Combat Rogue leveling guide

Level as Combat: two swords, Sinister Strike to five points, Slice and Dice, Eviscerate, and the mob dies before your energy does. Rogues level on avoiding fights rather than winning them, and Combat is the tree that wins the ones you take: Precision at 19, Blade Flurry at 30, Adrenaline Rush at 42 and Surprise Attacks at 50 are the levels where it gets faster again. Assassination with daggers is a stealth-and-openers playstyle that is slower to level and worse against anything that sees you coming; Subtlety is for PvP. The leveling tree ends on the Combat raid build exactly, so there is nothing to respec at 70.

Your endgame is Combat, the Rogue raid spec in TBC: Sinister Strike, Slice and Dice, Rupture and Eviscerate with Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry on top, and swords for the extra attacks. Rogues are the top melee damage in most TBC raids and Combat Swords is the standard way to get there. You are leveling in the spec you will raid in; the gear section is about hit, expertise and Agility, which are what separate a raiding Rogue from a leveling one.

Combat, 1 to 70. Sinister Strike to two combo points, Slice and Dice, Sinister Strike to five, Eviscerate, and the mob is dead or nearly. The real priorities in the tree are Precision at 19, Dual Wield Specialization at 29, Blade Flurry at 30, Adrenaline Rush at 42 and Surprise Attacks at 50; Improved Sinister Strike from the first point because it is the button. Assassination with daggers levels fine if you love openers and badly if you ever get seen first; Subtlety is a PvP tree. Combat is also the raid spec, so there is nothing to undo.

1 to 10. Sinister Strike and Eviscerate, with Stealth to pick your fights and Gouge at 6 to bandage. Rogues are fragile before 10; fight one thing at a time, and learn First Aid from the first trainer you see, because bandages are your heals for seventy levels.

10 to 20. Slice and Dice at 10 changes the loop: two points, Slice and Dice, three more, Eviscerate. Sprint at 10 is your escape and your travel. Sap at 10 takes one humanoid out of a two-pull before it starts (and Pick Pocket it while it sleeps). Kick at 12 on every caster's first cast. Feint at 16 matters in dungeons, not alone. The energy rule: never sit at full energy; Sinister Strike as it comes.

20 to 40. Poisons from the class quest at 20, Instant on the main hand and Crippling on the off-hand, and from here every swing does more. Vanish at 22 is the escape when Sprint is down. Cheap Shot at 26 is your opener on anything you can stealth to: Cheap Shot, Sinister Strike, Slice and Dice, Sinister Strike, Eviscerate, and most mobs die stunned. Blade Flurry at 30 makes a two-pull a one-pull; Kidney Shot at 30 is a stun that stops a caster for the rest of the fight. Mount at 30. Blind at 34 is the second crowd control.

40 to 60. Adrenaline Rush at 42 with Blade Flurry is a pack killer every five minutes. The loop is unchanged; the fights are shorter. Rupture is worth using on anything that lives past one Eviscerate (elites, mostly), and Deadly Poison on the off-hand from 30 stacks with it. Surprise Attacks at 50 is the last Combat point and your finishers stop being dodged.

60 to 70. Outland mobs have more health, so Slice and Dice goes up every fight and Rupture replaces Eviscerate on anything with more than half its health left when you reach five points. Deadly Throw at 64 stops runners, Cloak of Shadows at 66 answers casters, Shiv at 70 applies the off-hand poison on demand. The Assassination points arrive from 51: Malice for crit, then Lethality, and by 70 your tree is the raid build.

Weapons: two swords, the slow one in the main hand. Sinister Strike, Eviscerate and the Sword Specialization extra attacks all scale with main-hand weapon damage, so the main hand is the slowest, hardest-hitting sword you can find (2.6 to 2.8 speed) and the off-hand is fast (1.4 to 1.8) for Combat Potency later and poison applications now. Maces work with the same build and Mace Specialization in place of Sword Specialization; fists too, with Fist Weapon Specialization. Daggers in the main hand mean Backstab, which is a different spec. Train swords early at the weapon master in Undercity if your race does not start with them; a freshly trained weapon type starts at skill 1, so beat on grey mobs for a few minutes before you swing at orange quest mobs.

