Jame's Guide on How to Level a Rogue

it seems as though we have forgotten Mallet of Zul'Farrak
I have been using it on my rogue since level 35, and I will tell you it made a HUGE difference in what I've spent on my weapons. It appears to be the best until you get to level 48.

I'm just leaving this here, I hope it helps.

Is he still working with these guides? I have a feeling the horde leveling guide for level 74 is not Jame. It's off a little and hard to follow

In the last part of the guide, you say this:

"Also note, there are a lot of possible weapon upgrades you can get from quests and instances, I didn't put those in my list, so if you find any good weapon while questing or instancing, you won't be able to save some cash."

I think it is: "you WILL be able to save some cash."

Or it could be just me ^^

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#f0xZ0xV0bZtbbdIGdzAzAbot

By far best rogue leveling build.
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Some people are like slinky's, Good for nothing, but they stil lbring a smile to your face everytime you pus hthem down a flight of stairs.

I'm not sure whether or not to use the same talents as before

Has this guide been updated for the latest content patch (3.1)?

Jame, with the change of the Mallet of Zul'Farrak now becoming an actual weapon, this may be a nice addition to the list. It's useable at 35, but still has a nice slow (2.5) speed and high damage. Thought I'd pass it along.

I was wondering if maybe you could also add a list of grinding spots for over the levels.
Thanks, Ultaninja

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Ultaninja is my name and a rogue is my game

Hi there Jame,

I was wondering if you could add a section for BoA items. I know it's not hard to find out, but it could also give people an idea of which stats they should aim for.

Outside of that, I'm gonna use this guide as soon as I have my BoA shoulders and MH sword.

~Trollvink.

i recomend showing the move rotation ( much like with the retridin leveling guide) you use for us rogue noobs

I am scanning over this one more time before I start to grind up my little rogue and looking over your weapons most of them seem to be stat heavy on str or str stam. Is this along the lines you would suggest for looking to gear for higher base damage or is it just the fact that most one handed blunt tends towards those stats? In short should I be building gear towards higher agil for crit dodge and pary or should i be looking more towards base damage and going for str? I tend towards more of a sword spec myself, purely for aesthetic reasons, but as such will need to know more of what I am looking for stat wise on weapons as well as my general gearing up. My friend plays a combat rogue stacked toward high agil and +crit gear but he is starting to have a hard time now that he has hit 70 and want to try to avoid that if I can as I lvl up myself.

I know this is semantics, but it irks me

You don't want a SLOW main hand weapon, you want a HIGH DAMAGE main hand weapon. It just so happens that slower ones usually have higher damage (but not always).

Weapon 1: 2.4 speed, 60 damage
Weapon 2: 2.5 speed, 50 damage

Choose the slower one and you'll have less damage (using abilities).

Now, having raked you, I'll go on to say I love your guides. Keep up the great work.

Hey all

This is my first time posting here and for starter i would like to thank Jame for all great guides. I leveled my main and few alts never finishing or taking quest without consulting his guide first ;D.

Now... my main is rogue and all the play time i divert to this char. I agree with all Jame says about leveling spec. It will give you biggest dmg and with combat spec after certain point you will also be able to do some insane AoE dmg.But there are some things i just don't like about combat tree and i am leveling as mutilate now. At level 75 i use this spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fMecoegoVzoIuZ0xZjbf

So to explain a bit and answer some questions from below...

I believe that, while leveling, dmg output is not the only thing you need to think about. There is also movement speed and stealth cooldown time which is just bad with combat spec. Also i like imp. stealth cos i just feel more comfortable around mobs and hostile players.

Remorseless Attacks talent -- someone asked below and for combat spec it's a No No , but for dagger spec its one of my favorite. As combat you will most likely use swords or maces and as such you just don't have good enough opener for this talent to be worth. With daggers and possibility to Ambush everything changes.

Camouflage talent -- it has nothing to do with damage but reduced stealth cd is a must for dagger grinding cos with your Ambush and Mutilate mobs go down so fast that you ll have to wait for stealth to cd before reentering it if you don't have this talent.

I also pickpocket while leveling just to skill up my lockpicking. So if you want be true thief imp stealth and glyph of pickpocket will also help a lot.

And in the end. The main question is... Do i really kill mobs slower than combat speced rogue? I can't really say, but i would say that on single target Mutilate has advantage over Combat while Combat gives you possibility of AoE-ing from time to time.

And small tip if you decide for Mutilate spec. Put talent in vigor and use Glyph of Vigor. That will give you aditional 20 energy and mobs will die in no time. Ambush - Mutilate - Envenom (evisc)- dead. And move fast to next mob before Remorseless wears off.

