Why are rogues so damn squishy in PVE!?

[lolpve]

I leveled 3 rogues at least to level 90 and two of them are 100, one has been my main since Vanilla.
From my own experience, the worst spec for leveling is Combat : it has no burst outside KS and is extremely boring to play on fight that does not last more than 10 seconds.
Assassination is average for leveling : high speed CP generation and Envenom does the final job.

Sub is extremely fun for leveling : it is extremly bursty, the most roguish of the three specs for leveling (a real assassin, much more than the Assassination spec !)
Talents :
- use Subterfuge (to use Garrote + Ambush as an opening sequence).
- use Cloak and Dagger when you are on mob spot and Burst of Speed inside buildings or caves.
- use Dirty Tricks, if you want to play with a dagger and use Backstab after Gouge
Glyphs
- use Deadly momentum : to auto refresh Slice and Dice and Recuperate
- use Hemorrhaging veins to apply the Sanguinay Veins +25% damage debuff
--
After the opener sequence (Garrote + Ambush), use Hemorrhage to build CP and backstab if are using a dagger in main hand and have chosen Dirty Tricks (apply your Rupture and Hemo dots, pull energy, Gouge, wait a little and Backstab just before the end of the weak stun). Slice and Dice should always be up (before opening : use Premeditation + SnD), apply Rupture and Recuperate when possible.
Thanks to this you will destroy normal targets in less than 5 sec and explode Elites within one Shadow dance. You can play this with any weapons.

This still works when gearing level 100 but a rogue is not made to kill packs of mobs, only combat would have the AOE power for that but it would be destroyed within seconds outside Evasion. Rogues are not warriors or DK, they are extremly fragile if you try to play them like a DK or a warrior. In raids, this is the other way round, rogues have the best survival toolkit of all classes (Elusiveness, CS, Evasion, Feint) which is paid extremely hard by having now a low/medium DPS compared to other classes (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/7 ).

I couldn't disagree more. I have two level 100 rogues and have levelled 4 rogues to levels 80/90 over the years since vanilla. Without a doubt combat is the best spec for levelling IF you level at the right spots with good mob density and pull aggressively. It's also got the best survivability. I would say that assassination does ok playing multi-dot and sub is the worst. It's flashy doing big ambush crits and sneaking around "like a real rogue" but at the end of the day a combat rogue can pull 4 mobs and down them in the time it takes sub to kill two. And if sub is caught out of stealth without FW up then it's even slower. I would never recommend levelling as sub to anyone unless they aren't confident enough to pull aggressively as combat. Sadly shadow dance does far less damage than AR+KS and unlike combat sub's burst is limited to stuns after which it is castrated.

[Demeia]

I had zero problems leveling to 100 this x-pack--though I'm sure the garrosh heirloom helped some. I will say that leveling from 88-90 was depressingly difficult. Well, it seemed much harder than it should have been anyway.

I'm honestly having trouble imagining anyone having difficulty leveling once they can get Marked for Death. I will say I never had a lot of luck with deadly momentum though I certainly used it; it just always seemed to be down before I could kill anything else.

It was certainly a hell of a lot easier to level a warlock...and there's a reason that there are almost half again as many hunters as the most popular class.