A Look Back at Assassination Rogue in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist - Editorial

wowhead.com:

With the sun setting on Dragonflight and The War Within on the horizon, our Assassination Rogue Writer, Whispyr, offers a retrospective highlighting Assassination's journey in Dragonflight and shares their hopes for the spec's next evolution with a War Within Wishlist.

Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists

Assassination Retrospective & War Within Wishlist

Assassination has seen a lot of ups and downs throughout Dragonflight, receiving a new capstone in 10.0.5, as well as a bigger talent tree rework alongside the other rogue specs in 10.2. Let's take a look back at how the spec has evolved, talk about what's working well (and not working well), before diving into a small wishlist for the Hero Talents coming with The War Within. Before we start, I do want to thank those who have helped share their views on the spec over the last weeks. Having another view on a topic helps the feedback cycle immensely and drives conversation. I appreciate you all so much for it.

Reflecting on the Past

Assassination going into Dragonflight had its issues, but it had strong roots in some core foundational concepts that drove players to the spec. A lot of the spec at the start of 10.0 could be summarized as follows:

Mythic+ Woes
Going into 10.0, the situation for Assassination in Mythic+ was quite dire. The spec had serious issues in the talent tree trying to juggle single target and AoE talents, often failing at doing either successfully without severely hampering the other. While the lack of AoE was addressed at the start of the expansion, it wouldn't be until 10.2 that the vision would be clear. For the first half of the expansion, this ended up leaving Assassination clinging to