WotLK Classic Rogue Leveling Guide: Rotation, Talent, Glyphs and more

About WotLK Classic Rogue

Rogue is an extremely nimble master, known for popping up suddenly, employing skirmish tactics to kill priority targets, and disappearing quickly when he comes.

Rogues are excellent DPS classes in WotLK Classic, offering unmatched crowd control and cooldowns while also dealing very high single target damage. Rogues offers a unique leveling experience with Stealth and its incredible toolkit.

Rogues can be upgraded to combat, or to Subtlety or Assassination. Since it is the most reliable way to kill enemies in a row, it is the choice of most people when upgrading to combat. Regardless of what the upgrade is for, Rogues are heavily Stealth or longer fights, as combat is generally considered the norm for advanced leveling in WotLK Classic.

RPGStash will focus on combat rogues, but a lot of the tricks apply to Subtlety and Assassination as well. We'll cover helpful tips, where to spend your talent points, what to look out for when equipping, using your abilities effectively, and other general advice to make the leveling process as smooth and painless as possible!

General Leveling Tips

Keep an eye on your cooldowns while leveling up, using spells like Evasion and Blade Flurry up can easily kill multiple monsters at once without having to struggle.

Vanish acts as an escape card to help you kill enemies with wards, kill your quest targets, and disappear from everything you don't need to kill, allowing you to take bigger risks.

Rogues initiate fights with Sap, hit targets with Blind, and can easily work in your favor with Gouge and Kidney Shot. Rogues have more crowd control than any other class and can easily take out multiple enemies at once.

Most of the rogue's damage is based on its weapon, not spell level. So upgrading your weapons will be the best way to increase your leveling speed, and many times it's worth taking a detour into a dungeon or a different area to get a better weapon early on.

Slower weapons do more damage in your main hand. Ebon Hilt of Marduk will be better than Blade of Necromancy even though it has lower DPS and will do more damage per hit.

Rogues can barely heal himself. Consider leveling First Aid and try to carry foods suitable for leveling with you. A stack or two should always fit in your bag, so you don't have to be stuck waiting for health to regenerate.

Stat Priority

Agility - This is always going to be your favorite stat. Each point of Agility gives you 2 Attack Power and increases your critical strike chance by a small amount.

Strength - Increases your attack power by a lesser amount than Agility.

Attack Power - Increases your damage dealt with most of your abilities.

Critical Strike Rating - Increases your chance to deal critical damage. This is fantastic, especially for finishers, which take a long time to build but do massive damage.

Haste Rating - Increases the speed of all your attacks, allowing you to do more damage faster!

Hit Rating - Increases your chance to hit with all attacks. This is a great extra stat, but while leveling you will rarely find enough of it to make it worthwhile.

Stamina - Increases your maximum health! This is a fantastic stat that is already on most gear, so it is usually not something you aim at, but instead something that comes naturally.

Rotation

Rogue Rotation revolves around builders and spenders. You can accumulate combo points with attacks like Sinister Strike, and then spend them on abilities like Eviscerate. Combat rogues can spend most of their combo points on Slice and Dice, which significantly increases their attack speed.

Keep Slice and Dice (Unlocked at level 10) up at all times

Use Blade Flurry (Unlocked at level 30) against 2 or more targets

Spend Combo Points on Eviscerate (Unlocked at level 1) or Kidney ShotKidney Shot (Unlocked at level 30)

Build Combo Points with Sinister Strike (Unlocked at level 1)

Before any pulls, make sure you have poison on both of your weapons, usually Instant Poison (unlocked at level 20) on both weapons, or along with Deadly Poison (unlocked at level 30) on your offhand.

