Welcome to our Rogue Leveling Guide for World of Warcraft Forever. This guide will cover everything you need to know to level a Rogue in WoW Forever, including an overview of Rogue Strengths and Weaknesses, a Leveling Talents Build for Rogue, and the best Professions for a Rogue.
Guide Contents:
- Strengths & Weaknesses
- Best / Suggested Racials
- Recommended Leveling Talents
- Playstyle and Core Abilities
- Key Spells & Levelling Milestones
- Best / Suggested Professions
Rogue Class Overview: WoW Forever
Rogue is one of the most approachable classes, it has a lot of answers to problems while leveling and has good flexibility across the board with many viable hybrid builds which allow you to follow your heart after picking up fundamental talents.
Rogue follows a traditional rotation where you spend time building resources called Combo Points and executing various Finishing Moves to spend them.
Best / Suggested Racials for Rogue
Historically, Horde has been the stronger pick for the Racial on-use effects, but with WoW: Forever, all Racials have received various tweaks or changes.
For Horde, I recommend:
- Orc for Blood Fury
- Undead for Touch of the Grave
For Alliance, I recommend:
- Gnome for Eureka!
- Night Elf for Elune’s Light
Strengths & Weaknesses of Rogue in WoW Forever
Strengths
Weaknesses
- Utility: With Expose Armor matching Warrior's Sunder Armor, we have little outside of raw damage that would help us fight for an eventual raid spot.
Recommended Leveling Talents for Rogue in WoW Forever
Rogues have a few options when it comes to the best Specialization in Warcraft Forever. Either of the following Talent Builds will be suitable for leveling.
Combat: General Build
This talent build chooses to fully invest in the Combat tree, so that we can access Blade Flurry as early as possible.
Your first two points should go into Remorseless Attacks until Level 30, then you re-spec these for 4/5 Dual Wield Specialization, and 1/1 Blade Flurry.
If you are not using Daggers, Three points from Puncturing Wounds should instead be moved to 2/2 Endurance and 1/5 Lightning Reflexes.
My recommendation for levelling goals after this point are:
Something to mention is that the Rogue talent trees are very flexible and that the Assassination tree has plenty of strong options that make the class feel a lot nicer.
Assassination: General Build
This build establishes a stronger resource economy through Relentless Strikes, Ruthlessness, Improved Slice And Dice and prioritises Sinister Strike.
Expose Armor also becomes easier to use with the Assassination tree as a result of Relentless Strikes.
My recommendation for levelling goals after this point are:
Rogue Playstyle and Core Abilities
Rogue has a very generic rotation, in that we always want to build combo points and eventually spend these on Finishing Moves.
Backstab and Sinister Strike are our builders, which are interchangeable depending on your build. If you’ve opted for Puncturing Wounds then you should be looking to Backstab.
Eviscerate and Slice And Dice are our main Finishers, Slice and Dice should be maintained as the better of the two options while levelling when we unlock it.
Rotation:
- Ambush out of Stealth (From Level 18)
- Backstab (With Daggers)
- Sinister Strike (Without Daggers)
- Slice And Dice
- Expose Armor*
Being able to Backstab consistently becomes a lot easier in group content, use Sinister Strike as a fallback if you cannot Backstab.
*Expose Armor should be used when your target will live for the entire duration.
Key Spells & Leveling Milestones for Rogue
Below are some of the priorities and power spikes throughout the levelling experience:
When you reach Level 10 you should:
- Complete your Class Quest for a strong early-game weapon.
- Prioritise training Dual Wield and Slice And Dice at the Class Trainer.
When you reach a major city, you should:
- Train a different Weapon Skill if you have a stronger weapon in bags which is either a Sword, Mace, Axe or Fist Weapon.
Sinister Strike will always be better when using a Non-Dagger weapon and will be a core ability throughout the entire levelling experience.
That being said, make sure to always use your highest DPS weapon in your Main Hand slot.
At Level 14 Expose Armor becomes available to us.
While it looks like a high-combo point value Finisher, you should only use it when what you are fighting will live for the entire duration.
At Level 18 we can train Ambush, which will likely be better to cast than Garrote or an initial Backstab in most situations, though it does require a Dagger in your Main Hand.
At Level 20 we gain access to Poisons. The only poison we will use for now is
Instant Poison, as it is more applicable than the utility poisons we have available.
Deadly Poison when you unlock it would deal more damage across longer fights, but you won't see too many of these moments while levelling.
While there are other poisons, they see very little use outside of PvP.
At Level 20 you should complete your Class Quest for the Pyrwood Signet Ring.
If you clear Deadmines, look out and roll for the Cruel Barb from Edwin VanCleef.
Best / Suggested Professions for Rogue
Listed below are the profession recommendations for Levelling as a Rogue.
Profession 1: Skinning
Picking up Skinning and utilising it as early as possible sets you up nicely for when you reach your first Major City, at which point you will pick up Leatherworking and have the ability to craft a lot of cheap leveling gear. Training it further allows you to continue making stronger gear as you level alongside it.
Profession 2: Leatherworking
Leatherworking gives you access to some very cheap crafted gear while you are levelling, and with Skinning you should have an abundance of leather to craft it with.
You're likely to have a lot of Ruined Leather Scraps when you reach your first Major City so don't hesitate to spend some time crafting Uncommon upgrades.
When crafting upgrades, you are looking for items that have higher Agility on them and any additional Strength is a nice bonus. An item like Skulker's Leather Belt would be a good example of this.
Secondary Professions
Secondary professions are all worth picking up. Even if you don't invest much time into them, you can still reap benefits from them while leveling.
I highly recommend training First Aid whenever you can, doing so allows you to make bandages which are great for quicker healing between combats.
Cooking will grant personal access to Camping and the additional perks from your other professions whilst also enabling you to start crafting food which can give additional stats and experience!
Fishing will give you early access to the Fish Bowl and serves as another way to help train your Cooking skill.
Camping
Camping is a system that pairs with your professions, allowing you to gain helpful buffs at either your own, or other’s camp sites.
The three camping buffs you should look to utilise while levelling are:
- Camp Chair, from Skinning
- Fish Bowl, from Fishing
- Lodestone, from Mining
Since we want to learn Skinning + Leatherworking, we don’t have direct access to the Mining buffs, but these buffs are shared with everyone at the camp site so encourage a friendly Miner to craft a Lodestone.
Camp Tent from Leatherworking will give you 5% Rested Experience, but you can only place 3 buffs at a single campsite.
We hope our Rogue Leveling guide for WoW Forever was useful to help you know where to spend your talent points and how to get the most out of the class whilst leveling.