Why not Assassination to level? Daggers mean Backstab, Backstab means being behind the mob, and a mob that is hitting you is facing you. Mutilate at 50 fixes the positioning problem and the spec is a real raid spec at 70; before that it is a stealth opener followed by a worse Combat Rogue. Level Combat; the respec plan below prices the switch to daggers at 70.

The rule that governs the order below: a talent row is locked until you have spent 5 × (row - 1) points in that tree, and you have level - 9 points to spend. Row 2 opens at 5 points, row 3 at 10, row 9 at 40. The consequence is that you will buy talents you don't especially want purely to open the next row. That isn't a mistake; it's how the tree works. The order below has been checked against the real tree: every point is buyable at the level it is listed.

Where it ends: 20/41/0, the Combat Swords build WoWSims ships as its default raid spec, point for point. The Combat tree is complete at 50 and the twenty Assassination points after it are the same twenty the raid build has.

Precision before Improved Slice and Dice is on purpose. Five percent hit at 19 is five percent more Sinister Strikes landing for the rest of the game, and a missed builder is a wasted global and 40 energy. Slice and Dice at level 10 lasts long enough for a quest mob without the talent.

Malice at 51, not 10, is on purpose. Five percent crit is the best row 1 in Assassination and a worse leveling talent than Improved Sinister Strike and Precision, because crit is random and energy is not. If you would rather have it early, buy Malice at 10 to 14 and push Lightning Reflexes to 51; the engine validates either order.

Swords, maces or fists: Sword Specialization in the order assumes swords. With maces, buy Mace Specialization in its place (the Combat Maces raid preset keeps both specializations for a mace main hand and a sword off-hand, paid for with Endurance, Vile Poisons and two ranks of Lethality); with fists, Fist Weapon Specialization. All three are on the same row and the engine validates each.

The solo loop

Stealth to the mob. Cheap Shot from 26 (before that, just attack). Sinister Strike twice, Slice and Dice, Sinister Strike to five points, Eviscerate. On an elite or anything with more than half its health at five points, Rupture instead of Eviscerate and keep going. Never sit at full energy and never Eviscerate at three points unless the mob is about to die; the fight is about spending energy as it arrives and finishing when it counts.

Two mobs: Sap one (humanoids only, from stealth, before anything else), kill the other, then the sapped one wakes up and you start again with full energy. Without a Sap target, Blade Flurry from 30 and hit them both. Three: Sap one, Blade Flurry, Evasion, and Vanish if it goes wrong. A caster: Cheap Shot, Kick on the first cast after the stun, Kidney Shot on the second, and it never finishes a spell. A runner: Crippling Poison on the off-hand means it does not get far; Deadly Throw from 64 finishes it.

When it goes wrong: Evasion (8) is +50% dodge for 15 seconds and fixes most pulls. Gouge (6) buys a bandage. Sprint (10) is the exit. Vanish (22) is the exit when Sprint is down, and it drops the mob entirely if you do not touch it for a few seconds. Cloak of Shadows (66) is for the caster that is killing you. A Rogue with all of them up should not die to anything that is not an elite, and should not fight an elite alone until 70.

Poisons

From 20, after the class quest, both weapons carry a poison at all times and you carry a stack of each. Instant Poison on the main hand, always; it is a flat share of your damage. Off-hand: Crippling while leveling (nothing runs), Deadly from 30 on anything that lives long enough to stack it, Mind-numbing on casters you cannot Kick, Wound Poison in PvP. Poisons wear off the weapon after an hour and when you swap weapons; a WeakAura that shouts when one is missing pays for itself in a day. At 70, Deadly Poison on the off-hand and Instant on the main hand is the raid setup for Combat; Mutilate wants Deadly on both.

Stealth and openers

Stealth is a travel tool before it is a combat one: around packs you do not need, past patrols, into caves. Sap is the Rogue's crowd control and the whole reason dungeons want you: Sap the marked humanoid before the pull (Distract at 22 turns the pack away so you can reach it), and tell the group when it is about to break. Pick Pocket every humanoid you Sap; the lockboxes and silver add up to a mount.

