Season of Discovery Assassination Rogue DPS Talents and Runes

Your talent build as an Assassination rogue is largely set in stone due to the strength of talents found towards the bottom of the Assassination talent tree such as Vile Poisons and Cold Blood which make it difficult to branch into other specializations. As we reach the level cap we will now be able to delve into the Combat tree to find great talents like Blade Flurry and Dual Wield Specialization. If your group is without another source of Improved Expose Armor or you are assigned to it, you can move the points found in Improved Poisons there to receive the full benefit of your Sebacious Poison.

Gloves — Mutilate

Pants — Envenom

Chest — Deadly Brew

Waist — Poisoned Knife

Feet — Master of Subtlety

Helm — Focused Attacks

Wrist — Carnage

Back — Blunderbuss

Ring — Dagger Specialization

Ring — Nature Specialization

Mutilate is an incredibly strong ability and thanks to the changes in its Energy cost it will be our default ability in the Gloves slot. Saber Slash is another great option but unfortunately just deals less damage compared to Mutilate. Mutilate also synergizes incredibly well with the other Runes we have recommended such as Deadly Brew and Envenom.

Envenom deals by far the most damage of the options found on your Pants with Between the Eyes being much more focused on control and acting as a ranged finisher we default to Envenom as our primary way to spend excess combo points and apply additional poisons.

Deadly Brew applies a stack of Deadly Poison anytime you inflict any kind of a poison to a target, this synergizes incredibly well as Mutilate and Envenom deal additional damage to targets effected by poisons. Once you have learned Occult Poison I this will be applied instead of Deadly but you will still receive the same benefits as having Deadly Poison active on the target as well as the target having a stacking Magic damage taken debuff making our Poison damage even more potent.

Poisoned Knife is another great ability to deal DPS and should be used on cooldown once you have achieved 5 stacks of Deadly Poison/ Occult Poison I. If you have 5 stacks of either poison active on the target this will refund the full amount of energy it consumes making it a basically free source of damage while also applying a Combo Point to the target.

Master of Subtlety increases your damage by 10% after leaving Stealth just generally strengthening our opener against enemies but also allowing for Vanish to be used as a small DPS cooldown.

Focused Attacks is an incredible source of Energy that will allow you to cast more abilities over the course of an encounter. Due to the massive amount of Critical Strike rating we are likely to have and multipliers found throughout the Rouge talent tree like Malice and Improved Backstab we will have another near constant source of incoming Energy thanks to Focused Attacks.

Carnage gives us a considerable damage increase when we have a bleed effect active so this will require us to apply a bleed effect while doing our DPS rotation. With the addition of Sebacious Poison we will no longer have to spend combo points on Expose Armor allowing us much more freedom to use Rupture if you are not using Saber Slash while still maintaining our Slice and Dice.

Blunderbuss allows us to deal some AoE damage to up to 4 enemies in a frontal cone. While this is rather limited other options tend to perform worse compared to Blunderbuss and the focus should be on dealing as much damage as possible with what are rather limited options when it comes to dealing AoE damage. In a situation where you are required to deal consistent AoE damage consider swapping to Shuriken Toss on your waist.

Dagger Specialization and Nature Specialization greatly increases our chance to hit with Daggers and our Poisons. Dagger Specialization gives us 5 extra weapon skill which is a massive boost towards the 9% melee Hit cap required to hit bosses and allows us to itemize towards other stats. Nature Specialization increases the hit chance of our Poisons by 6% and while we are unlikely to reach the Spell Hit cap of 16% this is still a basically free increase to our DPS.

More engravings are likely to come out as we reach later phases, so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Rogue.

Relentless Strikes Your finish moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy. This talent is huge as Energy is your largest limiting factor and any chance to restore additional energy will translate immediately into additional damage.

Vile Poisons increases the damage dealt by poisons by 20% and makes them 40% resistant to dispels. While the Dispel aspect of this does not impact us much in PvE the additional 20% damage is massive as it synergizes incredibly well with Runes like Deadly Brew that is constantly applying poisons.

Improved Poisons Similar to Vile Poisons this talent just synergizes incredibly with the Runes we have chosen as Mutilate and Envenom deal additional damage to targets that are poisoned and Deadly Brew will proc more Deadly Poison/ Occult Poison I as a result of the increased application rate.

Cold Blood a guaranteed crit that not only deals additional damage but also gives a chance at regenerating additional energy thanks to our Relentless Strikes talent.

Blade Flurry increases your attack speed by 20% and causes your attacks to deal damage to an additional nearby target, while this will be used primarily for the attack speed its a great way to deal cleave damage even with the addition of abilities like Fan of Knives Rogue can have a tough time in 2-target cleave situations.