Whispyr
Forethought on Weaker Covenants
It should be noted both Necrolord is noticeably behind in raids, and Kyrian has no niche that allows it to shine. I think it is important to highlight their weaknesses and talk about why they aren't recommended.
Necrolord has a unique niche of providing incredible cleave, but it's not clear if that is enough to be adopted for widespread use.
Prototype Pantheon might see some Necrolord play, but given its position in the raid as one of the earlier bosses, I find it unlikely to see much widespread usage, and further adoption outside of that fight.
黯灭之刺 holds back the whole covenant through its lack of single target (the only benefit is 2 more casts of
锯齿骨刺 over the course of a single target fight), and inconsistent bugs. One of the most well known bugs with
黯灭之刺 occurs when one of the bonus spikes hits a target already affected by
锯齿骨刺. This causes the target to no longer refund a charge of
锯齿骨刺, which is incredibly annoying in any content with adds that you are trying to snipe for resets, as your refunded charges are wildly inconsistent. With this being a
required legendary to play for the covenant, I think it's inconceivable how this has not been fixed yet. The lack of single target damage the legendary provides is fine since it provides such a strong cleave and aoe niche, but please at least make it work in that setting. The bugs surrounding
黯灭之刺 make Necrolord almost unplayable on their own.
Kyrian, while good for the other two specializations, has never seen play for Assassination, and for good reason. Where the other covenants provide something with synergy to the spec (Fae and Venthyr both providing burst cooldowns through
败血刃伤 and
狂热鞭笞, Necrolord having a strong cleave/aoe profile through
锯齿骨刺), Kyrian falls flat on providing anything. The 45 second cooldown of
申斥回响 does not do enough damage to be viable in single target, and the animacharged combo points that follow don't provide any inherent benefits like they do for Subtlety and Outlaw (in the form of the cooldown reduction passives they have connected to their combo point usage). At the end of the day, 7 combo point finishers do not have enough damage attached to them for Kyrian to shine either. What you're left with is a covenant that provides weak single target, no burst, no aoe, and with
明澈回响, a sometimes infuriating minigame that can be tricky to execute effectively.
Best Assassination Rogue Double Legendaries for Sepulcher of the First Ones
Night Fae is on the rise with the set bonuses, especially the 2 piece:
宿怨之敌. This bonus directly benefits
败血刃伤, which acts as a huge buff as we sync
败血刃伤 and
毒刃 together. There are also numerous fights that could benefit from Korayn's
争先打击 soulbind ability due to add spawns. The 4 piece:
宿怨之敌, enables our second legendary,
暮行者的眼罩, essentially doubling the amount of
宿敌 casts we get throughout a fight, by reducing the cooldown by a full minute. You'll begin to notice this
暮行者的眼罩 and
宿怨之敌 synergy as a general theme, and for good reason.
暮行者的眼罩 ends up being far and away our best legendary in 9.2. Some other legendaries still have their niche and place, and will be discussed later.
Night Fae also has one benefit over Venthyr that might not be apparent at first. During PTR testing, it was quickly realized that there will be a lot of movement during fights. Some of the abilities, such as
引爆 during the Lihuvim fight, knock you back a considerable distance, while the intermission on Lihuvim seemed to be a very awkward and inconvenient for Venthyr and the uptime requirement associated with
狂热鞭笞. Night Fae has an easier time handling this as
败血刃伤 acts as a "set and forget" cooldown. Press the button on your target, follow it up with
毒刃, and it will do the rest, no effort required. This "more forgiving" cooldown might turn out to be a strong reason to play Night Fae over Venthyr, but as the fights are learned, this issue might not be as prevalent.
