Great Spec Changes But Lacking Otherwise - Assassination Rogue Class Changes and Tier Set Review
Great Spec Changes But Lacking Otherwise - Assassination Rogue Class Changes and Tier Set Review
Our Assassination Rogue writer, Whispyr, discusses changes to resource economy, reworked and new talents, and the missed opportunities of the patch.
All 12.1 Class Changes and Tier Set Reviews
Some of our class writers have written up their first impressions of the 12.1 class changes and tier set reviews. We've listed all of them below.
New Talents, More Tuning
Assassination on the 12.1 PTR has received extensive tuning, along with a rework of the first apex talent and a new capstone talent. For completeness, the class/hero talent tuning has also been included.
Assassination
Developers' notes: We're making some updates to Assassination's Energy economy in Curse of Ula'tek. We aren't happy with how the Rank 1 Implacable apex talent is playing – it's unintuitive for optimal play to intentionally let Envenom drop. We're updating its design so refreshing Envenom late is consistently the best way to play and giving it consistent Energy recovery value. We're also making some changes aimed at increasing talent build options.
- New Talent: Unstable Toxin – Envenom damage increased by 18%, but its duration is reduced by 2 seconds.
- Apex Talent: Implacable (Rank 1) has been updated – Envenom damage increased by 10%. Envenom now restores 2 Energy per combo point spent.
- Internal Bleeding has been updated – Now triggers from casting Kidney Shot and Rupture, rather than also being applied when copying Ruptures with Crimson Tempest. Damage increased by 10%.
- Iron Wire has been updated – Garrotes applied from stealth or during the Improved Garrote window now silence the target for 5 seconds. Damage reduction behavior unchanged.
- Dashing Scoundrel has been updated – Envenom's effect now also increases the critical strike chance of your weapon poisons by 10% (was 5%). Your Energy generation is increased by 4% for each lethal poison on your weapons.
- All damage dealt increased by 3%.
- Deathmark increases the damage of your Rupture, Garrote, and Lethal Poisons by 75% (was 100%).
- Kingsbane damage reduced by 15%.
- Shrouded Suffocation increases Garrote damage by 30% (was 20%).
- Avulsion increases Rupture damage by 25% (was 20%).
- Motivated Murderer Energy increased to 30% (was 20%).
- Rapid Injection damage bonus increased to 20%/40% (was 15%/30%).
- Venomous Wounds generates more Energy when multiple targets are affected by your bleeds.
- Blindside's chance to trigger reduced to 10% (was 15%), and 20% when the target is at low health (was 30%).
- Poison Bomb's visual has been adjusted to make other important visuals on top of it easier to see.
- Several talents have changed positions in the talent tree.
- Deadly Momentum has been removed.
Class
- Thistle Tea is now a choice talent – Players may now choose between the existing version, which casts automatically at low Energy in addition to being usable actively, and a new version that must be cast actively.
- Atrophic Poison now reduces damage dealt by 4% (was 3%).
- Atrophic Poison duration increased to 60 seconds (was 10 seconds). Duration remains unchanged in PvP combat.
Hero Talents - Fatebound
- Deal Fate now has a 60% chance to grant an extra combo point when you Seal Fate (was 100%).
The developers' note outlines two main goals for these changes: making Envenom's gameplay more intuitive and increasing build options.
More Energy In, Same Energy Out
Reworking Implacable might be the most impactful change in the bunch. Instead of requiring players to wait until the buff from Envenom has dropped to get energy back, the new effect immediately refunds energy upon casting Envenom. Other energy-related talents, such as Dashing Scoundrel, also received changes, now granting baseline energy regeneration instead of flat energy on poison crit. Motivated Murderer has been buffed to 30%, and the proc chance on Blindside has gone down. Venomous Wounds has also received some changes when scaling into AoE.
