Leveling a rogue--is it tough ?

[Swargle]

...Leveling as a rogue 1-60 was incredibly painful for me. It was expensive to constantly buy mats and keep my poisons up to par. Damn near everything after level 40 seemed to be immune to poisons, Mechanical, Elementals, etc. If you pull more than one mob and don't have Blade flurry off cool down, you better hope Vanish is because otherwise you gonna die. Assuming of course you remembered to stock up on vanish powder. Be sure to keep up your lock picking, nothing worse than running across a locked chest and being unable to open it because you need to go out to Desolace and grind 15 more points in lock picking skill. Also stealth rules.

[Mafic]

1-30 levels is easy to level. But beyond that it is now a pain to level given Recuperate was nerfed to the ground. Even with the Glyphy of Deadly Momentum it is a very mediocre skill now, and surpassed by Leeching Poison.

2 of the 3 specs do not have a cleave, which makes completing a lot of quests very difficult. Also, 2 of the 3 specs do not receive their major DPS cool down till 80. Fan of Knives and Crimson Tempest both come late in the leveling process which makes it hard on all Rogue specs.

Without Combat Readiness, if you pull more than one mob, you are in trouble (this is where Combat has the edge due to its cleave, Blade Flurry). Elusivness takes precious energy, while Nerve Strike is only against one target. Vanish is 3 minutes now, so if you pull too many mobs after using the 1st Vanish you probably will visit the graveyard.

The point of adding Recuperate, and Combat Readiness in Cata was to ease Rogue leveling, and reduce reliance on cooldowns (recup) at level cap. Now that recup is nerfed, and Combat Readiness is only a talent choice, not a base line skill, tough sledding for any newcomer to the class. Throw no longer procs poisons which is also a nerf to leveling if you think about it.

So, in summary Rogues took one step forward to ease leveling in Cata, and in MoP they have taken two steps back. Not a friendly class to level unless you know what you are doing.

[Marema]

It's been a while since I've levelled a rogue by any measure but I can tell you that I've had fun leveling mine to 90 (currently 88 though my sig hasn't been updated) and It's been going pretty fast but I'm not sure if that is because of the class or because I've already done all of these damn quests 4 previous times. I can tell you what though, that being able to sneak past mobs to get to a quest item is very nice!

[AceofHarts]

I'll just repeat what I said in the other thread:

rogues might be the easiest class (in your opinion) but they are one of, if not the SLOWEST classes to level.