I wonder if there are any blizzard employees left to read the feedback on the forums but gonna give it a try.
I just tried PTR for a bit to see these changes for myself and its crazy how the rogues seems worse than before. In general the rogue already has way to many buttons for the rotation and without stealth it does very little damage.
Assa have multiple cooldowns but none of them were really AOE cd-s, yes you could say that the Indiscriminate carnage was a cd but apart putting dots on multiple mobs it didnt increase the damage output at all it was quality of life. Given that assa does damage with dots nerfing this skill to apply Garrote and rupture only to 2 targets make it even worst to do burst damage. I will try to keep it short
Slice and dice should be made passive or removed from the game.
Deathmark is a great skill but I wish it also affected all targets with bleeds to give assa rogues at least 1 AOE cooldown. This was already done in shadowlands and it was great.
Remove Echoing reprimand, its so clunky and has nothing to do with rogue fantasy. Was hoping to get rid of it after shadowlands but somehow we still have it.
Indiscriminate carnage, change to make it passive is fine but the nerf to 2 target is a worse trade of that what we currently have. Leave it on passive and make it affect 5 target. or give it an option to have it on a 30sec cooldown and affect 5 targets.
Kingsbane seems great and its easy to talent but yet again why do we need more single target cooldowns when assa has no AOE cooldowns? Should be optionable between deathmark or kingsbane on the same line and adjust the damage on them.
Dragon tempered blades nerf was really unnecessary, remove the 30% less application chance and leave it as it is, in fact remove all downside on passives, leveling up and talenting should feel good instead of having a trade off.
Sudden demise, This new passive seems good but has the same problem to me as Exsanguinate. Very hard to understand what it really does, should just change the description that people would understand.
Preparation would be great to give back to assa rogues.
10.2 Assa set bonuses are very boring, the 2 set bonus takes to long to stack up and keep up, does not help with burst damage at all. Many skills are building on bleed damage however natureblight only gives nature damage increase.
4 set bous does very little damage and is again worse that what we had for the previous season which was again not great.
Caustic splatter.
Again, unnessesary. We already have poison bomb which was amazing. But since its got nerfed to the ground now you just add another skill that does the same. This is the reason why balancing in wow takes way to long. too much clutter. Remove Caustic splatter, make assa 4 set bonus to buff posion bomb, this way you only need to adjust 1 skill for balancing.
Honestly I am disappointed on the changes for the assassination rogue, I mean yes we got changes but what we got after waiting for a half year can’t be justified.
Fixing assa is really not that hard, it was close to be good already, it only needed the Indiscriminate carnage cooldown reduced, giving it an aoe cooldown, and help it deal with cleave situation when only fighting 2 mobs as that was the worse scenario.
I am hoping we will see adjustments in this season and won’t need to wait until the next expansion for new changes that will be nerfed to the ground. (looking at you outlaw spec)