The Talents

Combat is the tree to go deep if you want to level fast. However for levels 20-24 you can not pick DPS talents in the combat tree, so I suggest you to take a little deviaton into the Assassination tree until level 35. Then unlearn your talents and throw everything in the Combat tree.

Level 20-24: Malice
25,26: Remorseless Attacks
27,28: Murder
29: Ruthlessness
30: Relentless Strikes
31-35: Lethality

So, at level35 your talents should be like this.
The only point not spent in DPS talent is Ruthlessness. You could have picked Improved Eviscerate(1/3) at level 29. However, 5% increase of 10-15% of your total damage(Eviscerate will do even less) is not noticable at all. With Ruthlessness 1/3 you will get a combo point for every 1 out of 5 finishers. This is not much but combined with Relentless Strikes will stimulate you to do 1-2 combo points finishers more often. Combinations like Sinister Strike x2 Slice and Dice or Sinister Strike x2 Expose Armor will sometimes reward you energy and combo points. I use such combos against mobs of my (or higher) level, mobs with high armor and named mobs. Expose Armor adds damage for every hit you deliver (improves your white and yellow damage). Slice and Dice improves only your white damage, but with it you will score more Poison procs. If you use two Instant Poison Slice and Dice is a huge DPS boost.

Use Expose Armor/Slice and Dice combos only against high armor/strong opponents. For normal mobs revert to the normal strategy. Charge in, several Sinister Strikes + Eviscerate. IF your Eviscerate did not kill the mob and you got extra combo point from Ruthlessness, if you feel the mob is dying any moment you can use Slice and Dice(SnD) and immediately jump into another mob while SnD is active.

Remorseless Attacks is a great DPS boost. Exrta critical strike on your first Sinister Strike(SS) is great, and with it SS will do over 30% of your total damage. And it will keep you running fast between opponents because you will always want to get the Remorseless bonus.

At level 35 or 36 unlearn you talents and spend everything in Combat. If you are 35 get 5/5 Sword Specialization and then 5/5 Dual Wield Specialization at 36. You should be using two Swords now. Sword of Omen is the best you can get at level36. Use it in the main hand and buy some fast sword "of the monkey" from the AH for your offhand.

Also you have learned Riposte. You can use it after you parry opponents strikes. It deals nice damage will disarm your opponent if he uses a weapon. You can bind it to a key, watch for parries and use it manually, or you can use a macro. A macro like
/castrandom Sinister Strike,Riposte
will randomly do one of them. Its not a perfect solution, you will have to mash the button with this macro alot not to waste an energy. Its up to you. Riposting manually is still good, you just have to watch for those parries.

Legionnaire's Sword vs Stinging Viper: Low level Battlegrounds

At level 18 or 19 you can use one of these:

Legionnaire's Sword

Stinging Viper

They are almost the same. The sword is reward from doing Warsong Gulch and the mace is a drop from Lord Pythan in the Wailing Caverns. Which is easier to get depends on your luck. I prefer the sword because it is guaranteed you will get it when you get enough honor and marks. 10 Warsong Gulch wins is enough to get it. The problem is you get rewarded honor once every day, in the night (around 3am i think). So it is not a bad idea to visit Warsong Gulch several times between levels 10-18. I went there at lvl13, stealth leached all the honor and marks i needed and got it the next day when i hit level18. People will complain about you being too low level in Wrsong Gulch, just ignore them. It is a war out there.

The mace may be easier to get but you need to be lucky. While it can drop on the first run, you may need to go to the Wailing Caverns several times which may be long.

I told you that the most important thing is to level fast. A good mainhand weapon may double your experience per hour and even better, it will make it more enjoyable. So the time spent in Warsong Gulch will pay back once you hit 18. Get 30 marks and 300 honor(just to be sure you wont have to wait another day). It will serve you well until late 20s.

Level12 - Swords from The Crossroads

In the Crossroads, look for the Weapons Vendor Nargal Deatheye.

He sells the following green swords.
Enamelled Broadsword - 12-23dmg +1strength 2.40speed for 28s78c
and
Feral Blade 12-24dmg +1agility 2.60speed for 24s7c

These weapons are Limited Supply, if they are not there you will have to wait. Do a quest, come back in 5minutes. Enamelled Broadsword is the better choice obviously. It has better dps and almost the same damage range. This is an example when faster weapons are better. But Feral Blade is good too. You can only use one of them because they both are Main Hand.

Make Crossroads(XR) your home, get all quests and start doing them. Do the plainstrider quest and Disrupt the Attacks, go back to XR, turn them in and get next part - The Disruption Ends. When done turn them in, get new quests and head to Ratchet (a bit southeast of XR). Again get all quests and don't forget to click on the Wanted: sign, it will give you the baron quest. Do all the pirate quests and kill the baron when you are 14. Turn quests in, heart to XR and take the road west(northwest). In a bunker there you will get two quests to kill centaurs. Do them alongside with oasis, mushrooms and zhevra quest. This is how you must stack quests. Turn them in the XR get new ones and you know what to do. The Barrens has enough quests to keep you going beyond lvl20.

