I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps I just suck big fat donkey balls as a rogue. It could be possible. I mean, a lot of us live lives of delusion, why should I be any different? Here’s what I remember from levelling my rogue all those years ago – don’t take on too many mobs, particularly at lower levels. Lets say, around level 25 or so. What abilities has a combat rogue got? You can Sap, you can Distract, you can do not fucking much really. You can sneak around, hit a guy on the head. But get toe to toe with a bunch of mobs, say more than two, and you are seriously up shit creek without a paddle. And with nothing to drink probably.
I was thinking this because I’ve been watching my mate Mark play his shaman that he rolled on SAN. Mark lives in Australia but comes over every year to take advantage of the fact that I live in the Italian Alps in front of a ski resort. He says that he comes to hang out with me, I know better. Anyway, he rolled a restoration shaman at the same time as I rolled my protection warrior, and we’ve been buddying it up through instances and group quests and just generally hanging out in WoW whilst drinking a combination of Hendricks gin and tonic, excellent Italian wine, some semi-decent beer and a damn good cognac that he brought over. Oh and cuban mini cigars, it’s been fun. And I’ve been watching him sometimes play this shaman. Today I was watching him when he took on 6, count them 6 level 28 mobs at the same time. He was level 25. He has an ability that gives him back mana when mobs hit him. Then he puts up a totem that heals him and a totem that fires flames at the mobs and a totem that brings him a fucking coffee, I don’t know, and he wears the mobs down through sheer perserverance. And then after he took out all those mobs he calmly went over and took down the level 30 elite that was the subject of his quest. By himself.
You just can’t do this on a rogue at a similar level, or at least I can’t do this. So maybe I am the suckiness. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to ‘The Noisy Guy who Plays WoW like a Cockhead’ or something. Are there rogues out there at level 25 that can take on 6 level 28 mobs at the same time? Please tell me if you can and then go and get stuffed because I hate you. I mean, at least after you tell me how you do it because I never could. I remeber levelling a rogue as being … challenging. Challenging in the sense of, jesus christ is this ever going to end? It’s a long hard slog as a rogue, well at least it was back in the day. Perhaps it’s easier now, is it easier now? I don’t want to go and level another rogue, I have a rogue, why would I want to do that again? In fact, why would anyone reroll a toon of a class that they already played to level 80? Why would you do that? Over at Kurns Corner she has a post up about Christian Chase responding to her investigative digging of a few weeks back. In his response he writes that he has had 4 rogues and 3 paladins over the years since vanilla WoW. I mean, I just don’t get that. I don’t get that at all. You levelled a rogue and then you levelled another three. What, you didn’t like their hair? Can someone please explain this to me? Why wouldn’t you try something different like for instance a fucking shaman that can take on a freaking football team at the same time and give them all a run for their money. In a purely platonic sense of course.
I’m enjoying my warrior, my mage was a breeze to level, but thinking back on a rogue, it was hard. Perhaps that’s why we don’t see many rogues around the place. On SAN, rogues are the least represented class and we have over 120 unique accounts and something like 230 toons. I think there are about 6 rogues, that’s it. Hardest class in the game? You tell me.
The Noisy Rogue 
March 24, 2010 at 8:34 am
Glyph Evasion. Use Dismantle. It gets better after 30.
March 24, 2010 at 10:03 am
It’s true, rogues don’t get the benefit of nuking down 6 higher level mobs at once the way other classes can. But: Combat can make life a damn sight easier with the additional dodge and parry, and abilities like Blade Flurry make the rogue very survivable. But it is true that they probably have the least survivability of all classes, with no healing capability aside from bandages (and Lifeblood for herbalists) while that damn DK took on 8 mobs at half hp, walking out the fight with full hp.
It’s true they are a harder class to level (even if a rogue was my first toon) but they’re damn good fun anyways 🙂
March 24, 2010 at 11:10 am
Mages are a pain if you can’t get AoE frost kiting to work – and really have trouble with elites unless you can kite them well.
Priests are a pain unless you have the gear and mana pool to support holy nova spam approaches (or run a healing spec and sloooooooowly burn down, for elites, but mana pool is an issue). Overgeared priests, of course, are just fine.
