Low Levels // No BoA // SUPER SQUISH

[Verain]

If they convert the trinket to "readiness" it will probably naturally decay as you level like any ratings-based stat points generally do as you level.

Oh, definitely. I'm just saying that if it has 1200 readiness rating or whatever, that's unlikely to generate the relatively large effect that it does right now.

[jtstormrage]

In my opinion, forget Subterfuge and positional requirements. Take Shadow Focus, Ambush a target for FW, and just hemo spam them down. Eviscerate on them if you need.

Always keep SND and Recup up (SND gives more energy) with glyph of Deadly Momentum but otherwise the above will help a lot. With Subterfuge or Nightstakler you will feel energy starved a lot of the time.

[Verain]

You will FEEL energy starved with nightstalker, but a ghost version of you with shadow focus will be several paces behind when you are already on the mob. You will generate more kills per time with the ability to move around so fast- the damage boost is also something kinda nice.

[shadowboy]

Nightstalker is the talent I used for my 85-90 trip, and it's the talent I will use for my 90-100 trip, too.

[Sesshou]

In my opinion, forget Subterfuge and positional requirements. Take Shadow Focus, Ambush a target for FW, and just hemo spam them down. Eviscerate on them if you need.

Always keep SND and Recup up (SND gives more energy) with glyph of Deadly Momentum but otherwise the above will help a lot. With Subterfuge or Nightstakler you will feel energy starved a lot of the time.

Pretty sure I said the same thing earlier. Subterfuge is a crap leveling talent. You burn through so much extra energy doing that and it will slow you down. With SF 110 energy gets you ambush, 2 hemos, and an evis (which will most likely be 5cp due to hat). The subterfuge cheap shot ambush thing mentioned before costs you 135 to get up to the 5cp evis (with 1 hat cp) but you don't get the 35% damage from SV, so its 165 if you want SV which is ~ 3 seconds of you sitting around waiting on energy on every single mob.

[shadowboy]

Sesshou: The OPs issue wasn't leveling speed, it was survivability. Opening with a stun when taking nerve strike will go a long way to contributing to that survivability.

Also note that cheap shot will grant you almost as many CPs as ambush, for less energy, and STILL apply FW, at the expense of the ambush damage, but you still benefit in terms of survivability from the 4-4.5sec stun and subsequent 6 seconds from nerve strike. That's a 70% reduction in the damage you take from that mob in a 10 second period, versus just opening with ambush. Are you killing the mob 3x faster with the ambush? Magic 8-ball says definitely not.

Also, if you take combat readiness as a survivability talent when you're not doing aoe pulls, you're gimping your survivability. Nerve strike when coupled with stuns will mitigate FAR more damage than combat readiness will.

My leveling talents of choice back in 5.0 for 85-90 were nightstalker, nerve strike, leeching, shadowstep, and prey on the weak.

[ymirsson]

Movespeed is always useful when leveling, i sure as whatever will have it on my journey to 100.

[Deleted]

I never had problems leveling as an assassination rogue. It was really really smooth from 1-90.
But yeah, if you really want to stay sub I can't really help you further.

[Sesshou]

My leveling talents of choice back in 5.0 for 85-90 were nightstalker, nerve strike, leeching, shadowstep, and prey on the weak.

You leveled at MoP launch all the way to 90 as sub? I really can't recommend that because sub was garbage for sure at 89 and probably at 88 (I switched then, but assassination was kinda op with daggers that the OP won't have). Best advice if he was doing that would be respec. Hes no where near that yet though. Hes currently in BC which was massively nerfed since its release.

And I get his thing was survivability, but if hes taking too long to kill something then he is also taking a lot of extra damage. Leeching and recup should quite easily heal you through 5 seconds of damage from a mob. If its taking too much longer than that, like I said originally, change specs. Sub is only good for leveling if you can actually burst mobs on opener.

