Leveling rogue but....

[Anium]

I feel your pain OP.
I'm currently in the middle of leveling my rogue (89) and warrior (88) up to 90. My warrior is literally 3 shotting mobs and taking on + 4 at a time, an absolute breeze while rogue struggles when I unfortunately pull more than one mob, it so painful it's unreal. Far more than it used it be from what i can remember.

My advice to you would be to go combat, get correct glyphs, especially DM, and if you happen to have a 90 already farm the hidden treasures you can find around pandaria. I know for a fact there is a bind on account blue dagger, which you can use at 86, with a very respectable ilvl available (beleive it is found in the north east of dread wastes, check wowhead) that you will keep until 90.
Other than that, plug yourself in, get a good music mix and grit your teeth to level 90. GL

[Avengerx]

There are some quite interesting remarks here including the buying of dancing steel enchants or the get hit capped ones...

For the useful ones, as has been mentioned try getting the Deadly Momentum glyph and Leeching Poison. Also your spec will greatly rely on what weapons you have available at that time.
Lastly, some people mentioned leveling as assasination. I would just say 1 word of "caution", if you decide to level as this spec be prepared to wait an eternity for energy to regenerate.

[Jinna]

Lastly, some people mentioned leveling as assasination. I would just say 1 word of "caution", if you decide to level as this spec be prepared to wait an eternity for energy to regenerate.

Does not suffer from energy regeneration problems. You have 2 options

1) Open with CS, spend the 2 combopoints on rupture immediately, and then Mut > Mut > Envenom to victory (we are assuming Glyph of deadly momentum, SnD and Recup up already). 1b) Open with CS, one Mut and then 4 point Rupture

2) Open with Garotte (gets bleed up w/o combopoints) and just Mut > Mut > Envenom to Victory

The Advantage to 1 is that you get to use prey on the weak and nerves with your stun, also if the target dies before rupture wears off, you get lots of energy back. This is great for if you pull an additional mob, you have full energy when you start on the second one.

The advantage of 2 is that you can kill a bit quicker, since you get the damage in early, you have the bleed up right from the start. But you might take more damage. I would often weave between 1 and 2. Use 2 when you are on full health, use 1 when you are at about 50% until you get up to full again through recuperate.

Assassination is great because it doesn't have the direction requirement of backstab, and it is such an easy rotation, once SnD is up, it stays up, even if DM doesn't refresh it, Envenom will.

With combat, you have lots of things to keep track of, and if you are out of combat for long, your levels of insight will prove useless.

Also, with Assassination you will Always have combopoints left at the end of any fight as you will just spam dispatch towards the end. Getting and keep Recuperate up is child's play.

[patcherke]

leveled the whole way as assassination. combat was too slow and tedious. full LFR DS gear. ambush > SnD > envenom spam usually took care of any mob fine. it kept up SnD, worked like a charm. after the fight, use whatever combo points left to throw up recup, head to next mob. if you keep your pace up nothing should wear off. leech poison is a must have for any spec imo

I levelled as assassination too, and to be fair, it was slower than combat. When I hit 90 and was doing dailies, I switched to combat because I could quest with less downtime. Adrenaline Rush, Shadow Blades and Killing Spree used separately did wonders when compared with Vendetta (which is wasted as soon as you mob dies) and you had a cleave in case you pulled 2 mobs.
Combat at that point of time made me feel at least like I was doing other things than looking at the energy bar.

[Avengerx]

Does not suffer from energy regeneration problems. You have 2 options

1) Open with CS, spend the 2 combopoints on rupture immediately, and then Mut > Mut > Envenom to victory (we are assuming Glyph of deadly momentum, SnD and Recup up already). 1b) Open with CS, one Mut and then 4 point Rupture

2) Open with Garotte (gets bleed up w/o combopoints) and just Mut > Mut > Envenom to Victory

The Advantage to 1 is that you get to use prey on the weak and nerves with your stun, also if the target dies before rupture wears off, you get lots of energy back. This is great for if you pull an additional mob, you have full energy when you start on the second one.

