Let's talk about the Assassination (patch 10.5)

Classes Rogue
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With the Dragonflight expansion we received many new active abilities. Assassination was so good it even became number 1 DMG dealer in the new raid. But that’s a past. It happened when the spec was too powerful and people didn’t have high-end gear.

Right now, with the people getting much better gear and after nerfs Assassination is once again below the middle, it’s actually even less than average.
According to WarcraftLogs Assassination in Mythic raiding with 90% Percentile over a range of two weeks is second worst(!) melee DMG dealer spec in the entire game(overall it’s fourth from below, which makes it 22nd spec from all 25 we’ve got).
In the Mythic+ dungeons Assassination is the least played rogue spec… by a huge margin! Once again it’s second worst melee spec(just above the Survival hunters). According to raider .io from the whole group of people that timed at least +20 key it’s played by… 0,4% players! There are also 0 Assassination rogues who did time +25 key!

You may think that it’s obvious that some specs will be worse, some will be better and that’s totally fine. The game cannot be perfectly balanced and expecting such is wrong. The main point though is that Assassination is much more complicated than it was before. I shouldn’t really expect to do the same as before, while putting more effort. It doesn’t seem fair.
The amount of abilities we have to focus on is higher than it was before. Sometimes it requires planning ahead and micro-managing.

Keep in mind that I am not saying that the spec has ultra-high skill-cap, because it doesn’t, all that I am saying that it’s not as smooth as before and it’s more punishing… while doing exactly the same. After all it was more easy and simple spec before.
You may say “git gud” or “skill issue”, while in fact that may be true in some cases I think that the TOP Assassination players are fully professional players that are unleashing almost whole potential of the spec… and still not being on par with others who are doing less.

What are my solutions?
-get rid of Exansanguinate, it’s just a bad ability that requires too much to utilize it properly, sometimes sacrificing the whole momentum flow of the spec during the fight,
(there’s even a whole tirade about it on the Rogue Discord server),
My proposition: Make it so that Shiv gives an aura that makes your enemy bleed faster by some%. It could also make Arterial Precision(the new talent we’ve got in 10.5 patch) more interesting and would help us in the M+ scenarios, because for now no one uses it(Dragon Tempered Blades and Indiscriminate Carnage are just straight better in almost every possible scenario).
-reduce the amount of active abilities, it will help people focus on a fight, not on the dots or CDs that need to be checked every second,
-make Slice and Dice passive, it’s a relic of the past that sometimes requires you to click only once in the entire fight, it also feels tiresome to keep it up in M+ between the packs instead of actually using an ability that does something cooler than “increases your attack speed”,

While some of the things I’ve written above are the facts(data from WarcraftLogs and Raider .io), most of it is just subjective opinion.
What do you guys think about Assassination spec? It’s in the right place? It should be changed? Would you like to see new mechanics or reduce the amount of the ones we’ have right now?

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I think current assassination is trash, the emphasis on damage over time bleeds is far from what it used to be. And it will always be trash in m+ because majority of our damage is focused on over time, direct damage just performs better.

Indiscriminate carnage is a nice bandaid, its a shame its design is antithetical to how people play m+. Having garrote be our highest damage and buffed from stealth when people don’t want to wait for leave combat makes it frustrating rather then rewarding.

As far as shiv being changed, i do think it should. The damage buff component should be removed and put back into the abilities it was taken from. And leave shiv to be an enrage dispel.

Venemous wounds and thistle tea also has flawed interaction with the spec, where one will feed you a lot of energy on trash and low amounts on single target. The other will buff damage when you don’t need energy and work ok on single target although with our cooldowns when you would want to buff damage we at the majority of the time don’t need more energy as we are being fed too much.

I would get rid of the bleed focus they seem obsessed by and bring us back towards poison damage, and add new direct damage aoe’s. Id also add back focused attacks if they insist on keeping slice and dice. Although snd should just go back to being passive.

