Combat???

[ChristopherD87]

Actually leveling my first rogue, done a couple to 20 or 30 but nothing past that. I am not at 86 with mine, and I see a lot of end game rogues choose combat. My question is why combat and not assassination???? Cuz IMO from what I see I can take out mobs and single target better with assassination. And, the combat rotation seems very Cd dependant and clunky to me, i'm not sure if I am doing it right or not, but does combat surpass assassination???

[-Raer-]

All 3 Rogue specs are currently viable and within a good margin of one another. This leads to people playing what they like or what drops they get. Most Rogues were pigeon-holed into playing Assassination for all of Throne of Thunder and a lot of T14 as well, so as they are able to branch out from that, they do.

Personally I hate Assassination. It feels too slow (or did in T14, now it's pretty smooth-ish), one of it's cooldowns ties you to a target for 20-30s and is a generic +% damage, and I don't like the idea of poisons tied to weapons. 2 of those 3 are subjective and will differ from person to person though.

Another reason for Combat becoming more prevalent is the amount of cleave in this tier. There are few fights that cleave is not wanted, and those fights Combat does good on as well. Also, there is a trinket that reduces the cooldown on most offensive and defensive abilities that works in sync with Restless Blades very well. This pushes the up time of your cooldowns way, way up.

[Kael]

Nothing about leveling has any application at all to end-game.

At the moment, with proper play, heroic gear, and specifically AoC (a trinket), Combat in equal play is out-damaging assassination on single target and cleave encounters. It's extremely CD dependent, but that has nothing to do with performing well - but the specs are not so far apart you can't play assassination (or even subtlety) on every fight.

[Squirl]

I would not judge relative spec performance at max level (and near-max gear) by spec performance while leveling.