Similarly to Night Fae, Venthyr sees great gains using
暮行者的眼罩. In conjunction with the covenant legendary
苦打成招,
狂热鞭笞 and
宿敌 roughly line up to be on the same 1 minute cooldown. This consistent 1 minute burst window can be a boon on fights with important adds, or simply with timers that can benefit this playstyle. Of course the synergy between
暮行者的眼罩 and
宿怨之敌 is a formidable combo. You may also want to play Venthyr in the first weeks of the raid, before swapping to Night Fae as you obtain your tier set and second legendary.
Honorable Mentions
Legendaries for all covenants:
Both
冲动恶徒 and
末日之刃 are very similar in their usage. They both buff
毒伤 damage, while providing either a buff to
夺命药膏 or a bleed in the form of
毁伤血肉. These are both passive options that do not affect your rotation, and have little to no downside. They are a few percent weaker than
暮行者的眼罩 when considering the 4 piece bonus:
宿怨之敌. Most rogues from 9.1 will have already crafted
冲动恶徒, making it an excellent early choice.
The odd pick here is
佐迪克徽章. While rather bad as an all-around option,
佐迪克徽章 still remains as the execute legendary of choice. Should we see a boss (perhaps the jailer?) with an execute based final phase,
佐迪克徽章 is a very strong contender. Whether or not the damage gain of a couple percent during execute makes up for the legendary doing nothing for the rest of the fight, is a more complicated question that I frankly don't have the answers for right now.
Best Assassination Rogue Double Legendaries for Mythic+
For similar reasons, we again see Venthyr and
暮行者的眼罩 in the spotlight once more. In the last patch, we have seen the mythic+ meta shift towards rogues dealing with bosses, mini-bosses, and priority targets in packs. While our AoE has improved with the tier set, we are still the kings and queens of single target damage. The 1 minute timer of
狂热鞭笞 and
宿敌 combined gives us a source of consistent single target burst, available in every single pull. For higher level keys with longer pull times, it will also be possible to have 2
宿敌's per pack, another strong single target burst. With
苦打成招 giving a decent chunk of versatility, you may even want to pick up Venthyr for some extra survivability.
As we saw with the raid choices, Night Fae is the strongest single target choice currently. The timings may not work out as beautifully, but Korayn's
争先打击 comes back into play, providing a powerful critical strike bonus at the start of pulls to help with early combo point generation. For the same reasons as Venthyr, we again see
暮行者的眼罩 as a strong choice for priority and boss damage.
While lower on the priority damage, Necrolord makes up for it in raw firepower during low to medium target cleave and aoe.
黯灭之刺 finally has its time to shine in an otherwise useless and miserable existence during single target and raids, providing a substantial boost in the aoe potential of the covenant. As mentioned at the top of the piece, this legendary is still bugged sadly, as it has been since its first appearance in 9.1 and will not give a refund charge on a dying target if hit with the additional
锯齿骨刺 that it throws, including on targets that received an original
锯齿骨刺 earlier. This can be very inconsistent and almost infuriating to play with, as it is near impossible to know whether or not you will get your charges back for the next pack. If this bug gets fixed, Necrolord will definitely see some shining moments in dungeons like
凋魂之殇, where having multiple
血肉铸造s available to extend the
Various Ooze Buffs has proven to be very valuable. Sadly the bugs were already looked at for fixes earlier in 9.1, however ended up just being more bugged than before, leading to a revert back to the 9.0 bugs. It would be great to have this legendary working at least once this expansion, especially now that is a required pick for Necrolords, so I hope that they can get a set of fixes in along with tuning before 9.2 launches.
Honorable Mentions
For all covenants:
Here we see some interesting options come into play.
佐迪克徽章 pops up as a powerful AoE option, while lagging behind in single target. There is also some ephemeral execute value which always comes up in heated debates of damage profiles and their importance. In my opinion, it's just fine, nothing impressive, but not unplayable. You lose a lot of the priority damage you would get from
暮行者的眼罩, which will most likely discourage a majority of players from playing anything else, however you will get a bump in your AoE damage. The way I see it,
佐迪克徽章 provides some interesting focused damage on raid fights that for example have a damage race last phase starting at 25-30% hp. In these situations however, you will often get more usage out of
暮行者的眼罩 anyway due to the general fight timing. In mythic+ you rarely have execute phases on a boss, and the timing issue makes itself more apparently on shorter fights, such as dungeon bosses. All of that combined makes
佐迪克徽章 pretty tough to recommend for repeated and regular use.
