The foundation for leveling a Rogue quickly and effectively is set when you decide your priority on stats so lets give a quick class specific breakdown. Agility above all else, it strengthens your attack power, your critical strike rate, while improving your armor and dodge slightly. Second priority is Stamina, while you level you will be soloing a fair amount so you need to be able to take a few hits and shrug them off. So where can you get armor and weapons with the right stats? It might mean periodic trips the local auction house. What are you looking for? Any green leather armor or (usable) weapon “of the monkey” (of the monkey offers combined agil and sta, exactly what you need) within 5 levels of your character, higher levels being better.

Every tree can be made to work for leveling but all have unique strengths. Combat shines as a leader in multi target damage, which is great for running instanced dungeons. Assassination is a well rounded build focused on improved attacks, energy efficiency, quick recovery and the improved use of poison. Subtlety is a spec built around getting the drop on enemies with stealth and better lends itself to PvP than to speed leveling, definitely not a tree for those in a hurry, ironic since it speeds up your stealthy movement speed. In a nutshell Combat for dungeon runners and grinders, Assassination for questing and Subtlety is the weakest choice due to its reliance on stealth which slows you down if you over use it.

Unfortunately the lions share of old world quest rewards quite frankly suck making buying greens every ten to fifteen levels necessary. Picking your server (medium or high population servers are the best bet) for a strong auction house and keeping a steady supply of cash is necessary. Luckily making gold in WoW as you level is easy, just pick up the skinning profession early and sell full stacks of leather acquired from animals you kill in the normal progress of your questing. A great side note too, skinning provides a passive boost to your chance to crit, making it the best Rouge leveling profession in the game. Another great tip is to sell cloth you don’t need for your first aid on the ah in full stacks, often higher level players will pay a premium for low end materials when they need it. Just make sure you price reasonably, try to take five silver off your lowest competitor to ensure fast sales.

Instances are great if you are a strong social player and have connections with similarly leveled tanks and healers. If you aren’t a social butterfly or are a casual player than your best bet is to quest selectively and round it out with the occasional grind/instance. When I say quest selectively I mean that you should complete quests that are simple and fast. The courier quests are notoriously bad for experience generation since you spend a ton of time on mounts and transports instead of fighting. Avoid them if you can unless you are headed in their direction anyways.

Dungeons are good XP, queue up for them when you need a break from solo-questing just realize that as a damage dealing character you will have a rather long wait time, so keep questing while you wait. Grinding, the basic leveling tactic typically is how I finish up a zone, once you have done the quests you chose, find an out of the way spot with monsters that appear green or yellow in difficulty and kill away. Once you are content that you have out leveled (Ex: they are too easy) them move on to the next quest hub. Battlegrounds offer an interesting change of place, but the overall experience is rather low compared to other methods. Que up when you reach the higher levels in each bracket for the most fun, for example join at 18-19 in the 10-19 bracket etc. PvPing helps hone your skill with your class so it should never be entirely overlooked.

So you’ve wrapped things up in your current town and are ready to move on and it’s unclear where to go next. It’s usually fairly simple, just follow the road down into the next zone but if you can’t find your way just ask. Other players love to show off how much they know, give them the chance to do so and you’ll be surprised at what little pearls of wisdom you can pick up, just take it all with a grain of salt. Supposing you can’t find the way even after asking around in general chat then your next move is to head over to a capitol city and ask around. Hanging out in a capitol city is also a good way to find a helpful guild. Just remember when you are moving to the next zone not to get in over your head. Fighting enemies that are at red and orange difficulty levels leads to getting killed and wasting time, avoid doing it like the plague.

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