Cheap Shot is the solo opener from 26: a stun and two combo points. Garrote is a bleed opener for things you cannot stun. Ambush needs a dagger in the main hand and is not your spec's opener. In a raid, there is no opener; you walk in after the tank.

Threat, groups and Expose Armor

Feint (16) drops your threat on the current target and Vanish drops it on everything; in a dungeon before 70, the rule is to let the tank hit twice, then open with Sinister Strike, and Feint when you are second on the meter. Expose Armor at five combo points removes a large share of the target's armor for 30 seconds and does not stack with the Warrior's Sunder Armor; in a dungeon ask which the group wants, and in a raid with Improved Expose Armor yours is usually the one they want on the boss.

Macros

#showtooltip Sinister Strike
/startattack
/cast Sinister Strike

Every builder with a startattack line, so you are never standing next to a mob with auto attack off.

#showtooltip Sap
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm] Sap; Sap

Sap whatever is under your mouse without losing your kill target.

#showtooltip Cloak of Shadows
/stopattack
/cast Cloak of Shadows
/cast Vanish

The full escape on one key, for the fights that have already gone wrong; press it once for Cloak, again for Vanish.

Train every new spell rank the moment you can afford it; an old rank of your main nuke is the most common reason a level feels slow. Keep your bags clear of vendor trash before leaving town, and pick up every flight path you pass; the map is the biggest time-saver in the game.

Leveling set: the main-hand weapon first (slow, highest top-end damage), then Agility (attack power, crit and dodge in one stat), then Stamina, then attack power, hit and crit. Leather, obviously, and "of the Monkey" (Agility and Stamina) greens are made for you; "of the Tiger" (Agility and Strength) are nearly as good. Replace the main hand every ten levels if you can; a quest sword with 10 more top-end damage beats a blue chest piece. The off-hand matters less: fast, and whatever has stats.

Combat at 70, in order:

1. Hit. Your special attacks need 9% (142 hit rating, 5% from Precision so 4% from gear); your white attacks with two weapons need far more and never reach the cap, so hit keeps paying after 9%. Hit is the best stat on your sheet until well past the special cap.
2. Expertise. Boss dodges stop at 26 expertise (6.5%); with Surprise Attacks making finishers undodgeable, 26 is the number for Sinister Strike. Weapon Expertise's +10 skill helps glancing blows, not this.
3. Agility. Attack power, crit and dodge.
4. Attack power. Straight damage on every swing and strike.
5. Crit. Lethality makes Sinister Strike crits worth 30% more, and Combat Potency and Sword Specialization procs are white hits that can crit too.
6. Haste. Later tiers only; Slice and Dice is your haste until then.

Weapons: main hand slow (2.6 or slower) with the highest damage you can find, off-hand fast (1.5 or faster) because Combat Potency procs per off-hand hit. Both swords; the dagger and fist drops you win are for the Mutilate Rogues and the bank.

Quest levels by zone, Horde side. A zone is comfortable when your level sits inside its range; move on when the quests turn green.

Dungeon ranges are the levels the quests and drops are tuned for; you can enter earlier with a group that knows the place. In Outland, every dungeon has a heroic mode at 70 that needs a key from the matching reputation at Honored.

You have not picked professions yet, so this section is the advice on which to take; pick them in the character card and it becomes the route.

The two questions. Do you want the profession to make you stronger at 70, or to make gold on the way? The crafting professions with a bind-on-pickup payoff (Tailoring's cloth sets for casters, Leatherworking's sets for mail and leather wearers, Blacksmithing's Armorsmith and Weaponsmith lines for plate, Jewelcrafting's trinkets, Engineering's goggles, Alchemy's flask that lasts through death) make you stronger and cost gold to level. The gathering professions (Mining, Herbalism, Skinning) make gold and cost nothing but detours. The usual answer is one of each: the crafter your damage gear wants, and the gatherer that feeds it.

