Rogue Hero Talents — The War Within (11.1.0)

This page is specifically about Hero Talents in The War Within. If you want to learn more about the best regular talents for Assassination Rogue, check out our Talents page:

Deathstalker is the more involved Hero Talent Tree for Assassination, adding a variety of Plague (Shadow & Nature) damage to your toolkit by enhancing several of your abilities and having some minor rotational impact. Its key mechanic is the application of Deathstalker's Mark and the maintenance of the Mark through Darkest Night, which will greatly boost your Energy regeneration and direct damage.

Fatebound is the more passive Hero Talent Tree for Assassination Rogue. It is centered around the idea of 'flipping coins' whenever you use a damaging finisher while hoping that you flip the same side of the Fatebound Coin multiple times in a row. The more you roll the same side of the coin back to back, the more damage you will deal, while certain Hero Talents help you guarantee the outcome of your coin flips for added consistency.

Fatebound is a worse option than Deathstalker numerically, and only worth playing in this environment if you really like the theme of it – but it will come at a minor DPS loss. This is largely due to how much of Assassination's damage comes through Envenom which gets major buffs to its damage through Deathstalker, which the generic damage boosts from Fatebound cannot keep up with.

Deathstalker is the go-to choice for Mythic+ due to its funnel-damage properties, as well as having useful boosts to Fan of Knives and Crimson Tempest, and buffing Rupture. While Fatebound offers some damage bonuses as well, Deathstalker is the preferred pick for M+ of any key-level. You can still play Fatebound if you want, but it will negatively affect your DPS output in a notable way.

4.

Best Hero Talent Builds for Assassination Rogue

Deathstalker Standard Build Fatebound Standard Build

5.

Best Deathstalker Build for Assassination Rogue

The Deathstalker build is the same for Mythic+ and Single-Target. While there are a few DPS choice nodes in the Deathstalker Tree, the chosen ones in the Tree below are numerically superior to the alternatives.

There might be some unique situations where Ethereal Cloak or Shroud of Night can make a difference, but unless you can leverage the extended duration for some tangible benefit, the currently selected options are more useful.

5.

Best Fatebound Build for Assassination Rogue

The Fatebound build is the same for Mythic+ and Single-Target. The tree is entirely passive, augmenting your flips and helping you generate longer chains of flipping your coin.

Two of the choice nodes are simply for Utility, with Death's Arrival allowing you to quickly Shadowstep to a ranged party member and back to the boss, potentially gaining you a second or two of additional boss uptime. You can pick between these choices freely, as they are all low impact and situational, to the point where they do not make much of a difference either way.

The only DPS choice node ends up with us picking Inevitable End, as it is simply stronger than the alternative talent by ~1% of our total DPS.

For more general information on your rotation, make sure to check out our rotation guide:

Make sure to always use Envenom with 7 CP when you have Darkest Night active, in order to re-apply Deathstalker's Mark to your main target.

This is the only rotational change for Deathstalker, and you will want to make sure that you do not run into the issue of having to refresh Rupture while Darkest Night is active. You will want to keep track of how many more finishers you have to cast before gaining the Darkest Night buff to avoid this from happening.

There are two minor rotational changes you can make depending on the amount of flips you have during your opener.

If you have a 5-flip in your opener and you have not used Vanish yet, you can use it to guarantee the next two rolls to hit your Fateful Ending proc early into the pull.

You will also want to macro Cold Blood into Cold Blood as this will naturally get you the most benefit out of this specific aspect of the Fatebound hero talent tree.