How the build works
This Assassination Rogue build is a crit engine. Malice gives you 5% crit on every attack and every poison, and Lethality raises the crit damage bonus of your builders, Mutilate included, by 20%. Everything else in the tree keeps your Combo Points and Energy flowing so those crits keep coming.
Ruthlessness gives each finisher a 60% chance to start the next cycle with a Combo Point already on the target. Relentless Strikes refunds 25 Energy with a 20% chance per Combo Point spent, so a 5-point finisher refunds Energy every time. Improved Slice and Dice adds 45% to the buff’s duration, which means fewer finishers spent on upkeep and more on Eviscerate.
Cold Blood is your burst button: a guaranteed crit on the next Sinister Strike, Backstab, Ambush, Eviscerate or Mutilate. Remorseless Attacks gives 40% extra crit to your next builder for 20 seconds after a kill, so it rewards pulling the next mob right away.
Mutilate is the level-30 point. It hits with both weapons for 75% weapon damage plus a flat bonus, deals 20% more to poisoned targets and awards 2 Combo Points. It requires a dagger in each hand.
Leveling tips
Take Malice first: crit helps every attack you have from level 10. Ruthlessness and Improved Slice and Dice follow, so Lethality is open at 21. Until 30 you build with Sinister Strike, or Backstab if you carry a dagger. Ambush from Stealth becomes your opener at 18.
Poisons arrive at 20 through the class quest. Use Instant Poison while questing and Deadly Poison for longer fights. Assassination has no AoE, so pull one mob at a time and finish it before you start on the next. In dungeons, let the tank build threat and keep Feint ready.
Changes in WoW Forever
Mutilate and the new Venom finisher make this tree about poisons and finishers. Poisons now scale with Attack Power and can crit, and Malice covers them too. Seal Fate no longer requires Cold Blood. Puncturing Wounds is the old Improved Backstab and now also boosts Mutilate crit, but it sits in Combat. Note that the talent text we use comes from client build 70630 without hotfixes, and one calculator that includes hotfixes shows a higher flat bonus for Mutilate, so the exact number may differ in game.
Toward level 60
The plan most guides share is a 38/11/2 build: Seal Fate, Improved Poisons, Vile Poisons and the Venom capstone in Assassination, then Precision, Puncturing Wounds and Improved Eviscerate from Combat. Murder against Vigor is still being argued about. Treat this as provisional until people have played past level 30.
