The loss of Combat Readiness was replaced with Double Feint charges but that doesn’t help leveling players that much plus you do not have enough energy at lower levels.
Watching Cata classic and seeing Combat Readiness, Deadly Throw and Recuperate in action makes me a sad panda.
Honestly my favorite time ever as a rogue was in legion when my first legendary was the healing over time after using feint pants. I literally face tanked blood dks in duels and outhealed them (this was when they were doing to much damage and never died)
I consider Legion legendaries broken haha.
I think Rogue leveling was the most balanced during Cata/MoP. After that leveling was kind of a pain because they started to spread out abilities and talents due to level cap increases and it felt bad to level Rogues.
Also Rogues lost a lot of QoL tools and useful utility like Combat Readiness and Prep.
You had a point until you mentioned all specs. Outlaw is obviously notorious for being the probably worst spec to level as, even under some healers. But sub and assa u just 2 shot everything from stealth.
Especially assa, they get Venemous Wounds very early which makes energy a non issue.
Absolutely not a tuning issue because who cares about non max tuning, but instead its more an issue of the defunct talent tree until a minimum of lvl 60-65 where you get most of your kit online (not assa). This leaves outlaw and kinda sub in a permanent energy drought and zero way to maintain aoe.
Man let me tell you how much great fun im having leveling a rogue in cata classic. I hit a mob twice, wait about 10 seconds, hit again, wait 5, finisher if they didnt die before. then i stealth for the opener and repeat.
Not having a great time dog. Retail is just as bad and yeah has been forever. quests are so slow because of it so you have to do dungeons which as dps is also still slow
Cata leveling is tough because you don’t pick up your major DPS CDs very late in the leveling process.
But with Cata you have access to a lot of defensive tools which helps with leveling.
Rogues should get Evasion for a passive. Everything would be better.
Leveling rogue compared to everything else has been interesting. It is definitely faster than my priest but has none of the survivability or ability to near insta-pop a dungeon queue. That said I absolutely melt things on my rogue by comparision and most of the time I delete mobs during their RP speeches. The AoE is definitely subpar but generally I just use stealth to pick off one target at a time and between recup and vial I do fine healthwise.
Then again I also have access to.plenty of bandages when needed as well due to having multiple tailers at max level so that helps to.
Leveling anything feels meh. It’s a redundant aspect of the game at this point. Just let us make current xpac levels.