Difference between Assassination and Combat for raiding

[Whitewolf 1]

What is the difference? Is assassination too far behind or is the difference pretty miniscule?

If one were to go assassination would bs or SS be better to use?

[falconertomt 0]

To answer your 2nd question first, if you go assassination, you would go BS > SS using dual daggers.

That being said, Combat  > Assassination > Sub for PvE (There are a few caveats to this, but only at high end AP and gear levels).

Rogues in PvE rely heavily on white damage, in conjunction with that the first tier of raiding (MC) renders poisons useless on over 50% of the mobs (Elementals). This puts combat at a large advantage.

Combat Swords is currently the strongest PvE spec, with combat daggers 2nd to it. Depending on what gear has been released for your server (I am on Elysium, so we are pre BWL) will further dictate this what specs are viable. The extra attacks make combat swords king, combine that with Hand of Justice (Extra attack Trinket) and it is god. If you go combat daggers, there are some things you will want to get, i.e Muggers Belt from DM: North, +5 dagger skill is insane for damage, and is bis for pre-raid dagger rogue, crit is your friend for dagger rogue.

Pretty much you are running combat swords until Perdition's Blade is released. Even then, Combat Swords will be stronger than combat daggers, though the gap will close somewhat.

I do not recall assassination being a viable raiding spec ever during vanilla, though in truth I would need to run simulations in order to confirm this. At Naxx level gear, and with the proper MH weapon, a Combat/Hemo build was insane, but that was LATE vanilla.

 

I do not have access to target dummies in game yet, so I do not have any modeling for you at the moment.