PVE Assassination or Combat.

[Irishman]

I personally find Combat the most boring, clunky and fiddly spec of any class i've ever played (And i've tried warlock in all 3 specs).

Assassination flows incredibly well and there's only a handful of skills you actively make use of in PvE.

[aresnic]

I personally find Combat the most boring, clunky and fiddly spec of any class i've ever played (And i've tried warlock in all 3 specs).

I assure you that sub is much clunkier and fiddlier.

That stated, it's also the best for pretty much every fight in DS except for Ultraxion. Definitely worth learning. Plus it makes the most out of all the crit Blizz decided to throw on gear this tier, whereas itemization alone makes Assassination two steps behind the other specs.

[Verain]

Right now, all three specs are actually pretty damned good. But if you are going to stick with one for this whole tier, I would suggest combat.

This is a pretty thin tier, though not as anemic as firelands. There are only 8 bosses.

1)- Morchok is a single target fight. On such a fight, sub's stronger damage, plus the ease of staying in, makes it quite good. But EVERY rogue spec is ok at this kind of fight. You won't have any problems running assassination. The two big strengths of assassination- aoe and execute- don't matter much, but the boss does do a boosted damage phase when low, so execute technically helps you shorten the hardest part of the fight. Combat brings nothing special to this fight, as its tricks (flurry, burst, non positional attacks) don't matter much.

2)- YS summons adds that hit somewhat hard and have moderate health. They are normally clumped directly on the boss. The fight features regular target swapping, but most guilds excuse their rogues from that duty. If your guild somehow missed the part where the devs pretty much apologized to the rogues about the target swap and promised to maybe fix it in mop, then you'll probably want to avoid combat on this fight. In any event, since aoe is relevant, both mutilate and combat can perform, but now a lot depends on your teammates. If they are all excellent aoe classes, then your damage as mutilate won't be amazing- the mutilate damage has to stack to be great, and if your team is on the ball, this likely won't happen. Basically, any spec but sub for this fight can perform well, and sub can do a lot of boss damage.

3)- Zon'ozz has a phase where the boss is tanked next to a big cleavable add. This means combat can help your group if you don't already have tons of the "free" damage from other classes, rogues, etc. If you do have these things and intend on staying single target most of the time, sub and assassination can do well. While sub is normally higher single target damage, assassination has an execute, and this boss takes more damage towards the end of the fight. I believe sub is outdamaging assassination on pure boss damage for this fight, but most rogues run combat because most guilds can make use of the extra claw damage.

4)- Hagara has burst phases, and a lot of running while she stands around invincible. Sub and Combat both do well here, but mutilate has sort of a hard time with the cooldowns, at least compared to the other specs. This is just a fight where the decent burst cooldowns are stronger.

5)- Ultraxxion does not allow mutilate to execute. If he did, mutilate would be much higher on the charts. He doesn't allow sub to do much at all. If you are any spec but combat on this fight, you are probably doing it to mess around.

6)- Warmaster Blackhorn has a section of the fight where both he and a big dragon can be tanked adjacent. Both are bosses, and both have a bunch of health to get through. Combat greatly aids this phase, ending it faster while still delivering massive damage to the main boss thus shortening the fight. Sub's extra mobility might help a bit in p1, but assassination's tricks seem not really applicable. Any spec but combat seems ill advised on this fight in heroic.

7)- For spine, see the spine guide. Since most of this fight for dps is bursting tendons, a special spec (based on sub) is favored.

8)- I can't comment yet.

[Timujingeo]

Just for a change I tried Assass. on hc YS; we run two rogues and as we're both usually combat I thought it might help with master poisoner/fokking the adds. I always pooled energy/dropped a 5 point envenom/ had a 5 point rupture on the boss before going to town on the adds and yet still did less damage than I do normally as combat with bladeflurry.
So for me personally, combat is still the preferred spec.

[Flandersson]

I'd say stick to Combat during progression to help your guild the most, and when your guild can comfortly kill the farm bosses you could play whichever spec you prefer.

[Sesshou]

Just for a change I tried Assass. on hc YS; we run two rogues and as we're both usually combat I thought it might help with master poisoner/fokking the adds. I always pooled energy/dropped a 5 point envenom/ had a 5 point rupture on the boss before going to town on the adds and yet still did less damage than I do normally as combat with bladeflurry.
So for me personally, combat is still the preferred spec.

The only way I see assassination doing better on that fight is if your raid is really slow at killing those adds, and I don't just mean the last 1-2 of them. When we do it, the only time we have a lot of adds for a decent period of time is after yellow/red/black followed by something else with black. If theres only 2-3 stragglers that are slow to die, you aren't really going to do much better with FoK than BF, and then theres assassination's lower single target dps.

Also if having high dps on the adds is a problem, I'd say its likely not the case that you are going to have lots of extra dps on the boss. Gimping your single target may not be the best idea as if he enrages you're just as screwed.

[Torstein]

Dont.go.assassination.

If your looking for Maximum output that is <:

[macdisciple]

I out dps every rogue in LFR as assassination (of course I might out-gear the others or they could be bad as well), and I'm tops in my 10-mqan raid group 2 of every 3 bosses in nDS...something like that. If I played combat, perhaps my dps would be higher, but it's sufficient for what I'm doing and I don't like combat. Sub? Meh....people might do well with it, but there's no big reason for me to change atm.

[Sesshou]

I out dps every rogue in LFR as assassination (of course I might out-gear the others or they could be bad as well), and I'm tops in my 10-mqan raid group 2 of every 3 bosses in nDS...something like that. If I played combat, perhaps my dps would be higher, but it's sufficient for what I'm doing and I don't like combat. Sub? Meh....people might do well with it, but there's no big reason for me to change atm.

Ok but thats just a simple case of either you having a lot more gear and/or skill. I mean I out dps'd everyone earlier when I was killing time waiting for people to log on in LFR on ultrax with my thunderfury mh (2nd highest dps was 26k... how in the world...) But hey clearly if you are beating your raid as assassination, you being assassination is the least of your raids problems, so I can see why you would be hesitant to switch in your case.

[Burritaco]

I sware to god if one more person says that he gets top in LFR with assassination i'm going to kill someone.

That's not hard, try going combat and then pulling 15k higher then the second place, even that is not very difficult.

Get the stage one daggers and proceed to pull 40k dps.

[Khwaj]

I out dps every rogue in LFR as assassination (of course I might out-gear the others or they could be bad as well), and I'm tops in my 10-mqan raid group 2 of every 3 bosses in nDS...something like that. If I played combat, perhaps my dps would be higher, but it's sufficient for what I'm doing and I don't like combat. Sub? Meh....people might do well with it, but there's no big reason for me to change atm.

thats cos its "LFR", ive been to lfr and top3 dps as sub pvP spec jsut for lolz, wrong spec, pvp glpyhs, etc, so top dps in lfr is a poor example for dps comparison
assas is still a competitive dps spec, but its not the best (still waiting for more threads to appear for legendary debate for proc)

even though u might be top dps in ur raid group, if you get someone as equalled gear and skill who played combat spec, they might get an additional 1-2k dps xtra over u, maybe more
we arent saying that u shouldnt be assas spec, if its sufficient for ur group and u prefer it then by all means stick with, but if ur in a hardore guild that needs all teh xtra dps that u can get, tehn switch over to the higher dps spec

[spyros2283]

I always was an assasination guy , like the poisons theme of the spec and its more iconic for rogue class , although I respeced to combat for better dps.
In assasination spec you do crappy damage when fighting ads because the lack of blade furry. Although I love assasination I vote for combat