I would probably take nerve strike so you can have it when needed as the ramp up time on CR against a single mob is crap anyway (and you shouldn't be trying to AE pull with sub) which does allow you to still open with a CS on a mob instead of ambush for that extra bit of protection if you are for some reason low. He shouldn't need that anywhere near every single mob though with leeching and recup always up so it goes back to killing speed which is going to be better with SF because as you said, CS applies FW so even if he did need to open with CS 1 in 4 mobs or so, it maybe costs him very slightly more dps opening with CS using SF than with subterfuge and he gains solidly on the normal openers.

And no, you won't kill 3x faster. I also don't need to worry about mitigation for those 10 seconds because my mob is dead in 6-7 while you wait for energy.

[Verain]

I bet no one outside the devs has actually compared Nightstalker versus Shadow Focus for questing with metrics.

I really recommend Nightstalker, mostly because you begin going places stealthed, and you stealth ludicrously fast with burst of speed. It's not mount speed, but it's close. If you are grinding a set of mobs, I normally find that the small time to kill advantage of shadow focus is just nowhere close to the nightstalker boost, but I haven't done math or anything. Maybe we should.

[shadowboy]

Sesshou: I leveled at launch as combat. That's not the point though.

Like Verain, I wholly recommend nightstalker as a leveling talent. BoS + nightstalker is actually faster than epic land mount speed before the guild perk mounted speed boost. Using nightstalker you save approximately time it takes to cast a mount for every 100yd you move while unmounted and stealthed.

[Deleted]

i actually like the way rogues lvl , buy stealth and only if u can, killing the quest mob , in and out silent like the assassins we are
I have lots of other lvl 90 alts , yes i'd say dk was the easiest of all to lvl up ., just go blood spec in dps gear = win , but really rogue wasn't that much harder to get there keep at it.

[Hand Banana]

^ exactly. I just did my 85-90 as combat this past 2 weeks and flew through 85-90 without much effort, and am using the spec on timeless isle as well.

Combat will also not force you into daggers, so you can find a MH upgrade much more often.

Same here. Leveling combat through MoP was one of the easier classes (I have level 6 different ones). You just run train through mobs cycling cds and running perma recup/SnD, then pull 5 mobs and BF+KS and destroy them all for the hell of it.

Not sure how different it is now, but I lvled combat through all the expacs on my rogue and never had issues. Blade flurry cleaving and killing spree is nuts, you have so many baller cds to kill mobs fast when you need to, and you can use all of your CPs for stuns since most of your damage is white anyway and vanish can be saved for when you are really in trouble.

[Warstar]

One big problem with rogues vs. other classes is that our "survival" abilities like cheap shot and kidney shot both come at a huge dps loss. Granted they make us not take damage and increase our over all suitability but using something like a 5 point kidney shot is a nice stun but 0 damage (except for prey on the weak) kinda sucks. Also especially as combat cheap shot honestly seems like kind of a shit ability to use. I'd rather open with ambush and get an 8 second 5 kidney shot rather than 2 4 second stuns with cheap shot and kidney shot and lose out on damage on both the opener and a finisher.

As for warriors/DKs and healing. I know that they need to kill stuff but generally you can pull a bunch get your aoe out and then focus down one a time after your burst aoe and then you victory rush after victory rush after victory rush. Their sustain really is unarguably (if you argue you're just wrong) is a lot higher than rogues. They simply have a higher self healing possibility than rogues do. A warrior can pull a bunch, aoe bladestorm/blood bath get everything low and then finish them all off with chain victory rushes. It's how I leveled my warrior at the start of MoP.

So far I'm up to 9 90s and an 89 shaman and 86 paladin left to do and out of all of these leveling experiences my rogue was by far the most tedious and by the time I hit 90 was really bad and could barely do daily quests since if I pulled more than 1 at a time I got my face smashed off where my warrior could just aoe everything down at once no problem.

Leveling as assassination MfD will be a god send come WoD. The positional req. for sub will make it a lot more fun to level (and hurray for actually being able to use Shadow Dance!).