For damage: the crafting profession that makes your armor class's set (Tailoring for cloth, Leatherworking for leather and mail, Blacksmithing for plate), paired with the gatherer that feeds it (Tailoring with Enchanting or a gatherer for gold, Leatherworking with Skinning, Blacksmithing with Mining). Engineering with Mining is the universal second choice for the goggles and the gadgets.

Leveling a profession costs the least when you do it while you level the character; every zone's nodes and drops are the ones the route wants at that skill. Pick early.

20/41/0. The Combat Swords build WoWSims ships as its default raid spec, and the build you leveled into: your tree at 70 is this one, point for point.

The core is Improved Sinister Strike, Precision, Dual Wield Specialization, Blade Flurry, Sword Specialization, Weapon Expertise, Aggression, Adrenaline Rush, Combat Potency and Surprise Attacks, with Malice, Lethality, Ruthlessness and Relentless Strikes from Assassination. The flexible points are Lightning Reflexes versus Improved Gouge in row 1 (three points, neither matters on a boss), Improved Sprint and Endurance (row filler; Improved Kick is the alternative if you are the interrupter), and Vile Poisons versus a third rank of Lethality at the end.

The other build, 16/45/0 "Combat Maces": keeps both Sword and Mace Specialization for a mace main hand and a sword off-hand, paid for with Endurance, Vile Poisons and two ranks of Lethality. It is for a Rogue who has a better mace than sword in the main hand, and the mace stun does nothing on bosses; the sim for your weapons decides, and the difference is small.

Raid job description: walk in after the tank has threat. Slice and Dice at two or three combo points first, always, and keep it up for the whole fight; Rupture at five once Slice and Dice is safe; Eviscerate at five only when both are running with time to spare. Sinister Strike is every other button. Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry together on the pull with a trinket and every five minutes after, lined up with Bloodlust or Heroism if a Shaman has it. Expose Armor when the raid leader asks for it in place of Sunder Armor. Feint when you are climbing the meter; Vanish when Feint is not enough; Cloak of Shadows for the mechanic the raid leader names. Instant Poison on the main hand, Deadly on the off-hand. Stand behind the boss, always, because a boss parries from the front and a parry speeds its next swing at the tank.

The hit cap is not 9%. Your special attacks are capped at 9% hit (4% from gear with Precision). Your white swings with two weapons miss far more often, and they are half your damage, so hit keeps being worth gear well past 9%; the sim gives the exact weights for your gear, and hit stays at or near the top of them through the first two raid tiers.

When to respec: never, unless you win two good daggers and want Mutilate, or your raid asks for a Hemorrhage Rogue. You leveled in this build; the respec plan below covers both.

Pre-raid gearing, the short version.

1. Hit and expertise first, from the Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm quest rewards and the dungeon blues with them. A Rogue below the special hit cap wastes energy; a Rogue below 26 expertise watches the boss dodge the finisher.
2. Weapons. The main hand is the biggest single upgrade on the sheet; the Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvault and Black Morass swords are good for a long time, and the Honor Hold or Thrallmar reputation sword is the one you can plan for.
3. Heroic dungeon blues with Agility, attack power and hit. Honor Hold or Thrallmar Honored for the first heroic key; Lower City, the Sha'tar, Cenarion Expedition and Keepers of Time for theirs, and Lower City and the Sha'tar sell leather pieces along the way.
4. Crafted leather from the auction house where it beats the dungeon drop: Fel Leather (Gloves, Leggings, Boots) is a Leatherworker's Agility set that is not bind-on-pickup.
5. Poisons: a stack of Instant and Deadly in the bag before every raid, and Mind-numbing for the fights with casters to Shiv.

The heroic keys are reputations from the dungeons themselves: Honor Hold or Thrallmar, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, the Sha'tar and Keepers of Time, each to Honored. A Rogue with Sap and Kick gets groups; a Rogue who also opens the lockboxes gets invited back.

Karazhan attunement starts in Deadwind Pass and runs through Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvault and Arcatraz to Black Morass. Do it as you gear; every one of those dungeons drops something you want.

