Assassination rogues fight with a dagger in each hand. Mutilate strikes with both daggers for two combo points, Slice and Dice turns the first points into 30 % faster white swings, and Eviscerate spends the rest. Poisons on both blades add Nature damage, and Mutilate hits 20 % harder while Deadly Poison is on the target. There is no burst window: Cold Blood and the consumables go out on the pull, then the same loop runs to the end. The build here scores 718.4 DPS on a one-minute single-boss fight, 19th of 25 damage specs.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• Short fights. On a one-minute single-boss fight the spec ranks 19th, its best place. Everything it presses on the pull is a larger share of one minute: Thistle Tea alone is worth 6.6 % there against 2.1 % on three minutes.
• Damage armor doesn't touch. Deadly Poison and Instant Poison are Nature damage, worth 8.0 % and 4.3 % of your damage. They roll on the spell table, and in Forever both gear hit and Precision count for it.
• Few moving parts. The whole rotation is five lines, and it keeps Slice and Dice up 82.2 % of the fight. None of it waits for a proc.

Weaknesses

• It trails most damage specs. On a one-minute single-boss fight it is 34.1 % behind the best one, and no fight lifts it into the top half of the table.
• No area damage. Against three bosses only Dragonbreath Chili, the Goblin Sapper Charge and, on the shorter fights, an area trinket reach the other two, so it drops to 23rd on a three-minute fight against three bosses.
• Two daggers or nothing. Mutilate needs a dagger in each hand, and the talent is worth 60.1 % of your damage, because every combo point comes from it.
• Three hit caps. Mutilate and Eviscerate stop missing at 9 % hit, poisons at 16 %, and dual-wielded white swings never do.

On every fight

The spec does best on short fights and worst on three bosses. A short fight gives the pull's cooldowns a bigger share. Extra bosses add nothing to Mutilate, Eviscerate or the poisons, only to the Chili and the sapper. Picking a fight in the table switches every page of the guide to it.

Races

Undead is the Horde pick on every fight through Touch of the Grave. On 5 % of your hits it drains 5 % of your maximum health from the boss as Shadow damage, which comes to 2.8 % of an Undead rogue's damage on a one-minute single-boss fight.

Night Elf is the Alliance pick on every fight with Elune's Light: 10 % crit for 15 seconds on a three-minute cooldown, pressed on the pull with everything else. Human and Dwarf get nothing here: their weapon bonuses are for swords and maces, and Mutilate needs daggers.

What a Rogue brings to the raid

Expose Armor is the debuff a rogue adds. In Forever it removes as much armor as five Sunder Armors, and the two share one slot. The benchmark raid has both, so the table only shows what Expose Armor adds while a warrior's Sunders are still stacking. The simulated rogue never spends a finisher on it. The raid's copy is simply there from the pull.

Changes

The table tracks this build's result on this fight through each simulator and game-data update, with the details of each on the Updates page. The rogue rotations were corrected on 12 October, when Cold Blood started waiting for a 5-point Eviscerate.