Rogues are the masters of stealth and surprise. Capable of sneaking up on to their victims and dealing massive amounts of damage in a very short time, a well geared and played Rogue can compete with the best of the DPS classes.  Today we will talk about the highest damage output build for a Mutilate (assassination) rogue using the best in slot gear from prior to patch 3.3. Disclaimer: This is a build from patch 3.22, in 3.3 with the new rupture-less  cycle this is subject to change. Ok, seeing as this is 3.3 and all this spec is slightly dated, however it is still more than capable of pumping out some completely dominating dps.

Gear

Example Gear Patch 3.3

The Build:

Assassination Rogue Build

Glyphs

Major

• Hunger For Blood
• Rupture (the build shows tricks of the trade glyph – your choice)
• Mutilate

Minor

• Your choice in the minor glyph category; whatever floats your boat baby.

Priorities:

Make sure hunger for blood doesn’t drop off and Slice and dice is maintained by envenom. Poisons: main-hand Instant Poison, Offhand Deadly Poison.

The rotation:

1. Garrote
2. Start Hunger for blood
3. Start Slice and Dice
4. Mutilate to 4 or 5 combo points
5. Envenom
6. Mutilate to 4 or 5 combo points
7. Rupture
8 Go to step 4

Being that this example is for a target that’s not moving, ie your not chasing it around or moving constantly to avoid those nasty void zones, etc. You simply sneak up behind your target, Garrote for the initial bleed and first Combo point, start up Hunger for blood and slice and dice. After that its Mutilate to 4 or 5 combo points (Depending on how much time is left on your slice and dice you may want to envenom before rupture in order to get a full 20 sec duration), Rupture, Mutilate some more, Envenom which also conveniently refreshes your slice and dice, and back to Mutilate. Be sure to refresh Hunger for Blood before it drops off, and don’t let rupture drop off.  In a Raid scenario where you have multiple classes with bleeds on the target you may opt to skip garrote. Mutilate for some quick combo points, start up slice and dice, and Hunger for blood, then jump right into the rotation.

With the best in slot gear the dps for this build can turn out a whopping 10,204 avg dps, or a theoretical maximum dps of 11,052! Take that mages.

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Interesting Items In The Next Patch

We recently put up a page for the Patch WoW links at Blizz. But we also want to give you some more insights incase you don’t go into patch notes like some folks (and you know who you are). So here are the more interesting tidbits coming from the current PTR notes.

Titansteel bars will no longer have a cooldown, expect prices to drop a bit since supply will be able to more adequetly match demand. The same thing applies to Moonshroud, Spellweave and Ebonweave – no more cooldowns on those.

Random dungeons have been such a hit that the concept is moving into the Battlegrounds. Using this system will give you extra honor equivalent to 30 kills the first time through each day and an extra 15 for further BG’s the same day. Since honor per kill is being doubled, that’s going to mean a lot more honor in random BG’s than queueing for specific battles. Marks of honor for specific battles are also being removed, we can only assume that those items which required marks will now be purchased with honor instead.

the deserter debuff for bailing on a random dungeon has been increased to 30 minutes. leaving a random party for any reason will trigger this debuff, which overwrites the usual 15 minute debuff. This will prevent some of the goonery for instances like Occulus, where people leave the second they see where they are. Honestly, just make the run mon.

For holiday bosses, you can now queue for the encounter without having to do the prequel quests each year. As long as you’ve done the boss before at least once you can just queue up random and go spank them.

But the big one is that those worthless Frozen orbs will now actually be useful for more than just vendoring. A new NPC is being added in Dalaran that will convert your Frozen orbs to other items. Here is the list of what he sells in exchange for frozen orbs (consider this to be currently accurate but Blizz has been knows to change their mind at the last minute).  You can see the (current) list of items Frozo is selling at the link below.

Items you can get from Frozo the Renowned

Frost Lotus for a Runed Orb – that’s going to help some.  It’s also going to raise the value of the orbs a bit and lower values for certain eternals.  Since only one orb drops per heroic, there shouldn’t be a huge change in Ah prices for the items above, but beware the first week or two while everyone blows through all their extra orbs they might have sitting around.

I’m kicking myself now for finally vendoring about 60 of them, but you might be able to snag a few cheap stack off the AH before this change goes live.  There are also some class changes you’ll want to take a look at.  Once again DK’s are getting the most fiddling while most other classes remain fairly static.

It’s not what we would call a Dominating patch, but Frozo and the random battlegrounds will be a nice couple of changes.

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First Aid Leveling Tips

Yes, I know what the ‘pros’ will say, that a First Aid guide for WoW is silly.  But maybe they don’t know everything about everything.  And yes, leveling first aid isn’t really on the level of brain activity that might be required for brain surgery or calculus – but if you would rather NOT have to think about it any more than necessary, it’s nice to have it all listed out for you neat and clean.

At the very minimum it will save you a couple of trips back and forth between the AH and the trainers.  Really, if you could just go to the AH and buy every single scrap of cloth you needed (and you already knew exactly how much you would be needing) and could just stand at the trainer and hit the ‘create all’ button and come back every few minutes – that’s not something a total nub would do.  Just a little Dominating.

But even in first aid in wow there is a little trick we can let you in on that will save you s tidy bit of gold through the middle of leveling first aid.  And you wish you had thought of it – really.

Remember back in the day having to go all the way out to Theramore or Hammerfall for your artisan First Aid quest?  Triage is not required any more, but those of you who skip it are missing out on a couple of things.  Blizz giveth, and Blizz replaceth that way.  Not exactly biblical, I know, but . . .

Anyway, when Blizz removed the requirement for the Triage quest, they added an incentive in the form of a XP bonus that doesn’t seem to have a level cap.  In other words, you can still go grab the first aid quests at any point on your way to 80 and get XP based on your level.  Not bad to snag 10,000 to 20,000 experience out of a foofoo quest eh?

And if that’s not enough for you, just go out there during your first aid powerleveling work to save yourself a tidy bit of gold.  Enough for a decent repair of your mains T10 gear after a few wipes – seriously.  You see, the good doctors will train you for Heavy Mageweave, Runecloth and Heavy Runecloth Bandages absolutely free if you complete the quest.

All of those first aid recipes will set you back 37 gold 50 silver if you buy them anywhere else.  Excuse me, but I can turn that 37 gold into about 50 in a couple day’s work – throwing it to some trainer is not my idea of a good time.  Getting to Theramore may be a pain (hush Horde, Hammerfall is easy), but not enough of a pain to blow almost 40g.

So there you have it, a decent couple of tips out of something you thought was completely worthless.  You really shouldn’t judge before you read.  If you already knew about this little trick, you’re not a nub.  If you thought you were REALLY pro and didn’t know it – tsk.  If you’re glad to know it, stick around, we find this kind of thing all the time.  It’s why we (and you) can Dominate.

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