The advantage of 2 is that you can kill a bit quicker, since you get the damage in early, you have the bleed up right from the start. But you might take more damage. I would often weave between 1 and 2. Use 2 when you are on full health, use 1 when you are at about 50% until you get up to full again through recuperate.

Assassination is great because it doesn't have the direction requirement of backstab, and it is such an easy rotation, once SnD is up, it stays up, even if DM doesn't refresh it, Envenom will.

With combat, you have lots of things to keep track of, and if you are out of combat for long, your levels of insight will prove useless.

Also, with Assassination you will Always have combopoints left at the end of any fight as you will just spam dispatch towards the end. Getting and keep Recuperate up is child's play.

Erm first of all because I just have to ask, just what are all those things you have to keep track of as combat? Snd or maybe the Rev strike buff?

The thing is after he gets that first envenom in (and muti + envenom at 88+ hits like wet noodles) there's no way the mob will die. Then he's left with 0 energy, low crit, haste and mastery rating and it will take ages (even with rupture up) to get a decent energy back again. By that time rupture might be running out...

Tbh I think he's better off just starting with a mutilate or an ambush to get some extra damage in.

Also as patcherke said combat has more and better cd's situated for leveling. (Vendetta might be good but once the mob dies it's lost whereas AR can go on for a while).
Combat also has cleave which currently makes it ideal for double pulls. Not to mention combat benefits more from leeching poison.

But no matter what spec you choose because of how ratings are effected by leveling up, the closer you get to 90 the slower you will feel the leveling experience.

[zeuseason]

of all my 90's, my rogue was the easiest & fastest. They are an ultra-routine class meaning for virtually every single kill you use the exact same rotation (not true with most classes). I leveled sub, premed->sstep->garrote->recup->hemo till dead. I'd throw a snd/disarm/kshot in there every once in awhile but not necessary. For hard hitting mobs it's the stun lock rotation. Bring bandaids. My rogue is one of my only classes that has capped first aid.

Rogue dps is horribad tho. I pretty much only leveled my rogue for JC & lockpick, and cause it's so easy to level.

[Kaeth]

Odd. I had absolutely no problems on my rogue (starting MoP in ~378 gear) and never once used the Glyph of Deadly Momentum (clarification: I'm not recommending against it in any way -- I just didn't bother to use it and still did fine). Playing as Assassination with Leeching Poison and liberal use of Recuperate, it was pretty much a zerg rush straight to level 90. Did I die? Yes, occasionally. Not often, though, even when I was questing in Dread Wastes.

Don't be afraid to use Shiv for occasional minor extra healing. With the Dirty Tricks talent, you can also Rupture and immediately Gouge at low energy to get a couple recuperate ticks in while refilling your energy bar.

If you get overwhelmed, Vanish. Unless luck is really against you, a solo rogue only dies if he/she waits too long to run away.

[Viridis]

I've leveled all my rogues as subtlety (I only pvp on my rogues,so its the only spec that's really interesting to me). I don't quite understand all the back and forth in this thread. All through my levelling, everything died in a glyphed cheap shot. Sometimes I'd have to kidney too, but it was a rare occation when my target wasn't dead before coming out of whatever stun I had it in. Pull 2 mobs? Blind the second, finish the first. Pull 3? Blind one, gouge into paralytic root the second, kill number 3 and so on.

That said, leveling a rogue can be painful if you're new to the game or the rogue way of gameplay. What I've found to speed up my leveling process dramatically is using arena mentality. If there's 2 mobs, I'll set a focus, and I always have focus cast macros etc. This is why I never play a rogue in PvE to be honest - to me it doesnt really offer anything pve-related that all the other classes don't have. And usually they have what rogues have, and then some. For PvP though, I find rogue to be an amazingly entertaining class. With all the peels, crowd controls, and various disappearing tricks, they seldom get boring.

TLDR; Look through your spellbook, and think of ways to use the abilities in there to control your way to victory. A rogue questing isn't really being a warrior who charges in and pops his swifty macro to blow up 20 mobs.

