Rogue Leveling Guide From 1 to 70 for TBC Classic

This guide will provide you with talents and a clear path to Level 70 in TBC Classic as soon as possible. You will find detailed talent builds below for a couple of different playstyles including their rotations, weapon suggestions and ability breakdown.

Providing non-Hunter leveling advice is outside the scope of this article and is covered in our general TBC leveling guide.

Rogues have three talent trees: Assassination, Combat, and Subtlety. It is recommended that you either level in Subtlety for a more survivability-based approach, or Combat for a higher damage output approach.

Combat is a viable leveling specialization with many offensive talents, such as Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush. On paper, Combat is by far the fastest way for leveling, but you should know that the tree offers very few survivability talents. If you plan to level in a group and want to contribute the most DPS possible, then Combat is the clear choice.

Subtlety is generally seen as the PvP spec, but has very high survivability and utility. If you are mostly leveling solo and will not be doing many dungeons, then Subtlety might be the best choice for leveling. Although your damage output will not be nearly as high as Combat, you will have a lot of defensive tools which allow you to survive many situations you may not have as another spec. If you fear world PvP or getting ganked while leveling, then this will most likely be the spec for you.

In this section, we will go over some of the key talents gained while leveling as a Rogue and their strengths.

• Riposte is an incredible ability for leveling. In addition to getting this talent, you also gain Deflection, which is a nice added survivability bonus. Riposte also costs only 10 Energy and disarms the target for six seconds, making it extremely efficient.
• Blade Flurry can make or break pulls while leveling. Naturally, Rogues have no cleave, but with this talents you are able to kill multiple mobs at the same time or have insane burst in dungeons. Pairing Blade Flurry with Eviscerate will yield high burst damage.
• Adrenaline Rush provides an extra 100% Energy regeneration for 15 seconds on each use, totalling a bonus of 150 Energy. Pairing it with Blade Flurry will yield insane burst damage.
• Dirty Tricks increases the range of your Sap and Blind abilities. The Sap range increase specifically will allow you to safely Sap targets without worrying about being seen. This talent alone can really improve the quality of life while leveling, as you can easily split multi-mob pulls into single pulls.
• Ghostly Strike is a nice ability to use on cooldown as an alternative to Hemorrhage or Sinister Strike, as it provides you with 15% dodge for 7 seconds after.
• Preparation is very straightforward. It will reset the cooldown on Evasion, Sprint, Vanish, Cold Blood, Shadowstep, and Premeditation. In addition to this giving you insane survivability, this ability will allow you to solo some of the more difficult elite mobs through the use of double evasions.
• Shadowstep is one of your strongest and most iconic PvP abilities. If you are leveling in the open world on a PvP server, you will inevitably have to take part in PvP combat. This ability is a great gap closer to get to your enemy.

Leveling your professions while leveling has a lot of benefits and can be very useful. The easiest ones to do while leveling would be First Aid, Mining, Herbalism, and Skinning. First Aid should almost be a mandatory profession while leveling, as the benefits from it are insane. Blinding an enemy and fully bandaging yourself will save you countless deaths.

Other professions, such as Engineering, Leatherworking or Enchanting, can be very time consuming. If you want to level any of these but still place value in leveling to 70 quickly, it would be recommended that you save any materials gathered in your bank and do it when max level.

Your weapon will be by far the biggest piece of gear you can upgrade. Due to Sinister Strike being based off of main-hand weapon damage, you will want a slow mainhand.

Your off-hand generally will be something fast due to Combat Potency or for the benefit of having more consistent poison procs.

Your stat priority will be Hit and Agility gear. Most of your damage will be from auto attacks and having abilities miss at lower levels of play can be devastating.