Rogues can at least blow all their cooldowns and become god for a while. I think I was able to take out 5-pulls, levelling (sap one, two dead by the end of evasion/BF, two more mobs are killable if you are prepared to use lifeblood, and maybe a pot or a bandage). It made levelling a rogue interesting. (Early BC).
Warriors, IMO, have the worst time of it. By the time I could take on two 44s, at 41, and walk away on other than my last legs, and felt like that was an achievement? Yeah…
March 24, 2010 at 11:34 am
Ive had 3 rogue mains over the years soon to be 4 once cataclysm hits.
Level 60 human Rogue – Deleted after I left vanilla WoW and RP realms
Level 70 Bloodelf Rogue – Deleted after I played through TBC and left
Level 80 Undead Rogue – I regret deleting him in a nerd rage due to nerfing and broken vanish *cough* which still aint fixed *cough*
The reason I did not level another is because as you say they are bloody painful to level. Taking on 3 mobs is possible using sap, dismantle, evasion etc but its still 50/50 on whether you will survive or not, perhaps with heirlooms its alot easier.
I only spec assassination so unsure if the ambush etc would boost your survival chance due to burning a mob down faster *shrug*
My main gripe with low level roguery is the lack of offensive moves early on, it is of course even worse if you spec combat and wave goodbye to ambush, backstab etc.
So yes I like the fact we arent facerolling mobs and have to use skill, hell picking our fights is a trait of the rogue class but come on we could do with a little love in those early levels.
One last moan – Why oh why do we not get FoK at level 18 or something? every other class seems to get an AoE ability fairly early but not rogues?!
March 24, 2010 at 1:30 pm
“Are there rogues out there at level 25 that can take on 6 level 28 mobs at the same time?”
Not that I’VE seen! I’ve leveled a few different classes, (only 2 of which to level 80, my rogue and a paladin).
Leveling a rogue? An exercise in frustration MOST of the time; BE READY TO RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.
Leveling a paladin? LOL, yah, go Prot and AOE grind that baby to 80 in your sleep.
March 24, 2010 at 3:06 pm
There is simply no way you’d be able to do that with a rogue. MAYBE you’d make it out there alive with a few hp to sapre, if you have semi-BiS for your level, you’d have to pop evasion and every cd you have + health pots. :[
March 24, 2010 at 3:49 pm
pretty much man. i’ve tried to level a rogue several times; just couldn’t get past their lack of survivability. never made it past lv20.
your shaman pal was probably using a glyphed stoneclaw totem to bubble himself; that’s how i’m levelling mine now. between the bubble and the totem’s taunt/stun, i can handle a big pack of mobs, too. i’m basically AOE grinding with magma/FN and healing myself in the 6 seconds between when my totem drops and its CD refreshes. fun stuff 🙂
March 24, 2010 at 5:23 pm
“and a totem that brings him a fucking coffee”
made me lol just a bit.
I recently talked about this on my blog. I would wager that only combat rogues could easily take on that much at one time, and only by the time they had adrenaline rush and blade flurry. I’m leveing a rogue in SAN-US subtlety, and I’m finding that picking apart a group one at a time, isn’t all that slow when you can two shot mobs.
All of that being said, yea, leveling a Rogue isn’t easy, and requires a completely different mindset than the other classes.
-Sam
March 24, 2010 at 6:02 pm
If you could give us an update at some point on the changes to subtlety with todays patch that would be most appreciated and I will buy you a coffee totem all for yourself.
March 24, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Normal service is resumed. Read it twice, the best hour I’ve spent this week 😉
Why, with a rogue, do you want to take out 6 mobs at once ? Sneak past 5 of them, sap the 6th and kill the boss. Can’t remember what level you get vanish.. but when all else fails (and it works of course) you get to try a different strategy without a death run. Let the shaman’s show off, rogue’s are smarter,sneakier,more conniving than that.
Roll the same class twice – no idea, one alliance, one horde ?
March 24, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Very pertinent, and something which I considered putting into my post after rereading the draft this morning and then didn’t as it negates just about all of my argument.
