World of Warcraft: Forever Combat Rogue Leveling Guide

Rogue offers a unique leveling experience that will allow you to deal massive amounts of single-target damage and completely avoid many enemies with the iconic ability Stealth. While tools like Stealth will make the leveling process a bit easier as you can much more easily pick and choose your battles, Rogue can be a bit slower to level than other classes due to their lack of AoE damage. Despite this lack of AoE, Rogue has some of the best tools in the game to help mitigate incoming damage, and high damage to make up for it.

The goal of this page is to inform you of things you may need to know during the leveling process as a Combat Rogue. This includes things like which talents to choose, what key gear upgrades to keep an eye out for, how abilities function, and what kind of stats you should be looking for on your gear. All our recommendations update based on the selection you choose with our leveling sliders, so you will be able to find bespoke information for your specific level range.

The talent build above aims to deal as much damage as possible, while also reducing the cooldowns of some of our most powerful defensive abilities like Evasion. It also grants us access to new and powerful abilities, like Blade Flurry, to help deal with mobs on our leveling journey even quicker. While this build focuses primarily on dealing damage and generating Combo Points with Sinister Strike and spending Combo Points on Eviscerate it also grants us access to Riposte which when usable deals tons of damage to your target.

Some key things to consider with this talent build is the focus on certain level breakpoints. The vast majority of the talents found in this tree are just passive increases that will not significantly impact your leveling experience, but certain breakpoints like Level 20 to unlock Riposte will result in a pretty significant power spike. Make sure to keep in mind that any of the cooldowns and new abilities should be your first focus when deciding where to next spend your talent points.

• Improved Sinister Strike: This reduces the Energy cost of our most used ability, Sinister Strike. Sinister Strike is our primary way of generating Combo Points, allowing us to use finishing moves more often.
• Precision: Increases your chance to hit with your auto-attacks and spells. Attacks that miss deal zero damage, so any increase to our chance to hit is a great benefit, especially while leveling where the level difference between mobs further impacts your chance to hit.
• Riposte: After parrying an attack, you can strike back with this for 150% weapon damage, and also disarm the target. This is a massive amount of damage, especially if you have a slow, high top-end damage weapon in your main-hand, and at a very low Energy cost to boot.
• Flawless Execution: Reduces the Energy cost of your Eviscerate ability. While leveling a Rogue your single largest bottleneck will be lacking Energy, so any chance we get to either reduce ability costs or generate additional Energy is highly valuable.
• Blade Flurry: Increases your attack speed and causes your attacks to hit an additional target. This is the closest to any type of AoE damage you will have while leveling your Rogue, so using this ability on cooldown to kill two mobs at once can be a massive increase to your leveling speed. Pair it with Evasion to take less damage while taking hits from 2 enemies at once.
• Hack and Slash: Offers a unique benefit regardless of what type of weapon you have chosen to use. This passive increase to your stats is well worth the points spent.
• Adrenaline Rush: Massively increases your Energy regeneration rate for 15 seconds, allowing you to cast more abilities while it is active. As mentioned previously, the largest limiting factor to your damage is availability of Energy, and you will have no shortage of Energy while this is active.

• Ruthlessness: Gives your finishing moves a chance to add a Combo Point to the target.
• Relentless Strikes: Your finishing moves have a chance to restore Energy. This again allows us to generate more Energy, which is the biggest thing throttling your ability to deal damage as a Rogue.
• Cold Blood: Is a powerful cooldown that increases the Critical Strike chance of your next Sinister Strike, Backstab, Ambush, or Eviscerate by 100%. This allows us to deal a massive burst of damage. Make sure to use it on Eviscerate, as opposed to Sinister Strike.

Combat Rogue offers one of the more simple damage dealing rotations while leveling in the game. It is more of a list of rules to follow rather than a set rotation, and highlighted below will be a rough breakdown of those rules. However, Rogue has some rather unique mechanics that are important to understand before jumping into your DPS rotation.

Combo Points are a resource that is added to your target anytime you deal damage with a Combo Point generating ability Sinister Strike. These points can be spent on powerful abilities like Eviscerate or Slice and Dice. It is important to keep in mind that your Combo Points will persist on a target even if you switch the target, but if you begin to generate Combo Points on another target, or your original target dies with Combo Points still active, you will not be able to transfer them to the new target.

Energy is your main resource as a Rogue, and all your abilities will cost Energy. Energy regenerates passively at all times, but it is important to keep in mind that you can pool your Energy, should you need to deal a large amount of damage in a small window of time. The rate at which Energy regenerates is very stable at 10 Energy a second, outside of talents that may offer a quick refund or a burst of Energy regeneration like Adrenaline Rush. Do not, ever, overcap Energy unless you absolutely have to.

Stealth is an ability that allows Rogues to avoid detection by enemies. Many of the enemies you encounter in your adventures through Azeroth will be hostile, meaning they will attack you the second you step into their aggro radius - Stealth greatly reduces this radius. The exact formula on how close you can get to a mob without being revealed from stealth depends on a few different factors: Your level compared to the enemy, any additional levels of stealth you may have from talents like Master of Deception, or some mobs that are just able to see through Stealth. Stealth will also allow you to use powerful abilities that can only be used while Stealth is active, like Cheap Shot or Garrote.

