoT damage and because of the guerilla playstyle, the spec can go for crazy cleaves on two or three targets.