The spiciest legendary on this list is the awkwardly positioned
提神影尘. Within the rogue community, there are quite divided opinions on this. On first glance, it frankly does not seem impressive, however reducing the cooldown of
毒刃, with the synergy from
宿怨之敌, allows for a lot more uptime on the debuff. It also allows for more
毒刃 casts to for example, cleanse an enrage. The gameplay in my opinion is a little bit awkward, and numerically provides no reasonable niche, but the overall performance is actually quite good. While it boasts no strong single/priority damage like
暮行者的眼罩 would, and it also provides nowhere near the AoE potential of
佐迪克徽章, it serves a decent middle ground, creating an extended burst AoE window through double
毒刃 usage. I don't think it will see much play on the high end, but is a fun change of pace from playing
暮行者的眼罩 constantly.
JustGuy
Best Outlaw Rogue Double Legendaries for Sepulcher of the First Ones
Moving into patch 9.2, the current frontrunner covenant performance wise is going to be Kyrian. Combining the first and second best legendary option for Outlaw is going to be a combination that other covenants are going to struggle to keep up with without a really specific niche. With an incredible soulbind through Mikanikos giving
溢流心能加速器 it really pushes this covenant over the edge even for AoE as you can get even more value from
明澈回响 while also being great single target is exactly what Outlaw loves to see. The legendary also feels great to play, it gives you extra CDR to help you spam cooldowns even more than usual! This also has great synergy with
狂猛迅疾 since
冲动 coming up more often means even more damage.
As I said in the Kyrian section, if you want to compete with that covenant, you need to be doing something specifically powerful other than just raw overall DPS. The one niche that Venthyr for Outlaw provides is it's the only way the spec can get access to burst damage. For example, if on some of the later encounters in the raid require you to do large amounts of damage in a small window, switching to Venthyr is basically the only way Outlaw can help with that sort of damage profile. One unfortunate side effect of covenant legendaries for Outlaw is that
恐惧之刃 used to technically be a stronger option than
敏锐 but since
苦打成招 causes these cooldowns to become desynced, the talent is back to being very useless.
Best Outlaw Rogue Double Legendaries for Mythic+
Similar to Venthyr, Necrolord has it's own niche that makes it worth mentioning.
黯灭之刺 is an incredible legendary at doing damage to lots of targets. Not only is it 3 times as effective per cast of
锯齿骨刺 but it also can potentially refund you a huge amount of charges due to applying it to many targets in range! This is a very strong legendary in M+ for example where not only are there lots of extra targets but you will be able to get lots of refunds on your charges due to the much lower time to kill in M+. There are just two huge problems. Problem number 1 is that this legendary does 0 single target damage. Gaining 2 extra casts on a boss is borderline meaningless, this legendary is less than a 1% dps gain on pure single target which makes it insanely hard to justify. The other
HUGE problem this legendary has is that it is borderline unusable due to 2 huge bugs.
The first major bug is that targets hit by the extra copies created by
黯灭之刺 don't refund charges. This is a huge loss for M+ as a huge reason to use
锯齿骨刺 to begin with is the fact that you get the refunds, missing out on over half of your potential refunds is huge. The second major bug is that the amount of combo points you get
should be based on how many active
锯齿骨刺 debuffs are on active targets, but this also does not work with the ones created by
黯灭之刺. This makes it incredibly difficult to know how many combo points you will be gaining, it loses you a lot of damage, and it makes it impossible to play the rotation out properly because the combo points given is basically random once
黯灭之刺 is proccing on multiple targets. Considering every Necrolord player is required to use
黯灭之刺 in 9.2 these bugs should be a priority fix, but with the current level of bugs it's hard to suggest going Necrolord. Once these bugs are hopefully fixed, this covenant will have a lot of potential in M+.
fuu1
Overview
Short summary of dominant choices for the second legendary slot.