At levels 12,13 and 14 pick Improved Gouge. I like gouging a lot. You control the opponent, get extra rage, swing time and combo points. At 15-19 pick Precision. It is a huge dps boost.

Sometime after level16 when you are in Orgrimmar to learn new skills get the quest Find the Shattered Hand. It is a chain of quests that ends in Ratchet and allows you to learn and level your Lokcpicking skill. Around level 20 when you are near Ratchet do the final part. You get Thieves' Tools and E.C.A.C from Wrenix's Gizmotronic Apparatus and go inside a ship near the pirates. When you click the treasure a parrot will spawn. Immediately use your E.C.A.C on him and he will turn into smaller polly and kill him. The ship is at 64,45. You can skill up your lockpicking up to 5 times your level. Better spend the time to do it.

Notable quest rewards:
Hezrul Bloodmark reward: Bounty Hunter's Ring
Stolen Silver reward: Rambling Boots
Serena Bloodfeather rewards: Elegant Shortsword and Harpy Skinner

Professions

While professions are tempting, I will suggest you not to pick any gathering skill until at least level40, when you get your mount. You can make good money with mining/skinning/herbalism but this will cost you time and inventory space, which is money lost and slow leveling. You will make money when you reach 60+, time is better spent leveling. The only things i will buy are: lvl40 mount 90gold, levle45 Helm of Fire 20-30g (on my server), Assassination Blade (before level52) 80-100g and the book for the rogue class trinket from Dire Maul (5-30g). While you can make some money with professions, at 70 for the same time spent you will make 50-100 times more so why not level fast? If you get bored questing or grinding take a break, make some coffee play with your girlfriend .. you know what to do just don't use Professions.

First Aid is a must. Take it at level6-7 when you visit Razor Hill.

Level1

I am writing this guide from the perspective that you don't have any level70 characters/friends who can send you money, bags or enchant your items.

As a rogue you cant help yourself much until at least level18. Casters can farm some 60 lilen cloths learn tailoring and enchanting and create themselves a wand which is over 80% of their damage until lvl20+. The most important thing for you are your weapons. In the beginning you can only use daggers. Daggers are fast, with low damage range which is not good for your primary damage skill: Sinister Strike(SS). SS is an instant attack which makes you swing for your normal damage + some bonus for every level of SS you have. Thus, the slower the weapon (better damage range), the better for you. Your Worn Dagger has 1.60 speed, so every SS you do is like adding your normal damage from your mainhand weapon for the next 1.60 seconds. Imagine wearing a 2.70 speed sword, you start the fight and do two Sinister Strikes, this will do your normal damage for the next 5.40 seconds plus the normal swing you will do. So the general rule is: good rogue main hand weapons are slow weapons with good damage range.

The only way to level fast is to go with the Combat talent tree. Subtlety is cool but after you break stealth you cant hurt your opponents much. Assassination has many talents that add to your damage, but with limited points you can spend early in the game Combat is the best tree.

The build i will suggest you is a mix of Combat/Assassination talents until about level35, then switch to full combat until 50 and the rest into Assassination. I will tell you why. If you want to kill stuff fast you must never go without the Precision talent. It is a huge damage boost, wielding two weapons you have 24% chance to miss on your normal (white) attacks and 5% on your special (yellow damage) attacks. The 5% Precision adds are invaluable.

How to kill mobs: Don't use stealth at all. Pull with thrown weapon or ust charge the mobs, Sinister Strike several times, Eviscerate and finish them. Without talents Backstab's damage is terrible. Thank god improved sinister strike is tier1 talent.

