Leveling Combat - Uncharted TerritoryFollow

For the first 71 levels of play I was an Assassination/Sub Rogue. For the most part leveling was pretty easy. Usually consisted of stun lucks and mutilate spamming.

Well just today I decided to take combat for a spin. All in all I enjoy it. I took a raiding build and messed with it ever so slightly (and to with 8 talents short being a level 72).

It has me wondering... how exactly do I level as a combat rogue? Do I mainly just let stuff hit me and beat on them? Do I still stunlock?


What about these nifty talents that increase parry and dodge and give me extra strikes when I do dodge. In a raid or 5 man I can see how these aren't as useful because if I'm playing right I won't be taking an hits...but what about for solo play?


Are talents like Riposte, Deflection, Lightning Reflex, and Unfair Advantage have any worth in putting points into? Where should I take points out?

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Nordrassil&n=Starfury


I'm sticking with daggers for now as I have two merciless daggers with mongoose that are far superior to any of the Northrend swords I've ran into so far. Should I go into swords/fists/maces later on?

Any advice would be appreciated.

The advantage with Combat is your ability to take on more mobs more effectively. You still open with CS, like you always should, but you basically spam SS and eviscerate until dead. When there's two or three, you hit blade flurry, spam SS and eviscerate until dead. When there's more than three, evasion, blade flurry, AR, spam SS and eviscerate until dead.

You "tank" mobs about as much as you tank them when you're any other spec. They're going to hit you eventually. Riposte helps a great deal. It's great for leveling.

And well, yeah, last I checked you should probably be swords or fists. I'm not sure if that's changed.

Yes, I was looking at that last night. Already did the line for the gun for my hunter and it was a breeze. Only problem I see is that there aren't many fist weapons in the game...should I be looking at eventually going over to swords altogether?

From what I had heard daggers vs swords was competitive atm as far as overall damage. Honestly, I'm not looking for high end content on this character. At least nothing more than heroics. Will there be a significant difference in my defense between swords and the fist/dagger combination?

Thank you for the help. I must admit I've had a hard time finding straight answers for rogues. There is a whole lot of conflicting comments and most of the stuff I do see is for raiding...which doesn't help me much at level 72.


Edited, Feb 10th 2009 2:12pm by ekaterinodar