March 24, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Well, no. But most of the time, you don’t need to take them all on. Most other classes *have* to fight those 6 mobs before they get to the boss. Rogues don’t. Glyph of Sap FTW!
March 24, 2010 at 6:40 pm
I tried to level a rogue a couple years ago but I gave up before level 30. I’ve levelled quite a few characters and I have never had so much trouble and died as often as I did on that rogue.
August 12, 2011 at 11:29 am
Well with a rogue its all about picking your fights. Leveling a rogue isn’t hard if you pick the right quests, you should always look up what rewards and what you will be facing otherwise you might waste your time going to a remote location and finding out that what you have to kill is going to be way out of your league. I am a level 27 rogue and new to wow and it really isn’t hard to take on a single enemy when you can just sneak up on them and use either backstab or cheapshot.
August 13, 2011 at 1:50 am
Rogues back in the day, (ie Vanilla or Burning Crusade), were exceptionally hard. You often struggled to take down a mob even after opening with one of those attacks. It’s a completely different game now in how hard it all has been nerfed. I’m sorry that you didn’t get to see how challenging it was in the original game.
March 24, 2010 at 6:46 pm
I’ve actually started to check out some of those changes. There’s some boring numbers over at the site that you can check out and a brief commentary on the changes from yesterday. I’m hoping to get some real work done this weekend on testing it at level 30.
– Sam
March 24, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Yeah, I saw those posts, very informative. It’s the testing that I’m interested in but having never played subtlety I’m loathe to do it myself. Which is why we’re counting on you!
March 25, 2010 at 6:19 am
To anyone who can level a shaman to 80 and play them, competently or not, I salute you. I struggled through the leveling process for my own, even including the 40 levels I got through the RAF “grant a level” feature. I picked up an early BC sword (the one from Ramps, I think) and a dagger “of the Bandit” and gave them both Mongoose. I slogged through Zangarmarsh (Which at one point was my favorite zone, but doing it as a rogue made me want to shank it. Yes, shank the zone.) and Nagrand. I hit 65, hopped on the boat to Borean Tundra, trained my professions, and /logged out.
I’ve been back a total of three times to make a bunch of Darkmoon Cards, as he’s my only scribe, and has subsequently taken every actual attack off of his action bars. I HATE being a rogue, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
That said, I level alts. A lot. More often than not, I play on dial-up, which means I can either run 5-mans and heroics, classic raids at 80, or level a new toon. But there are only so many classes you can play. Eventually, they’ll overlap. In my day, I’ve had an 80 mage, DK, druid, warrior, paladin, and warlock. I’ve also taken a shaman to somewhere around 50, but I lost that account. Why does this pertain to this post?
I genuinely enjoy the leveling process for casters and plate-wearing melee classes. I’ve had three mages that have made it to or beyond 60, I’m working on my second warlock, and plan another paladin shortly after I give my priest another shot. It seems a little ridiculous (and maybe it is) but it’s something I like doing. I don’t have to pay for a server transfer to play with other friends, I can learn something new about an unfamiliar spec, maybe actually bother to do Dire Maul at an appropriate level (HAH!) or… I don’t know. I’m sure there are other reasons.
I’m sure that raiders would be less likely to just say “Hey, let’s start a new character!” and run off to think of a new name. But not knowing Mr. Chase, or anything he has ever written, it’s possible he’s of a similar mindset. Maybe he’s one of those poor saps (Geddit? I kill myself.) that enjoys leveling a rogue.
March 25, 2010 at 6:20 am
Damn it. I make it through that entire comment, reread it to make sure it looks fine, and then realize I say shaman at the beginning. I meant rogue. I r gud @ ehditing.
March 25, 2010 at 9:14 am
(Two comments on one post, what’s going on here, am I short of things to do ?)
Xmolder inspired me to post another reply. It strikes me that, like marmite (vegemite), you either love or hate playing rogues there’s very little gray area. It’s another example of how wow is a microcosm of the real world, our real world id spills over into the game. A psychologist (of which I’m not) could have a field day analysing why some people are “at home” with rogues and others are not.
