Assassination got some pretty significant buffs in 3.2.2 to make sure that it could continue to scale as well as Combat has. In short, your Envenoms no longer consume your Deadly Poison (when talented via Master Poisoner), and Envenom gets an extra 2% boost from attack power per combo point. I knew this change was coming since they announced it just after 3.2 hit, and I’ve been trying to acquire Daggers of equal or better quality to my Swords. As luck would have it, I reached that goal on Thursday and I have been testing Assassination since then.
I think that the best way to summarize the differences between the current Combat and Assassination specs is that Combat has controlled burst, whereas Assassination does not. There are the three major DPS boosting cooldowns for Combat: Adrenaline Rush, Blade Flurry, and Killing Spree. I can blow them all whenever they’re available, or save them for when I need solid burst damage. Assassination only has 1 true cooldown, Cold Blood, which really isn’t all that great, as most Rogues aren’t hurting for crit chance these days. Your only other option is to fake another cooldown by using vanish offensively to activate Overkill.
You might assume that I’m not thrilled about Assassination, but that’s a false assumption. While it lacks in on demand burst damage, Assassination, It makes up for with BIG numbers. In a collection of 219-232 ilevel gear, I’ve seen Envenom crit for 14k, and that was in a 5 man. So while I can control the spikes in Combat damage, I’ve no real control over the spikey nature of Assassination’s damage.
I have yet to raid with the 3.2.2 Assassination yet, but from what I’ve seen so far, Assassination seems to be producing more DPS than Combat at the moment. I went from pulling 3-3.2k unbuffed on a dummy while Combat to 3.2-3.5k unbuffed after I switched back to Assassination. If my schedule permits it, I’ll be testing this out in earnest this evening in a TOC10.