Recently more players are picking up Assassination Rogues with the 9.0.5 updates. Let’s discuss legendaries for Assassination for we all want to make a lego that is best for everything. There’s a legendary that actually saw buffs in patch 9.0.5. Here’s why you should make this legendary asap if you are planning on playing Assassination Rogue.
Not a lot of players expected Assassin to blow up like it did but it looks like more and more players are switching over to Assassination as it is performing so well in pure single target. It looks like the spec is back from what it used to be in BFA- a reliable single target spec with quite a bit of viability for mythic pluses with its cleave bleed play style.
0:57 DOOMBLADE
This legendary saw pretty decent buffs when it comes to patch 9.0.5. Also, when you look at the overall changes Assassination is playing with 9.0.5, it synergizes super well into its single target focused play style.
Assassination has always been a spec that’s purely single target because your biggest button / burst ability is Vendetta. Vendetta only gets put on one single target and with so many different tools for you to do more damage to that one target. You have the ability to cleave the DoTs but there is just so much more impact with shiv and envenoms. And just how much raw damage you can pack into it inside even that Vendetta, it gives Assassination the single target focus. So Doomblade legendary ends up working really well for it. One because the extra damage it does makes you immutably do extra damage. And while you think it’s not a lot or a big bleed, it’s about 3% or 4% of your overall damage based on sims but also based on actual playing with this legendary.
3% / 4% does not sound like a lot but that’s about where some of our better trinkets are for Rogues. So think of it as getting one of your better trinkets into a third trinket slot and that is what basically the bleed for legendary does. It is very single target focused so it’s not that great in AOE but still really good even in mythic pluses.
Assassination changes with 9.0.5 looks like it is going back to that BFA play style where you can use Envenoms far more often. With Cut to the Chase being reintroduced to the spec, replacing those slice and dice refreshes with Envenoms. Which is going to be great for pure single target but even good in mythic pluses because you will be refreshing slice and dice with an Envenom and that means you will get regular Envenoms not just inside of your ship. With more Envenoms in this natural play style, you get the use of that second component of the Doomblade legendary where your Envenom is going to to deal 5% extra damage for every bleed on the target with corrode and rupture and the new bleed that you get from your mutilate now with this legendary. That’s 15% extra damage for your Envenoms which can actually go up to 20% inside of mythic pluses if you play with Crimson Tempest.
3:16 How does this legend perform so far in terms of the sims? I ran sims on my Rogue and looked at the available data on how this legendary is performing. Obviously this legendary has very good use inside of a raid. It was simming very highly especially for Venthyr Rogues.
And if you take a look at the data, the majority of Rogues are getting some great single target output with this legendary inside of Castle Nathria. So it is already doing good in pure single target and that will be the go to legendary if you are going to be going for raids.
3:49 What about Dungeons? This is why I want to say the Doomblade is probably one of the better legendary for dungeons as well primarily mythic pluses. There’s a bit of caveat because when it comes to pure AOE, it might not be the go to legendary but when it comes to mythic plus content and pushing it might still be the best general legendary for all content. I’ve sim my Rogue and there’s a lot of things you can do with sims and legendaries, there’s a couple of different builds that you can do for Assassin. For example, for Master Assassin that crit window is super amazing, all specs of Rogue utilize it and can use it for insanely good damage.
Plus for Assassination, you double dip into Master Assassination and critical strikes where you actually generate more common points when your common point generate abilities like Fan of Knives, Shiv and Mutilate crit. So you double dip into extra common points that you can use inside of the bug Vendetta windows. Plus also having big bursts that have a 100% crit where you do 30% more damage because of Vendetta is also quite good by itself.
However, Master Assassin really falls off when it comes to pure single target, pure focusing damage. It is pretty decent as a legendary when you have a Vendetta and when you can go for restyles which can be good. It has a good synergy with a vanish Vendetta combo but outside of just being able to focus enemies down, it has a bit of burst but falls off in single target.
Then we have Zoldyck which is a legendary where your poisons and bleeds do more damage the lower anima health is. So when they are below 30% health, you kind of have this execute phase with bleeds and poisons. Not all your abilities are bleeds and poisons. You also have fan of knives, auto attacks, mutilates. So anything that is a bleed of poison will gain value and it is a decent legendary for a single target. Where this legend ends up really good is AOE. It is kind of the legendary that people were to make before patch 9.0.5. If for example you are going to be in a boss fight for quite a while during the execute phase of course you will get a lot of value from Zoldyck. If you are going to do dungeon packs where the dungeon pack enemies are going to live at 30% health for quite a while then yes it is another good legendary that works there as well.
5:57 In pure AOE situations when you have multiple enemies and you can spread DoTs and bleeds all over the place it is also not a bad legendary. However I think it is not the legendary that is the impact type of legendary, not a gameplay changer. It is not a playmaker legendary that you sometimes need in mythic pluses in order to get through really tough groups. Doomblades I think is that legendary for Assassination Rogues as it really plays into the focus. Assassinations mark an enemy for death with a Vendetta and then slam as much damage as they can, absolutely eviscerating the enemy.
A lot of people try to chase that good overall AOE damage so Zoldyck or Master Assassin could potentially be a decent choice. However Assassination has this bad habit of being really good at only one thing and splitting makes you not that great at anything. For example in BFA, it always suffered from this issue. You could either go for a very single target focused play style or a very AOE focused play style because if you try to half and half you are then only half effective. If you went all in on a single target or all in on AOE, you will be really good at that one thing.
With the legendaries and tools we have in this expansion, Doomblades ends up being the legendary that’s all in on the pure single target just being able to take enemies out. It is useful in mythic pluses for Fortified and Tyrannical weeks. It is the go-to for raids as of right now. If you are someone playing Assassination, definitely invest into this legendary. It is also extremely fun, it fits so well to what you are looking to do as Assassination Rogue. Every two minutes with a big shift set up, big Envenoms back-to-back-to-back. And as you get better gear, more mastery and more haste, you will be able to get even more Envenoms in. More crits so you can hit mutilate and Envenom mutilate and over and over during that shift window. As we get more stats, it seems this legendary will just end up feeling super good and playing really well into that Assassination Rogue play style.