Keep Slice and Dice (Unlocked at level 10) up at all times

Use Blade Flurry (Unlocked at level 30) against 2 or more targets

Spend Combo Points on Eviscerate (Unlocked at level 1) or Kidney Shot(Unlocked at level 30)

Build Combo Points with Sinister Strike (Unlocked at level 1)

Stealth openers are generally not great for actual damage, while leveling you will spend a lot of time in Stealth and will have a lot of opportunities to use openers. When you do want to open from Stealth, you can use Cheap Shot for the stun and easy combo points. If you are against a caster or want damage instead of a stun, you can use Garrote.

Talent Path

Combat tree is very focused on passively increasing damage without really affecting the way we play the game. Many options feel very similar, and talents like Blade Twisting and Aggression do very similar things, but they all work together to greatly increase power.

The key points in the talent tree:

Blade Flurry at level 30, giving you a damage cooldown and the ability to kill two targets at once.

Hack and Slash at level 31, giving your attacks with swords and axes a chance to hit twice.

Adrenaline Rush at level 40, giving you a fantastic cooldown, doubling your energy regeneration for 15-seconds.

Vitality at level 41, passively increasing your energy regeneration.

Combat Potency at level 45, giving your off-hand attacks a chance to restore 15 energy.

Unfair Advantage at level 54, passively hitting an enemy every time you Dodge an attack.

Killing Spree at level 60, every Rogues favorite button. This spell teleports you to an enemy in combat 5 times, once every 0.5-seconds, attacking with every teleport.

When we are done in the Combat tree, we move over to the Assassination tree. This tree supplements our damage significantly with talents like Malice and Lethality.

Glyphs

Glyphs aren't always the easiest to pick up when leveling, but if you happen to stop by the auction house, you might find some cheap and useful glyphs to work with.

The Major Glyphs worth considering:

Glyph of Sinister Strike - Sinister Strike criticals have a 50% chance to add another combo point. This is invaluable and easily the best Glyph you can get.

Glyph of Eviscerate - Eviscerate has a 10% higher critical chance. Criticals with finishers are your biggest burst damage, making this very useful.

Glyph of Killing Spree - Reduces the cooldown of Killing SpreeKilling Spree by 45-seconds, allowing you to use it significantly more often.

Glyph of Cloak of Shadows - Cloak of Shadows also reduces physical damage taken by 40%, making it more versatile as a defensive tool.

Glyph of Sprint - Increases the speed boost of Sprint by 30%. This isn't fantastic but more speed is never a bad thing.

Glyph of Vigor - Vigor now grants 20 maximum energy instead of 10. This doesn't help a lot, but it's better than nothing!

Glyph of Evasion - Increases the duration of Evasion by 5-seconds. This is your most powerful defensive tool, so another 5-seconds is fantastic. The only negative is that typically enemies will be dead before this has time to be useful.

Glyph of Adrenaline Rush - Increases the duration of Adrenaline Rush by 5-seconds. More duration on Adrenaline RushAdrenaline Rush can be used to chain kill mobs for a longer time, giving you a lot of value.

Glyph of Slice and Dice - Increases the duration of Slice and Dice by 3-seconds. This can be useful while leveling if you find Slice and Dice drops between enemies more often than you'd like.

The Minor Glyphs worth considering:

Glyph of Blurred Speed - SprintSprint allows you to walk on water, not useful often but when it is you'll be very thankful you have it.

Glyph of Safe Fall - Increases the distance of Safe FallSafe Fall, allowing you to fall further without dying. This is great for taking more lethal shortcuts.

Glyph of Vanish - Increases your movement speed by 30% in VanishVanish, allowing you to reposition faster in emergencies.

Glyph of Pick Lock - Makes your Pick LockPick Lock instant cast, saving you a lot of time, especially while leveling the skill.

Poisons

Poisons are sold by vendors, usually near your Rogue Trainer. Instant Poison and Deadly Poison are the most commonly used, and to ensure the poison activates, it's best to keep a bunch of other poisons around.