[Termak]

I had no problems while levellin my rogue alt, even did the rarespawns when they were around. Stuns, recu, deadly momentum and leeching had no problems.

[Sealed]

Leeching Poison and Deadly Momentum Glyph. When doing kill quests keep Recup up and you'll be fine.

QFT.

Lots of baffling claims in this thread. I had no problem whatsoever leveling in MoP as a Combat rogue starting in fresh 85 gear.

Deadly Momentum keeps you going without pauses, Leeching Shiv is a handy bit of sustain, Adrenaline Rush and Killing Spree make for some insane on-demand burst (for Elites, in case of unplanned aggro or if you just want to speed it up), which Blade Flurry lets you duplicate to annihilate several mobs at a time... And then you have Evasion, Combat Readiness, Cloak of Shadows, and a get-out-of-jail-free card in case something still goes wrong.

At max level, I find questing to be a breeze.

Stealthing through a pack of mobs to avoid fighting what you don't need to just to pick off the quest ones

is also very handy !

[Lachtobi]

Lots of baffling claims in this thread. I had no problem whatsoever leveling in MoP as a Combat rogue starting in fresh 85 gear.

The question is not whether it's possible - obviously it is. It's that it's substantially slower than most specs out there and a substantially more dull experience. Combo points is what makes the rogue tick - it's the DNA. When you have to spend all of them refreshing maintenance buffs and few on them on actual finishers (which aren't in the least splashy), then a lot of the flair and excitement about playing is lost.

Dotting up 5 targets and going to town under a Hurricane. Whirlwinding a pack of mobs with a massive hammer and then instantly go back to full with Victory Rush. One shotting mobs at range with Aimed Shot. Killing mobs while healing the your friends through Atonement. Those are exciting ways to level up.

[Viridis]

Dotting up 5 targets and going to town under a Hurricane. Whirlwinding a pack of mobs with a massive hammer and then instantly go back to full with Victory Rush. One shotting mobs at range with Aimed Shot. Killing mobs while healing the your friends through Atonement. Those are exciting ways to level up.

I agree completely with this. I absolutely love my rogues as PvP classes, but the leveling and PvE experience is outright dull, dull, dull. Leveling to 90 is a matter of pressing 3 buttons over and over, more so with combat and assassination than with sub, but sub in a "kill the mob"-setting is extremely boring gameplay too.

[Kaeth]

I agree completely with this. I absolutely love my rogues as PvP classes, but the leveling and PvE experience is outright dull, dull, dull.

Maybe it's just because I'm a stealth junkie, but sneaking around and jumping from the shadows to kill a target never ceases to amuse me, even in PvE. It's what I enjoy about the rogue leveling experience that not even a feral can truly replicate.

At 90, once the focus returned to poking a boss in the back for 5+ minutes -- that's when I got bored.

At least the PvP game retains some of the stealth gank part of the formula. Except, in my case, the "kill" part. Because I'm a noob at PvP.

[Bananarepublic]

I am doing it for PVP.
Anyways, I just reached lvl 89, 1 more level to go...sigh.

[Maelstrom51]

-snip-

Why even open with CS? Go with ambush for more damage and quicker leveling. I leveled as assassination chain pulling everything, didn't even have time to stealth, and didn't need to CC stuff. I don't see why you would ever need to cc when fighting a single mob.

[Bananarepublic]

I am really bummed out that Ambush doesn't have the 70% crit chance talent it used to, would make it a lot easier.

[Jinna]

Why even open with CS? Go with ambush for more damage and quicker leveling. I leveled as assassination chain pulling everything, didn't even have time to stealth, and didn't need to CC stuff. I don't see why you would ever need to cc when fighting a single mob.

Prey on the weak and Nerve Damage. Also, you should always stealth, even just to pickpocket. I had 18 vine lockboxes when I hit 90 and one of them had the Krol sword in it. I macro'd it into my opener. The important thing to note is that you aren't moving before you hit it, sap is great for this.

[Bananarepublic]

Actually, I tried garrote and rupture and I like it WAY more than spamming eviscerate.

Steady damage all the way.