Start reputations before 70. Every Outland dungeon reputation reaches Honored from normal runs on the way up, and Honored is what buys the heroic key. Cenarion Expedition (Coilfang), Honor Hold or Thrallmar (Hellfire Citadel), Lower City (Auchindoun), the Sha'tar (Tempest Keep) and Keepers of Time (Caverns of Time) each gate a heroic; run the normal versions while they are your level and the keys are waiting when you arrive.

Pre-raid gear is dungeon blues, reputation rewards and crafted pieces. Heroics drop the best of it and pay Badges of Justice for the rest. Quest blues from Nagrand, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley fill the gaps; do not skip the last three zones' quest lines on the way to 70, they are the fastest gearing there is.

The Karazhan attunement (the Master's Key chain through Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvault and Old Hillsbrad, ending in the Black Morass) is the first raid gate on the Anniversary realms; start it the week you hit 70 because it takes a group for every step.

Anniversary realms have Dual Talent Specialization, so the cleanest plan is two trees: Combat for everything, and Mutilate or Hemorrhage in the second slot when the daggers or the raid ask for it. Check the trainer for the price in game; sources disagree on what TBC Anniversary charges.

Reading an order from any level. Every talent order on this page is a list of which point to buy at which level, and the trees in the talent section have a level slider that can show any of them. To respec into a build at level 70, pick that build above the trees and drag the slider to 70: the highlighted cells are the 61 points to buy, in the order the table lists them. Every order has been checked so that each row is open by the time you reach it.

You are already there. The Combat leveling order is the raid build. The only respec a Combat Rogue pays is the one into Mutilate when two good daggers arrive, or into Hemorrhage when a raid asks for the debuff.

The number to budget: 50g per respec on original rules, the dual-spec price once on Anniversary. A Rogue who respecs once at 70 pays well under 60g; nobody should be flipping specs per raid night.

A Rogue watches energy, combo points and two timers (Slice and Dice, Rupture) at once, and the default UI shows the combo points on the target frame where you are not looking.

• Combo points and energy near your character: any addon that moves them to the middle of the screen; the default placement is why new Rogues Eviscerate at three.
• WeakAuras: Slice and Dice remaining, Rupture remaining, poison missing from either weapon, Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry ready, Sap remaining on your mouseover target. An energy tick bar helps the pooling habit.
• A threat meter (Omen) in every group; Feint when you are second on it.
• A swing timer is less useful for you than for a Warrior; skip it.
• One boss-mod addon, DBM or BigWigs, not both.

The addons that pay for themselves on any class: a quest helper (Questie) so you stop reading quest text for coordinates; a bag addon (Bagnon or similar) so you can see what you are carrying; a boss mod (Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs, never both) the day you start dungeons; and WeakAuras once you have a cooldown or buff you keep forgetting. Bind every ability you use in a fight to a key before you hit 20; clicking is the single biggest thing that makes a character feel weak.

Ticks are remembered in this browser for this class and spec.

Now

• Improved Sinister Strike 2/2 first; Precision 5/5 by 19; Blade Flurry the moment row 5 opens at 30
• First Aid from the first trainer you see; bandages are your heals
• Two swords, the slow one in the main hand; train swords at the weapon master if your race did not start with them
• Slice and Dice at two points on anything that lives ten seconds; never sit at full energy
• The startattack macro from the basics section on every builder

20 to 70

• 20: the poison quest from the class trainer the day you ding; Instant Poison on the main hand from then on
• 26: Cheap Shot as the opener; 30: Kidney Shot, Deadly Poison, Blade Flurry, mount
• 42: Adrenaline Rush with Blade Flurry on every pack; 50: Surprise Attacks
• 60: epic riding; 64: Deadly Throw for runners; 66: Cloak of Shadows on the escape macro
• No respec at 70; you are already in the raid build

At 70

• Hit and expertise before anything else; then Agility and attack power
• Slice and Dice always up, Rupture on the boss, Eviscerate only when both are
• Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry with a trinket on the pull and every five minutes; Expose Armor if the raid wants it
• Honor Hold or Thrallmar Honored for the first heroic key