Rogue Leveling Guide (Level 1-30) - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

You’ll start by putting 2/2 points in Improved Sinister Strike as this is your bread and butter ability, alongside 3/3 in Improved Eviscerate for your strongest early finishing move.

Then you’ll have 3/3 in Deflection for Parry chance and 3/3 in Precision to increase your chance to hit with all attacks and poisons by 3%.

After that immediately pickup Riposte as this is a fantastic ability to use whilst leveling, followed by 2 points in Endurance to reduce the cooldown on Sprint and Evasion by 60% alongside 1 point in Improved Sprint.

Then place 5/5 in Dual Wield Specialization before putting your level 30 talent into Blade Flurry.

Every race has strengths for the Rogue and you really can’t go wrong picking whatever one you are most interested in, especially with the changes to Racials in WoW: Forever. 

Alliance

Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, Gnome & Skyborne

Humans have two incredible racial abilities for PvP with Will to Survive being able to remove stuns and Perception to detect stealth enemies, giving them the upper hand against Horde Rogues. They also have 5% increased Spirit which helps out whilst leveling, and Sword Specialization increases crit chance by 2%. Rogue have fantastic reasoning to prioritize swords anyway, as in their Hack and Slash, Swords melee attacks will have a chance to generate an extra swing.

Horde

Orc, Undead, Troll & Skyborne

For Horde, you could definitely go for any of the Races as the strengths of each are all mostly situational. The reason we’d recommend Troll is for their Rapid Regeneration active to sustain to increase uptime, alongside their Regeneration passive for 10% more health regeneration during combat. They also have Berserking for an attack speed steroid, and 5% increase to beasts to help in certain zones and encounters. If choosing a Race specifically for PvP or PvE, Undead or Orcs are potentially more desirable options.

If we had to recommend one for each faction it would be Human for Alliance and Troll for Horde.

The primary Skills you’ll use are Sinister Strike and Eviscerate for damage, alongside a bunch of other skills like Gouge, Kidney Shot, Blind and Cheap Shot to crowd control your enemies when fighting multiple or elite mobs.

If opening in Stealth, Cheap Shot grants two combo points alongside it’s stun so is the ideal opener against mobs in the open world.

Generally though, to maximize mob to mob uptime, just opening without Stealth with Sinister Strike is often quicker, and you shouldn’t have to stop to heal too often, unless you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

1. If opening with Stealth, use Cheap Shot to generate 2 combo points and stun your target.
2. Use Sinister Strike to build combo points.
3. Use Eviscerate when you have at least 3 or more combo points or if your enemy is close to death to use up your combo points quickly.
4. Slice and Dice can be used when fighting multiple mobs at a time or in quick succession, but when fighting mobs 1 on 1 it won’t hold much value.
5. If you get into trouble, use your various forms of CC with Gouge, Kidney Shot, Blind, Evasion and Sprint to get away or pop a quick bandage.
6. Once you have Blade Flurry, now you can easily take down multiple enemies at the same time, especially if you have Evasion available too.

Combo Points in WoW: Forever no longer reset after changing targets. This is a huge quality of life change that makes swapping to Kick or interrupt targets or even tag them for quest items much easier and less unforgiving.

Gouge is your best friend to stall for cooldowns or energy, or to sustain some health back with a Bandage. Use it often!

Always keep stocked up on Blinding Powder and Flash Powder, aswell as Poisons once you have unlocked them.

Make sure to train your weapon skill on lower level mobs when you get new weapons you may not already have proficiency with.

Stats to Prioritize

1. Agility is your primary stat to focus on, to increase your attack power, crit and dodge.
2. Spirit this helps with health regeneration, which is super handy whilst leveling.
3. Strength also increases your melee attack power. 
4. Stamina is always handy to increase your health pool.

Always try to find and requip strong new melee weapons as often as you can. If you have one slow weapon and one fast weapon, always put your faster weapon in your offhand.

For Poisons, in dungeons and against Elites or Rares, Instant Main Hand and Deadly Off hand is the way to go, but for leveling and short fights, double Instant Poison on both your weapons will provide more damage.

Remember if you are grouped up with a Shaman who has Windfury Totem, don’t put a Poisons on your main hand weapon as these do not stack and you will lose significant DPS.

Rogues also have the unique abilities to pick locks to open lockboxes, chests and more. Try to level this as often as you can, especially in areas the game encourages you to do so through class quests.

For Pickpocketing, when questing against humanoid mobs, this can help generate some very minor extra gold, but also help you gain various rewards, like extra lockboxes to open, which can have poison crafting materials inside.

Rogues are not the best dungeon class but can still offer solid single target DPS as well as a ton of crowd control. Once you get access to Blade Flurry you become far more capable against grouped up enemies, but until then, use as much CC as you can to help out your group.

Against bosses or tougher enemies, keep your Slice and Dice up at all times and make sure you always stand behind the target to avoid attacks being parried.

Start attack Sinister Strike Macro. /startattack can be bound to many of your melee abilities to make sure you begin attacking them.

#showtooltip
/cast Sinister Strike
/startattack

Sap stealthed targets macro. This will help you sap stealthed mobs or enemies.

#show sap
/cleartarget
/targetenemyplayer
/cast sap

Sap/ Pick Pocket macro.

#showtooltip Sap
/cast Sap
/cast Pick Pocket

Mouseover Interrupt. This can also be done with Blind.

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover] Kick