Poisons are a mechanic unique to Rogue that allows you to coat your weapons and cause your attacks to apply additional effects to your target. These effects range from things as simple as bonus damage when using Instant Poison or some added utility like being able to slow your target with Crippling Poison.

As highlighted above the leveling rotation for Combat Rogue is extremely simple and focuses primarily on generating as many Combo Points as possible with our Sinister Strike ability, then spending them on Eviscerate. There are a few exceptions to this that will be broken down below. Poisons can be unlocked at Level 20 by completing a series of quests provided by your class trainer.

• Make sure you have a poison active on both of your weapons. While leveling this should be Instant Poison, but if you are fighting mobs that are constantly running away you can consider Crippling Poison instead.
• Begin each encounter in Stealth. If the mob can be stunned, Cheap Shot will help mitigate a ton of damage. You can also open with Garrote for damage.
• Cast Riposte whenever it procs.
• Cast Sinister Strike to generate Combo Points.
• Cast Slice and Dice if you are confident you will have targets to hit for its duration, otherwise cast Eviscerate upon reaching 5 Combo Points.

Rogue unfortunately lacks true AoE. The closest you will come to being able to deal AoE damage as a Combat rogue is at level 30, once you've unlocked the Blade Flurry talent. This will allow you to briefly cleave onto a second target, but otherwise your rotation for dealing damage will be identical in both single-target and AoE situations.

While the damage rotation is relatively simple as a Rogue you will also find yourself with some of the strongest utility in the game. This added utility will allow you a ton of control over how an encounter plays out in ways other than simply dealing enough damage. Highlighted below are some key abilities.

• Evasion: Greatly increases your chance to dodge. This should be used early and often to keep yourself alive and mitigate downtime. While solo leveling, it is important to try and keep this ability on cooldown, but in a group you may want to keep it ready for a situation where you pull aggro or the tank dies.
• Stealth: Allows you to avoid combat all together, or give you a considerable edge on your opponent by starting the fight out with either a stun like Cheap Shot or some bonus damage with Garrote.
• Gouge: Briefly incapacitates your target. This can act as an impromptu way to interrupt, or just allow you to gain some distance between yourself and a target. Keep in mind that this will break on any kind of damage.
• Blind: Disorients your target. This can be used in many ways, but the key ones to consider are using it to either escape a target, or an impromptu way to regenerate some Energy and channel a quick bandage from first-aid while the enemy cannot fight back. It unfortunately will not allow you to drop combat in PvE scenarios but in PvP it can also allow you a quick re-stealth.
• Cheap Shot: Allows you to stun your target while exiting Stealth. This gives you a strong advantage immediately by allowing you to deal damage and generate Combo Points before they can retaliate.
• Kidney Shot: Allows you to stun your target based on the amount of Combo Points active on the target.
• Pick Lock: This ability lets you open lockboxes and locked chests. If there is a locked door in an area, the game will also sometimes let you open it without needing a quest-related key, saving you lots of time.
• Distract: Redirects the direction that an enemy is looking. Mobs have less stealth detection behind them, making it easier for you to sneak past mobs that would otherwise detect you in Stealth.

The gearing process of a Combat Rogue while leveling is pretty simple. Your main priority is to find a slow, high top-end weapon damage weapon for your main-hand to maximize the power of abilities like Riposte or Sinister Strike, while also gaining as much Agility as possible and sneaking in some Stamina for survivability. Listed below is a breakdown of each stat and how it effects your character.

1. Weapon Damage Weapon damage is a huge factor in deciding what is an upgrade for your Combat Rogue, with certain abilities like Sinister Strike benefitting a lot from having a slow Main Hand weapon.
2. Hit & Expertise: If your attack misses or is dodged, you will deal zero damage to the target. While Hit and Expertise are quite rare on gear, especially while leveling, these stats are hugely important to grab whenever you can get them.
3. Agility: Agility increases your Attack Power, Dodge, and Critical Strike Chance. Attack Power makes your attacks/spells deal more damage, and can also be found on gear directly. The added Dodge and Critical Strike rating from Agility are what make this stat truly valuable.
4. Critical Strike: A critical Strike deals 200% damage of a normal attack, greatly increasing your damage.
5. Strength: Increases your Attack Power.
6. Stamina: Increases your Health. It is rare you will ever have to choose between Stamina and other stats while leveling as it is present on many items by default.

As you level and new zones become available to you, there will typically be a few different areas you can choose to level in for each level bracket. It is important to try and stick to one place until you begin to run out of quests, as there are often follow up quests that yield much stronger rewards or can send you to a nearby dungeon that will offer you some incredibly powerful upgrades.

Highlighted below are some of our recommended zones based on level and nearby dungeons just to give you a general idea of where you should consider leveling to ensure a smooth experience in your journeys through Azeroth.

