This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out this guide here.

Click here for the Rogue Class Guide, also check out this page for more world of warcraft leveling tips & tricks.

Index:
1.0 - Introduction
2.0 - Talents
3.0 - Gear & Progression

Rogues, like hunters, have a really easy time leveling; you could even say it’s in the classes, pixilated, blood.   Running through monsters like a meat-grinder and hitting with enough force to bash even warriors down, the combat rogue poses the greatest leveling threat of all.

However, it’s not only pure burst-DPS, also known as smashing power, that gives combat rogues or even rogues in general their immense advantage over all others, it’s cooldowns.  Cooldowns that include everything from vanish, blind, cloak of shadows and much more.

So, read on and find what I consider the greatest Rogue leveling build.

2.0 – Talents

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To start off our combat rogue we’ll actually be picking up an assassination talent, malice.  However, given how useful this talent in particular happens to be, any reasonable build of rogue likely picks it up at some point or another.

Secondly comes both Improved Sinister strike followed by improved gouge, neither seem too great on the surface, but in reality both allow you quite a bit more freedom than one would expect.  Improved sinister strike gives you an extra sinister strike in the opening burst and improved gouge helps in all situations.

Precision and Deflection are two straight-up passive increases that dramatically aid the combat rogues style of play in general.  Deflection is a clear 5% melee mitigation, always helpful and especially so given that you’ll be in leather all the time.

Precision on the other hand is an increase of 5% white damage, meaning simple attacks, as well as negating the chances of any special attacks, yellow damage, from missing on pretty much any occasion – dodges, parries, etc. all still apply.

Next up dual wield specialization boosts off-hand damage by an ever helpful amount, another flat damage increase that really shines when considering total session/overtime DPS as opposed to looking for returns in a single fight or two.

Sword Specialization really marks the start of the awesome-tastic burst damage phase for combat rogues.  Not only is it a straight increase of overall damage, it just looks amazing when it triggers multiple times in a row and can help pull out a seemingly lost fight.

Blade Flurry is another surprisingly useful talent.  For a single point to pick it up initially, I was quite surprised at
how often I ended up using this ability to either save myself from unintended multi-mob fights or simply to boost XP per hour by pulling a group of monsters every two minutes.

Weapon Specialization, Aggression – Both of these represent even more flat increases in damage output, weapon specialization reducing the enemies chances of parrying, dodging, etc. while aggression quite obviously boosts your own damage with sinister strike and eviscerate.

Adrenaline rush is, much like Blade Flurry, a surprisingly good talent to pick up, offering yet another survivability cooldown for boss/group fights or simply boosting your XP per hour by popping the ability every 5 minutes for a few quicker kills.

Vitality, Combat Potency, well vitality is a rather un-noticed yet definitely helpful increase to both survivability(health) and damage(agility.)  Not much else to say about that one, however with combat potency we get a massive increase in energy depending on your luck with procs.

Finally, surprise attacks rounds out the tree with a flat 10% increase to Sinister strike as well as a few other abilities, gouge being the most useless of them all and backstab almost as much due to your wielding of non-dagger type weaponry most likely.

10 – 14 Malice
15 – 16 Improved Sinister Strike
17 – 19 Improved Gouge
20 – 24 Precision
25 – 29 Deflection
30 – 34 Dual Wield Specialization
35 – 39 Sword Specialization
40 – Blade Flurry
41 – 43 Aggression
44 – Weapon Expertise 1/2
45 – Adrenaline Rush
46 – 47 Vitality
48 – Riposte
49 –Weapon Expertise 2/2
50 – 54 Combat Potency
55 – Surprise Attacks
56+ - Expand out into whatever you find to suit your build best, either use the talent build in the link or design your own.

3.0 – Gear & Progression

Gearing a rogue is, like with most other melee classes during the leveling process, all about maximizing damage while leaving just enough stamina for a reasonable health.  In this case your primary statistics will be +critical, agility, +hit, and attack power.

What comes first is agility, it combines all the damage stats and improvements desired rolled up into a single stat choice, and even shows up on 90% of leather armor to boot.  Increasing +critical, dodge, and attack power.

Second comes individual stats such as +attack power and +critical, often you’ll find these in greater amounts on items with higher numbers of stamina or other single stats – Whether this makes them worthwhile to equip or not is up to you.

Finally, +hit becomes much more prevalent post-60 and venturing around Outland, picking this up will obviously increase your overall damage by a reasonable amount.