Instant PoisonInstant Poison at level 20, 28, 36, 44, 52, 60, 68, 73, 79

Crippling PoisonCrippling Poison at level 20

Mind-numbing PoisonMind-numbing Poison at level 24

Deadly PoisonDeadly Poison at level 30, 38, 46, 54, 60, 62, 70, 76, 80

Wound PoisonWound Poison at level 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 72, 78

Anesthetic PoisonAnesthetic Poison at level 68, 77

Class Quests

Blade of Cunning - At level 10 Rogues will be given a quest from their local Rogue trainer, eventually rewarding them with Blade of CunningBlade of Cunning to compliment their new Dual WieldDual Wield skill.

Recipe: Thistle Tea - At level 20 Rogues can pick up a quest from their trainer, leading them around level appropriate zones and eventually rewarding Recipe: Thistle TeaRecipe: Thistle Tea, allowing Rogues to cook a unique item that restores Energy on-use.

At level 50 all classes receive a quest taking them to the Sunken Temple. For Rogues, this quest offers a choice between Duskbat Drape, Ebon Mask, and Whisperwalk Boots. While Duskbat Drape and Ebon Mask are great items by themselves, Whisperwalk Boots offer a rarely found boost to your effective stealth level, making you harder to detect while in Stealth. This can be equipped at any point if you ever need to make sure you aren't discovered, making these boots the most long-term useful.

Equipment

Rogues can use Swords, Maces, Axes, Daggers, Fist Weapons, Crossbows, Bows, Guns, and Thrown Weapons. You should always try to use your best weapon, combat rogues usually stick to swords and axes because of Hack and Slash.

Prioritize slow, heavy-hitting weapons in your main hand. Abilities like Sinister Strike are based on your main hand weapon damage, not DPS, meaning weapons with higher damage range will hit more. Slower weapons such as the Ebon Hilt of Marduk, available before rank 3.

Prioritize using off-hand fast weapons. A combat rogue's off hand isn't as important in terms of actual damage as it is in DPS, but you'll also want a fast weapon since fast weapons will both proc combat potency more often and apply deadly poison more often.

Weapon upgrades will be the biggest damage increase when leveling. Most damaging spells don't do much damage with levels and gear that's much higher than the spell's level. It's worth noting that Eviscerate varies much more with level than with equipment.

Rogues can use Cloth and Leather armor, Leather armor is the most ideal state. Cloth armor typically provides attributes relevant to the caster, such as Intelligence, Spirit, and Spell Power.

Professions

Professions are hard to keep up with as you level up, especially ones like Blacksmithing, but in Wrath of the Lich King, collecting professions like Mining and Herbalism is pretty easy to keep up with as you progress In fact, even if you don't want to make things yourself, you can supplement other aspects of leveling in the auction house.

While every class will provide some sort of stat boost, most will allow them to max out on their skills. Collecting careers instead provides skills early on that scale as you level.

Mining gives Toughness, a passive boost to your Stamina, starting with 3 Stamina at 75 Mining, and ending at 60 Stamina at 450 Mining.

Skinning gives Master of Anatomy, a passive boost to your Critical Strike Rating, starting with 3 Critical Strike Rating at 75 Skinning, and ending at 40 Critical Strike Rating at 450 Skinning.

Herbalism gives Lifeblood, an instant cast heal-over-time on a 3-minute cooldown. This scales with both Herbalism and your maximum health.

If you instead want to craft things while you level, Alchemy and Engineering are fantastic alternatives.

Engineering allows you to craft grenades and bombs alongside a bunch of fun or niche utility items such as target dummies and fireworks.

Alchemy allows you to craft your own potions, flasks, and elixirs which can all be invaluable for improving your leveling experience and speed.

Useful Macros

The startattack macro makes sure you always autoattack when you're in combat.

#showtooltip

/startattack

/cast Sinister Strike

Conclusion

The above is all about WotLK Classic Rogue Leveling, I hope it can help you level up better. If you want to know more, keep reading the rest. Additionally, RPGStash supplies WoW Classic WotLK Gold. You can quickly Buy WotLK Gold, Instant Delivery and 24/7Online Service here.