Kyrian
- The Kyrian of Bastion will empower your Rogue with the ability to use Echoing Reprimand. This ability, while complex in wording, is actually fairly simple to use. The ability itself simply does damage and generates 2 Combo Points for a very low cost. Upon use, your 2nd, 3rd, or 4th Combo Point will be chosen at random to become “Animacharged”. The next time this Animacharge combo point is used on a damage dealing finisher, it will be as if 7 combo points were spent. This will only have a fairly slight impact on gameplay, as eventually you will land on the correct combo point just through executing your rotation normally. It is not a gain to try to manipulate your combo points in an inefficient way in order to use this Animacharge earlier. You will simply enjoy the benefit of a very long duration Rupture or Crimson Tempest, or a FAT Envenom hit, depending on when you use the effect.
Initially, I felt that this ability was “clunky” and didn’t quite fit into Rogue gameplay given the randomness of combo point generation due to Seal Fate. But the more I play with it, the more comfortable the ability feels, and I’ve actually grown to rather enjoy it! - The conduit for this ability is Reverberation. While this effect is not bad, there are other more powerful conduits you will likely use in place of it. We’ll discuss these in detail further into the article.
- Secondly, the Kyrian Covenant will grant access to Summon Steward, who when summoned will bring you a Phial of Serenity, along with allowing you to change your talents without the use of a Tome of the Still Mind, and compliment one of your friends! I commonly refer to the Phial as a Cloak of Healthstoneform, as it combines the effects of many other useful defensive spells into one. Importantly, it also does not share a cooldown with Healthstone or Spiritual Healing Potion, making this an extremely powerful item in both raiding and mythic plus alike. Even in situations where you can’t make good use of the debuff removal, or where Cloak of Shadows is already useful enough, having an extra health potion can very well save your life.
Necrolord
- The Necrolords of Maldraxxus offer aspiring Rogues the use of Serrated Bone Spike. This short cooldown, charge-based ability deals low damage initially, but leaves a permanent Bleed on the target. Additionally, it will generate more combo points per Bone Spike you have out already. Assassination Rogues benefit even more from this spell, as your Mastery scales the damage of the Bleed. It’s worth noting the Bleed is only removed if the target either heals to full HP, or dies. Upon removal through either of these methods, you will be refunded a charge and can reapply the Bone Spike to a new target.
This ability fits into the rotation rather smoothly as simply an extremely efficient way to spend your energy when building combo points, and replaces either a Fan of Knives or Mutilate periodically. It feels especially nice at the beginning of a mythic plus pull, before you’ve been able to stabilize your energy. Casting three Bone Spikes generates you 6 combo points for only 30 energy as long as they’re on 3 different targets!
Sudden Fractures can be used to empower the Bleed portion of this ability, causing it to sometimes deal damage twice. At lower ranks and current tuning this will likely not be used, however it looks to scale well into later ranks so keep an eye out for this to potentially change.
Finally, the Signature Ability of the Necrolords is
Fleshcraft. The strength of this shield can be empowered by consuming nearby corpses, and additional effects can be added through Soulbind traits if you choose to align yourself with the Necrolords. The ability itself can find some use defensively, but is generally pretty lackluster. With that said, some of the enhancements in the Soulbind tree can shift the power more favorably.
Night Fae
- If you choose to side with the Night Fae of Ardenweald, your Assassination Rogue will gain access to Sepsis. This ability applies a Poison DoT that deals high damage, and “pops” for a moderate hit on expiration. If the “pop” damage is allowed to occur before the target dies, you will gain access to an additional Ambush or Cheap Shot cast. If the target dies prematurely, the cooldown on the ability will be reduced. Typically you’ll want to use this on cooldown and intend for the DoT to tick its full duration. An exception to this would be when using the Niya soulbind in dungeons. Trying to “snipe” dying targets to get the Cooldown Reduction will allow more uses, and more uptime on Grove Invigoration.
Since the change to this covenant ability (even though it was a necessary change), I find myself very bored with the ability. A mediocre DoT and an extra Ambush every 90 seconds just isn’t what I was hoping for from a covenant ability. - Septic Shock can be applied to your Soulbind tree to increase the damage of the DoT portion of Sepsis. This conduit follows the theme of the previous two covenant ability conduits, in that it’s decent but unlikely to be used.
- Soulshape is an incredible mobility tool, and effectively acts like another Sprint with a teleport attached to it. Other, less mobile, classes will find a bit better use for it than Rogues, but that’s not to say this ability isn’t awesome!
Venthyr
- Last, and unfortunately perhaps least, choosing to align with the Venthyr of Revendreth will allow your rogue to use Flagellation. This ability I liken a bit to the trinket Ashvane's Razor Coral, from The Eternal Palace raid. When used it deals low damage immediately and leaves a debuff behind, causing the debuffed target to take additional damage per each combo point you spend. Each combo point also applies stacks to this debuff, which can be consumed by reactivating Flagellation to grant your Rogue a large Haste buff. It is worth noting that you can swap targets and still build stacks on this debuff so long as you are within its very forgiving range. Currently, it appears simply using this ability on CD deems the best results, however there could potentially be optimizations made around syncing the Haste buff with Vendetta.
Initially, I was very excited for the rework of this ability, given how much I enjoyed playing with Razor Coral. The addition of the 90 second cooldown has killed a bit of the hype for me here though. I still think it’s a cool idea, and hope they’re not done iterating on it, because I think it has amazing potential! - The Lashing Scars conduit provides a decent increase to the initial damage of this ability, but currently looks far too weak to see serious use.
- Door of Shadows is the Venthyr's signature ability, and is something you can certainly do some cool tricks with. It functions as a targetted teleport with a cast time. Initially it was thought this could maybe be insane for skips in mythic plus, but it hasn't really turned out that way. Now it mostly ends up being used as some nice in combat mobility.