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Loch Modan/Darkshore
  • The Barrens
• Available Dungeons:
  • Hall of Thanes
  • Ragefire Chasm

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Westfall/Darkshore
  • Silverpine Forest
• Available Dungeons:
  • Hall of Thanes
  • Ragefire Chasm and Ruins of Lordaeron

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Westfall/Redridge Mountains
  • The Barrens/Stonetalon Mountains
• Available Dungeons:
  • Hall of Thanes
  • Wailing Caverns

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Redridge Mountains/Duskwood
  • Hillsbrad Foothills/Stonetalon Mountains
• Available Dungeons:
  • The Stockade
  • Shadowfang Keep and Wailing Caverns

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Ashenvale/Duskwood
  • Ashenvale/Duskwood
• Available Dungeons:
  • Blackfathom Deeps and The Stockade
  • Blackfathom Deeps and Shadowfang Keep

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Wetlands/Ashenvale
  • Hillsbrad Foothills/Wetlands
• Available Dungeons:
  • Excavation Site: Wetlands and Blackfathom Deeps
  • Excavation Site: Wetlands and Blackfathom Deeps

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Wetlands/Ashenvale
  • Wetlands/Thousand Needles
• Available Dungeons:
  • Excavation Site: Wetlands and Gnomeregan
  • Excavation Site: Wetlands and Razorfen Kraul

There are also some powerful items we would recommend grabbing along your journey, some of these may result in some slight detours but will often greatly increase your leveling quality of life as you progress through your adventures in Azeroth.

• Weapons
  • Blade of Cunning is your first major upgrade in the weapon slot and the quest for this can be picked up at your class trainer at level 10. The exact quest will depend on what race you have chosen to play but the time invested will be well worth the upgrade.
  • The The Deadmines is a great source of all kinds of weapons such as the Cruel Barb or the Thief's Blade as well as various pieces of the Defias set. While you may not get your exact chase piece your first run through the dungeon you are very unlikely to walk away empty-handed due to the amount of powerful drops. If you are a member of the Alliance you can try to time your run around your completion of The Defias Brotherhood quest line to snag the Tunic of Westfall.
  • The Shadowfang Keep is another great source of weapons, namely the Butcher's Slicer and Butcher's Cleaver. The Butcher who they drop from has a relatively small loot table so you are likely to get one of the two. If you are a member of the Horde try to time your run around the Arugal Must Die quest to also snag the Seal of Sylvanas.
  • Excavation Site: Wetlands is our next focus due to the strong weapon rewards available for completing quests on either faction. As a member of the Horde you can get the Serrated Raptor Claw from the quest located inside of the Excavation Site dungeon. As Alliance you will be able to earn Subdued Dragon's Fang from completing the Stopping the Cycle quest line.

Due to the frequency of new things being found on the WoW Forever beta and the Level cap being set at level 30 it is impossible at this time to give any kind of extensive list of upgrades or items to chase after post level 30 but we will update this as quickly as possible when this information becomes more available.

Maximize Up-time: Your number one focus while leveling should be to constantly chase gaining experience. This may seem obvious, but small things like killing mobs as you run from one objective to another, utilizing cooldowns like Evasion to reduce the time you spend eating to restore health, or doing idle tasks like professions while waiting for boats, will result in a noticeable increase in your leveling speed.

Level First Aid: As a Rogue, First Aid is absolutely crucial and worth every second spend leveling it. Using bandages is considerably faster than eating, and in a situation where you need to use it in combat, a quick Blind will give you plenty of time to heal.

Remember to take advantage of campfire buffs: Especially early game, when your character power feels low, the added buffs from a campsite can help make your character feel stronger. They often also increase the effectiveness of your experience gains via bonus rested XP.

Consider groups: As a Rogue you may struggle to solo specific content. Do not hesitate to reach out to players you see nearby or in the zone chat to form groups for more difficult quests. If you happen to find yourself completing a kill quest and see another player killing the same mobs, there is no harm in inviting them to get through the kill count quicker, especially as Rogue is quite bad at tagging enemies quickly from range.

Level	Important Ability/Class Quest/Game-Altering Talent
10	Dual Wield Unlock
15	Lockpicking Class Quest
20	Riposte available through talents
20	Poison Crafting Class Quest
22	Vanish Unlock
26	Cheap Shot Unlock
30	Blade Flurry available through talents
34	Blind Unlock
40	Adrenaline Rush available through talents
50	Ravenholdt Questline Available

Leatherworking is an incredible choice, especially when paired with Skinning. There are many pieces of gear that you can craft quite early into your leveling experience that will last you for a considerable amount of levels, and it is very likely that some of the best end-game rewards will be crafted via Leatherworking as well. Skinning allows you to gather the majority of the materials you will need to level your Leatherworking skill.

First Aid and Cooking, while not primary professions, are also incredibly important for your leveling journey. First Aid allows you to bandage yourself quickly, healing back damage taken, which can both be done in combat while an enemy is crowd controlled, or outside of it as a quicker alternative to eating. Cooking can be used to create powerful buff foods, many of which even increase the amount of experience you gain from kills. Both are typically quite easily leveled with materials you will find naturally through your adventures in Azeroth, and will not require many detours.

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