Back to the topic. You are level1 and as I already said there is not anything special you can do to level fast, just do quests and kill mobs. The more quests you do the better. Try to do several quests at once, you must train your eye to read only the important stuff from the quest text, usually you only need to know the area where you must go, what you must kill to complete the quest. While Undead rogue is superior to Orc and Troll, quests in Durotar are better stacked. I suggest you to do only the first 2-3 quests in Shadow grave, get to level3 or 4 and head to Durotar. Once you are ready leave the town, take the road to Brill (read the signs), you may die a couple of times until you get to Brill but thats ok. Once there go a little southeast of the town and you will see the Zeppelin tower. You are looking for the Zeppelin to Orgrimmar, the one whose ramp is pointing west, ask the goblins inside the tower if you are uncertain if you are waiting at the right spot. Fly to Durotar, get down the tower and follow the road west, until you see the road south. Take south between the mountains and you will arrive at Razor Hill. Go further south and read the signs. They will tell you where Valley of Trials is (right turn, go west). Once there talk to NPCs get quests and start doing them. Once you do them all you should be between levels 6 and 7. You will get a quest to go east to SenJin Village. Get all quests there and go to Razor Hill. Make it your new home, again get all quests and start doing them. Get new skills from the rogue trainer there, and if you have the money buy some 6slot bags (5silver each). If you didn't find any bags yet it is important to buy bags for all your empty slots. Browse though the quests description and start doing them 2-3 at a time. Do not forget to equip better daggers you get from quest rewards. When you are done with the easy quests you should be level 9 or 10 (do not try the Dark Storms quest until lvl11). If not level10 yet follow the road to Orgrimmar north and do the harpy quest from the goblin, kill mobs until 10. At level10 you can learn the skill to use Swords, and you have your fist talent point. Pick Improved Sinister Strike at levels 10 and 11. Take the Zeppelin to Trisfal Glades, go south to Undercity, ask guards for the weapon master and find him. The Swords skill costs 10 silver. Also get DualWield from rogue trainer. Then heartstone(HS) back to Razor Hill (or fly the zeppelin if HS is on cooldown. The second harpy quest from the goblin will reward you your first sword. Put it in your main hand, and whatever dagger you carry in the offhand. Your offhand weapon really does not matter, just look for the highest dps. You can get some quests from Orgrimmar (Thrall). Finish all Razor Hill quests. If not yet level12 grind mobs inside the cave near the seaside east of Orgrimmar. At 12 get new skills and take the road west from Razor Hill to The Barrens. This is where you will spend most of your time until level 20. Turn in the quest at the border tower and take the road west. You will arrive at the Crossroads.

Create Your Hero

So the character creation screen is up and it is time to start roleplaying. Do you want to be a good or bad hero? Lets choose race for my hero. I plan to PvP a lot with my rogue so it's time to check racial bonuses. Dwarves have Stoneform which is good when fighting other rogues, Humans have Perception, temporary increasing their stealth detection, Gnomes have Escape Artist, Undead have Will of the Forsaken, Trolls Berserking, Orcs' Hardiness, Night Elves' Shadowmeld + increased stealth and Blook Elves' Arcane Torrent. Drarves, Humans and Trolls are out of the question. Orcs' stun resistance is not that good, it has huge advantage only against other rogues. While paladin will stun you once or twice every fight rogues are the only class who will try to keep you incapacitated all the time. Night Elves' added stealth is cool, and the Shadowmeld ability will save your life many times in battlegrounds, but its more like Honorable Kills leech talent than a real racial bonus to choose from. Blood Elves: as a rogue you already have a ton of moves to stop them from casting, why would you want your racial skill to do what you are already best at? So the choice is really either Gnome or Undead. As a Gnome you have a good chance to win when fighting mages and druids. Being able to break frost nova with 1min cooldown instant talent is priceless. It is the mages i hate the most in battelgrounds, even with the stealth advantage once you are over the mage, if you are out of cooldowns you still have a good chance to lose even if you are at 100% hp and he is at 20% hp/mana. Being able to control the fight is so important, mages have so much escape mechanics that you have to blow a cooldown every 10 or so seconds just to be in the fight. Of course there are exceptions, sometimes you will ambush cold blood eviscerate and with some lucky crits you will win, but if your opponent is good he will make you pay for every move you did not execute flawlessly. And finally the Undead. Will of the Forsaken will break Charm Fear and Sleep effects on you on a 2minute cooldown. It gives you advantage againts Warlocks, Priests and Warriors. Thats three classes you have to worry less about. You can always use PvP trinket to break fear and charm, and you will do so alot. Knowing that you are able to deal insane damage you will, once spotted, usually be the target of the whole enemy battlegroup. You have low armor and mediocre life, your only defense is dodge and parry which will only happen against physical melee damage. On the other hand, in battlegrounds, being undead you will be less likely the target of warlock fear, because it will be wasted. And at last, the Cannibalize skill. Being able to eat your opponents flesh and replenish your life is great, though it has bigger impact while you level to 70. So, Undead brings advantage against 3 classes while gnome against Mages (druids are not a factor at the moment).Click Click. Character created. Careful what face you pick there, you will be seeing it regularly for the next months.. maybe years.

In the beginning..

Hi everyone,
I decided to start a blog about my new rogue, covering every aspect of the class and what I needed to do from level 1 on to level quickly and be properly geared. There are many things you can do to ease your life as a rogue, and things that benefit you but slow you down too much to be worthy. In the early levels you may be tempted to craft or buy some good blue item like Deviate Scale Belt, but spending several hours getting the materials or the gold needed is usually not worth it, except if you combine it with doing quests near your level. Spending extra time for an item you can easily replace after 3-4 levels slows you down too much. So my advice is: get to 70 as fast as possible, do quests, grind experience and don't visit instances because "it is good exp in there".

And.. Please excuse my English for i am not native english speaker.