Rogue 1-60 Gear Guide

The big grind, the classical struggle between geek and vanilla WoW levels has never been easier to go through than with a rogue. Seriously, and I played a mage, warlock and hunter to that level, which are supposedly on-par at leveling speed with a rogue. I’m going to tell you exactly why those classes simply SUCK in comparison to a rogue, in the following rogue 1-60 gear guide.

First off, gearing a rogue up is a lot easier than any other classes, mostly due to their wide and varied choice of weapons, which becomes problematic with anything but maybe a warrior. Now that they reduced the level cap, grinding for the best leveling weapon isn’t even a necessity, it will only slow you down. So just choose your pick and remember the stat prioritization:

Agility > Attack Power > Hit Chance > Stamina/Strength

I’m sensing two questions incoming: Why put Stamina on par with Strength? And Why not go for +hit?

Well with stamina, of course, you could not focus on it, but it’s pretty much a vital stat around level 30 and above, especially if you’re playing on a PVP server. Rogues aren’t supposed to get hit that often and they’re not designed to last very long, so Stamina might give you that extra edge. Besides, strength, useful as it might be, is supplemented by Agility and a higher hit chance. You hit less hard but more often and in the end, more often wins (especially if you’re dagger spec’d).

Why not +hit? Because A. it’s extremely rare in the game before level 60 and B. grinding mobs never really lets you benefit from +hit to its full extent. If you’re the type of rogue that does a lot of instances, you might want to try hunting the AH for some +hit gear, but don’t break a sweat, it’s not really a vital stat until level 70.

Armor-wise, a rogue is pretty straight-forward to equip. You’ll not have many items to choose from and leatherworking is a good leveling profession, if only to keep you clothed warmly during the grind. The biggest issue is your weapons and that, of course, is dependant on the tree you went for. Combat is usually considered the sword spec, with assassination its dagger counterpart, but I’ve also seen rogues going for hybrid specs and weapon combos and reporting doing a great job grinding their way through the levels. Myself, I leveled as daggers, since I was on a PVP server and assassination is way too much of a fun tree for PVP not to wet my feet in.

The real problems start once you hit level 60 and go through the Outland instances. Weapon drops there are desired by everyone (every warrior is fury spec and every paladin is retri, so there’s some competition for those drops) and are rare enough to make you go nuts at times. Don’t just look at instance drops though, there are plenty of awesome honor and quest rewards that you can use early on in your Outlandish adventures.