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I totally agree. Though I think that Assassination should still stay as a DoT spec, but not as much as it is right now. For example, we can’t really deal with explosives or adds that have a “medium” amount of health because of that.
Whenever Adds appear(for example, the big spider during the Sennarth encounter), you actually have to put DoTs on him and then you will have time to do some damage. But the worst thing is that he’ll be half-dead after you actually put them…

I really like Indiscriminate Carnage, but the problem with going stealth → garrote still exists as you say. The damage we are doing, especially in the weeks with the Spiteful affix is notable lower. I don’t know any class that actually perform that worse because of the chain pulling.

That would be also cool. Making shiv an utility rather than DPS CD. Of course compensating it with other abilities buff. There’s nothing fun in clicking it every 25 seconds.

I’d reduce Garrote damage(and buff deadly/amplifying poison damage), because it’s our main damage ability in M+ but the whole group need to actually play around it, which makes it kidna unfair. I don’t want to make my group feel like they need to wait with the chain-pulling because otherwise I’d be doing less DPS.

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While i don’t agree, having it be less centered around dot’s would be a step in the right direction. I did prefer assassination when we primarily did direct damage and dots where deadly poison to facilitate envenom.

The problem is the stealth related talents in m+ where chain pulls is prefered, and that we have too many dots.

IC being a nice bandaid i still think a 45 sec cd is too long. Even shadow crash is 30 sec and applies 2 dots on 8 targets.

Arterial precision i think was doubling down on bad design, shiv enhancing both poison and bleed dmg. Felt awful last week during raging, when you had to hold shiv for enrage dispel.

Unbreakable Stride feel like it might as well be a blank talent as its fairly useless, at least burst of speed was a fun talent/ability. So they couldnt add that ofc.

I’m not surprised by the bad design, they are clueless about what to do with the spec. They did after all bring back snd in shadowlands without cut to the chase.

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assa is not as bad as people make it out to be for m+.

The main issue it has is that it’s competing with sub and outlaw, but it has it’s own perks and uses with the aoe garrotes being a really powerful tool.

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Gotta agree with that. Giving Vanish more charges wouldn’t really help either, as that would have plenty of repercussions in balance. I honestly feel like they should maybe just buff Fan of Knives, maybe give it some stronger synergy with other mechanics. I would also prefer Poison Bomb not being tied to Envenom, but instead be an active ability, a Finisher, like Crimson Tempest. It would help with giving the Player a stronger feeling of being in control, instead of the game just randomly buffing your abilities.

They should go back to Legion with Shiv, so it would be only a Utility, an Enrage Dispel. For the Damage function, return Toxic Blade, and you can still have the same DPS rotation, but won’t feel penalized in DPS for having to sit on the Utility of it. Sometimes abilities just try to do too many things, and this is one of those situations. Shiv and Toxic Blade should be separate abilities.

BoS was great, and I think it would work perfectly in the current Talent Design. The numbers can be adjusted for balance. You could have it be a choice Node, where you either get another Shadowstep charge, or BoS. Giving more options in movement is a positive thing, and this one would fit very well thematically in the Class or Spec Tree.

SnD is redundant. Everything it does could be achieved by other, existing mechanics. It doesn’t add fun, it doesn’t add a “meaningful choice”. It’s just a baby you have to watch, so it doesn’t choke itself. Instead of giving you something interesting to keep an eye on, you are now forced to deal with this inane mental maintenance issue.

By removing it there’d be more room for actually fun and engaging mechanics. The whole Class, every single Spec, would benefit tremendously by removing SnD from the game. With Encounter Designs becoming ever more complex, having an archaic ability forced on you, it just feels bad.

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Because it’s not that bad, it’s still viable spec for dungeons below 23-24M+, it’s just one of the worst spec. The amount of DMG is lower compared to other specs. Your DPS depends too much on the team.

I didn’t even choose that talent during that week. Compared to typical build for M+ it would’ve been about ~20k DPS minus just to clear enrages. It would require too much effort for so low gain. As I’ve written above - that talent was probably used only for the Council fight, there are no other scenarios where it would have been useful.

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They should remove/ swap Exsang with DTB and lower IC cooldown to 30s. It still would be a niche spec that nobody wants to play, but its at least more competitive as it is now. The spec is a mess atm, especially in m+

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