Use slow daggers for leveling cos those will give you bigger Ambushes and Mutilates. Mob lives so short that fast dagger won't give you any benefit regarding procs. Use fast ones when raiding in both hands.

Also note that Assassination based specs become viable after 50 th level cos you can't get Mutilate before than. Until then combat is the only way to go, with spec Jame advised.

And to finish... there is no only one right spec for everyone. Combat is great, i just like Mutilate better

I will try to do it over again. Thanks.

Jame after the new patch 3.0.2 or something, blizzard redid the talents and therefore the first couple talents are matching up but the rest are moved to different places. You might want to think about updating the talents. Thanks for you great guides.

-Zoggy93

Nice so far, but it's missing things that I would expect from a rogue leveling guide:

1. A guide to the class quests. Especially on how to deal with mobs in that annoying tower in the Barrens without asking for a high-level to help.

2. Discussion on choosing poisons. Especially on the subject of deadly vs. instant poison.

Hi Jame, with the recent changes to Mutilate and poison damage, do you think that starting at level 58, it is better to go with a Mutilate build like this at 58:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fGxcoeMoiboIzZ0xZ0b

And this at 80:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=fGxcoegoiboIzZ0xV0xZgb

While this may seem blasphemous to an old time rogue leveler such as your self, this build with 2 fast daggers and dual Instant Poison does tremendous damage, by means of Instant Poison procs and Focused Attacks procs, which outweigh the loss of mutilate damage. While it does not compare to combat in terms of being able to take down 2+ mobs or elites, it is significantly better for single target damage. Perhaps something similar could be added as an alternate route.

I highly recommend that the first two talent points go into Remorseless Attacks, then filling out the combat tree as you did. Having +40% chance to crit on the first attack is huge, especially when leveling up quickly when your crit chance isn't so great.

Another tip: make a simple macro for starting your auto-attack along with Sinister Strike, like so:

/autoattack
/cast Sinister Strike

You can just mash this macro, and even if you are short on energy to Sinister Strike, you will still start to attack the mob.

Thanks Jame for another great guide

This was a real nice addition to Rogues leveling. I myself have a low lvl rogue, this would make it easier i help, i never knew about the attack speed on weapons. Is there any chance you could make a nice write-up to some other popular leveling classes (i.e. Mage, Hunter) in the future?

Hello Jame.

It's a nice overview of the class, useful and pretty nice to read. Having leveled a rogue myself, I find great that you put a list of MH weapons to buy or search for, beacuse one of the most important problmes while leveling a rogue is to get some good weapons, otherwise you'll have a hard time while killing mobs. The first time I leveled a rogue I had some troubles because it's a tricky class to learn and to master. It's important to use the best abilities rotation to do the highest dps. I agree with your builds to level and grind since patch 3 Sub. has become less viable for pve .

Here I go with some questions:

- having read your guide, you basically tell us to learn Daggers , Swords and Maces skills. The major problem while leveling is to level the skill when you change type of weapon. I know it's important to dual wield with 2 different kind of weapon but there are always times when you do 10-20 levels with the same kind of weapon in MH (take it as an example) and then you find a better MH but once you equip it you find that your skill is very VERY low. So, my hint is to add to the F.A.Qs. some good place to go and level the skills. I think that everyone know the mobs in Blasted Lands ("servant of...") but at lower levels, trying to get up a weapon skill can be a trouble;

-I think that you can maybe add more OH daggers? Until level 49 there is a wide number of swords or dagger that can be used in off hand. I also know that a fast OH is VERY important when you get "combat potency" , but I always think that some more weapons can be good.

Keep it up!

Jame, as with everything, you have done a great job once again.

I went over to Wowhead to build the talent spec that you suggested and I took each point in exactly the order you listed, and unfortunately, I found two problems:

1 - You list Dual Wield Specialization - Rank 5/5 twice: Once after Weapon Expertise, and again after Vitality.

2- You recommend going into the Assassination tree once complete with the Combat tree. In this tree you state to grab Vigor - Rank 1/1. At this point, you can't. Vigor is an 11 point talent, and at this point you only have 8 points spent in this tree.

With the spec as listed, you are left with needing to spend two points elsewhere to open up the third tier of Assassination to take this talent. Even if you correct the double DW Spec being listed twice, you'll still be short one point to open that third tier. I've gone over it twice, hoping it was just me and I missed something.

Just thought I'd let ya know since I am leveling a rogue myself and currently have him going down the Subtlety tree.