It's a lot of energy tuning, but ultimately these changes leave Assassination slightly faster overall, especially scaling into 5-8 target AoE, where energy income is roughly 10-15% higher. This is also dependent on the talents taken and on powerful haste steroids, such as Bloodlust and trinkets, which skew resource income, making it difficult to pin down exactly where the difference will ultimately fall.
Red and Green into the Venomous Abyss
Assassination is constantly balancing bleed damage with envenom and poison damage, and the tuning showcases this duality quite well. Talents that were already powerful and core to builds in Midnight such as Shrouded Suffocation and Rapid Injection have both received buffs; cooldowns have gotten nerfs on both fronts, with Deathmark and Kingsbane seeing reductions to match with the rest of the patch. Avulsion, which was previously not taken, has also gotten a slight buff.
Altogether, Assassination is actually going to be seeing a bit more bleed damage this patch depending on final tuning and talent choices, but breakdowns in general will remain similar. The impactful change here ends up being in cleave situations, where the changed position of talents and buffs to bleed talents combo into a noticeable roughly 10% uplift in those pesky 2-4 target AoE fights.
New Talents, New Interactions
New to the tree is Unstable Toxin, a kiss-curse effect that both increases the damage of Envenom while reducing the duration of the buff. The most impactful interaction to keep in mind here is with the newly buffed Rapid Injection and the ever-powerful Inspiring Strike. Unstable Toxin takes the place of a capstone talent at the bottom of the tree. It should (with proper tuning) serve as a more difficult but more rewarding rotation, leaning further into Envenom's buff-management aspects. From initial testing, the most practical application of the new talent seems to be in heavy AoE situations rather than in single target, where the buff uptime is far more difficult to manage.
For mythic+ players, Assassination Rogues are getting an option for more utility through a change to Iron Wire, which now spreads from Crimson Tempest. This effect currently notably does not refresh or extend on reapplication. It is unknown if this is intended. Related to bleed spreading, Internal Bleeding no longer spreads from Crimson Tempest and will require a self-cast Rupture or Kidney Shot.
The Iron Wire change will introduce some decision-making for keystone pushers between the silences and an extra 1-2% DPS. The loss of Internal Bleeding automatically spreading can be covered by simply taking Canny Strikes instead, and should not cause any large changes to talent builds.
Season 2 Tier Set Bonuses
Blizzard has also revealed the Season 2 tier set bonuses, which are available for testing on the PTR.
Assassination
- 2-Set Bonus: Envenom damage increased by 10% and it increases your damage dealt by 3%.
- 4-Set Bonus: Deadly Poison increases your bleed damage on the target by 10%. Auto-attacks against targets with your Amplifying Poison deal 2% increased damage per stack. Wound Poison hits a second time.
The bonuses here focus on increasing Nature damage and Bleed damage through various means. Long-time Assassination players will recognize this tier set as another installment of the now infamous "10% Mastery" bonuses.
The bonuses themselves are generic buffs that provide no change to gameplay and do not impact player talent builds. The only question the tier set can invoke is regarding Amplifying Poison, which is a fairly standard pick across all content and most likely will continue to be standard going into Season 2.
Did Blizzard Hit Their Goals?
In short, yes on the spec changes. Unstable Toxin, the changes to the tree positions, and Iron Wire provide some new choices and ideas for players to explore; the reworked apex talent is a notable simplification, but Assassination as a whole should play and feel very similar to Season 1. Personally, I think these changes are thought out and well executed.
The Envenom-clipping gameplay, along with these changes, is reminiscent of Amirdrassil's design, which was heavily praised by the community. It also allows players to no longer worry about tracking the buff on Implacable, which has been notoriously buggy in Season 1 and a common pain point, especially for newer rogues who had to learn to play around a buff that their UI refused to track for half of the season. Bleed enjoyers are also getting some love this patch with the buffs to Shrouded Suffocation and Avulsion, and can look forward to some more red on their meters if they so wish.
Especially with Iron Wire now spreading, it's hard not to see these changes as a net positive for Assassination Rogues heading into Curse of Ula'tek.