Best second Legendary |
Legendary |
Strength |
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 |
Single Target, Priority Target Damage |
终结预兆 |
AoE, Funnel Damage |
Best Subtlety Rogue Double Legendaries for Sepulcher of the First Ones
Kyrian can shine with the highest pure single target damage output for Subtlety Rogue. The damage profile of Kyrian is a rather consistent with only minor damage spike with every use of
申斥回响. This makes it the primary choice on single target heavy encounters like
道茜歌妮 or
司垢莱克斯.
The reason
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 is strong is that the combo point generation of
申斥回响 ends up in a higher amount of
暗影之舞 casts. This ends up in more
暗影打击 casts and a higher amount of
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 procs. Both tier set bonuses (
神乎其技 &
神乎其技) increase this even further. A
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 proc does also generate
铁拳穿刺 with a recent update to the implementation on ptr what almost doubles the amount of stacks we generate and sometimes requires the use of
背刺 during
暗影之舞.
There is still a minor issue with this legendary power that is unresolved. When there are multiple shadow strike casts in a short time frame (what can happen with procs of
神乎其技) its possible that you lose or partially lose akaari procs due to the refresh behavior.
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 is due to the benefits mentioned above roughly 2% ahead of the second best choice in pure single target. It is also worth to mention that
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 ends up as the best legendary choice for priority damage even with higher target counts.
Venthyr does shine with its strong, frequent burst and funnel damage. The damage profile of Venthyr is bursty and damage is concentrated around uses of
狂热鞭笞. Venthyr will be the primary choice on encounters with two or more targets, adds, fights where
狂热鞭笞 lines up well with encounter mechanics and funnel fights.
圣物匠赛·墨克斯 and
安度因·乌瑞恩 are examples of fights that this covenant is the potentially better choice. There is also one downside to this covenant,
狂热鞭笞 does require you to stay on the target for a longer period of time. This can make it worth to look at other covenants on fights where this is not possible.
There are two Legendary choices we will choose depending on the encounter.
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 is a strong choice due to the high
暗影之舞 uptime the specialization provides and the higher uptime due to the tier set bonuses (
神乎其技 &
神乎其技), this is not as significant as on Kyrian, but still enough to give akaari a strong value. The interaction with
铁拳穿刺 increases the value further.
The main strengh in
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 lies in the higher priority damage and overall output when focusing on priority damage. This makes this Legendary Power the perfect choice for pure single target or low target cleave fights.
终结预兆 does benefit a lot from the higher amount of combo points generated by both tier set bonuses (
神乎其技 &
神乎其技). The Legendary power becomes better with higher target counts and will mainly be used on fights with a long uptime of adds or higher target funnel.
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 is similar to Kyrian around 2% ahead of
终结预兆 on pure single target but starts to fall behind in output noticeable on four and higher target counts. Both Legendary powers allow us to adjust our damage profile better to encounetrs.
Best Subtlety Rogue Double Legendaries for Mythic+
The new seasonal affix is potentially allowing us to have big sized pulls. This will make Venthyr a dominant choice in m+ due to the fact that
狂热鞭笞 is one of the only covenant abilities that translates well into cleave and aoe.
Subtlety overall is already a very dominant specialization due to the funnel and priority damage in mythic+, that allows players to equalize mob health in bigger pulls and bring down high health targets to allow faster pacing and a higher chance to beat the timer.
The legendary choice will most of the time fall towards
终结预兆. The higher funnel and AoE output should offset the marginal weaker pure single target output. This makes it the default choice.
阿卡丽的灵魂碎片 will be the choice in dungeons that are single target heavy or have a lot of pulls with lower target counts.