For me, a rogue is absolutely natural, which given the way they behave worries me. Is my personality really a sneaky, back stabbing, vanish without responsibilities kind of person ? … Time to do something else with my day before I go too deep 🙂
March 25, 2010 at 12:27 pm
[…] Rogues are freaking hard baby. « The Noisy Rogue […]
March 25, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Oddly, I never noticed my rogue being particularly hard to level, but I was already rich by the time I started and he was aiming at the 29 twink bracket and had good to ridiculous gear from the late teens on even though it was before heirlooms.
I thought it was similar to my mage honestly, easy to kill things and lots of tricks, but boy you sure die easy if you miscalculate or misfire. Maybe a little harder than the mage, because I could usually tell something was wrong before I had everything on top of me on the mage.
Leveling a feral druid and a warlock felt ridiculously easy in comparison. Mostly it was the luxury of rarely having to eat or drink. I didn’t know easy leveling though, until I rolled my prot paladin with heirlooms for undergeared. holy shit. It made the warlock look like rolling a warrior. It gave new meaning to “faceroll”. I could do things like go afk to make lunch without worrying where I was, because the respawns probably couldn’t kill me before I got back. I soloed large sections of ZF at level.
But really, *any* class with full heirloom gear is pretty trivial now.
the one really evil thing I notice with rogues is that you have no aoe at all until 80. That’s just rude, since you are basically the only class who doesn’t. It was less noticeable in BC when lots of classes had crappy AoE and you often didn’t have the tank/heal power to use it much anyway. But now, every dungeon is an aoe fest, and unless the rogue is good and somebody else is bad, the rogue will always be on the bottom until lvl 80. Behind the tank if the tank is any good. Sometimes behind the *healer* if the healer and tank are any good.
It’s kind of sad. I almost feel sorry for you guys until I remind myself of world pvp.
March 26, 2010 at 11:58 pm
I think Chewy has stumbled on to something. When I first started playing WoW back during vanilla WoW my first toon choice was a hunter… and I only made it to level 20 before I changed my main to a rogue and took it all the way to level 60. I just enjoy playing a rogue more than any of my other toons, sure they were fun for awhile and I am leveling an Enhancement Shaman and Ret Pally currently but they just aren’t as fun to play.
The problem that Rogues have with leveling usually isn’t a skill problem but a weapon problem. Because of the amount that we swing our weapons no other class gets as much benefit from a melee weapon the same as a rogue. The better your MH weapon is, the easier it is to level a rogue. (This changes at higher levels when you can get mutilate and 2 decent daggers works fine.) If you think of every rogue ability other than say Evasion they all improve something that your MH weapon does. Sinister Strike (Weapon swing), Slice n Dice (faster auto attack), Adrenaline Rush (More sinister strikes)… and so on.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
April 2, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Just an update. I took out Mor’Ladim (that elite you mentioned) as a 29 Subtlety Rogue, no problems.
I have no BoA gear on this toon, but I did use a food buff from cooking, my herbalism hot, and one healing pot that I made from alchemy. My health never dropped below 70%.
– Sam
April 3, 2010 at 7:31 am
That’s not bad seeing as you did it without kidney shot.
October 12, 2010 at 4:42 am
I have played all but two classes to max level, DKs and Palladins. The thing that troubled me most about levelling a rogue is I went from having my prot warrior soloing packs of 10 equal-level mobs, and my warlock soloing elites 5 levels higher than him, then my Druid killing things in no time as a feral cat, and having no downtime because I could shift out and heal, or eventually heal myself with every crit swing of my claw… to my rogue… who could kill one to three mobs REALLY fast… but then have to sit and eat for 15 seconds before rejoining the levelling process, and having to run away from elites that were even the same level as me.
Recuperate sounds like it may help a lot with these problems, but what I would really love to see is for a rogue to have a faster recovery BETWEEN battles. As it stands, if you used the last of your CPs to kill your enemy, and you are at 30% health, any DoT still on you means iminent death. Sure, you could immediately sit and eat, but any mob or player that comes along sees a free crit, on an enemy with nill HP… free honour points !
Give us somthing that allows us to replenish HP faster in stealth, as long as we stand still, and fix the frikking vanish issues that have been plagung rogues for the past 6 years !
Sorry, I needed to vent 😛