Really depends on how you want to play. Assuming you go human, going Hemo might be the best option just because you’ll have access to swords unless you really want to go daggers at which point go dwarf or gnome.
Hemo builds feel better to play due to the low energy costs of things, Backstab takes an impressively high amount of energy and doing too many of them will screw you with stunlocks. A common failure rogues do is backstabbing into cheap shot without at least Nightslayer 5 piece and timing the tick which will pretty much guarantee you aren’t following Cheap with Kidney or gouge without a tea/renataki.
For Hemo you have a good bit of flexibility when it comes to talent selection.
The standard for Cold Blood is 21/3/27 which looks like this:
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/rogue/305320115001-3-500243100332121
This excels at having control and damage as you usually end a fight on a 5 point eviscerate crit within cold blood while having stable energy management.
For something that incorporates Improved Sprint into the mix, I would run something like this though there are some floater points you can move around.
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/rogue/005320103-302050002-500243100330121
The 5 points in Combat that are going into Deflection can go into Precision as well, I prefer personally to take deflection because it gives me a lot easier of a time fighting with melee, specifically orcs who will be your bane because you can’t rely on stuns for them. If you’re confident warriors on your server aren’t using weapon chains or stronghold gauntlets for disarm immunity (oddly, this is a lot of the time the case) it is also worth it to take a point out of Lethality from the Assassination line and put it into Riposte. A 10% chance to parry, coupled with inherent dodge from gear, and ghostly strike gives you a lot of coverage from being hit for a good window of time. Overpower from the warrior would be your biggest threat but well, Disarm might play into it. It’s also just good for damage, it’s advisable to have this leveling because it does the damage of SS just on 10 energy without the combo point. Riposte is actually a very underappreciated ability. Against rogues this will save you a lot too if you get to points where you’re both in evasion whacking at each other. At least until BWL where rogues with them will wear tier 2 gloves for disarm immunity against warriors. Not so much for rogues because rogues running Riposte is very rare but catching them off guard with it can swing a fight. When you’re leveling with a combat build and fight another rogue, I have won many fights just on riposte. Same at 60 in tier 3 gear. It just prevents them from capitalizing or forces them to use some disruption like Blind sooner than they’d like. I’ve had a number of fights won by riposting them and popping Skull immediately because their first reaction is to blind and wait for it to fall off so they can reopen. Knowing that, Skull breaks blind and they’ve wasted their most valuable cooldown in a rogue vs rogue fight.
But let’s say you only have 20% dodge (you get a lot more in tier 2 gear, 20 is a lowball), Evasion brings you to 70, 10% parry chance means 80 (5% parry if not taking parry talent, so 75), Ghostly Strike on top of that is 90-95% chance to just not be hit by melee attacks.
Daggers
Daggers have a lot more flexibility and can feel better to play if you want to hit hard. They feel a lot more powerful than hemo in the early phases.
The standard a lot of rogues like to use is the traditional 21/8/22 build but more often than not you’re not ending fights with eviscerates, backstabs will be doing the bulk of the damage and your combo points are used around control so I feel Cold Blood is kind of pointless, especially when you consider with basic t1 gear you have like 60% crit chance with backstab, and 70% crit with Ambush. There is no reason spending 4 extra points to guarantee one of these when you have a lot more options available.
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/rogue/005320124-320302002-05024303030011
This is a traditional improved sprint backstab build. It gives you a lot of versatility fighting mages. Now where it gets fun with this is if you don’t feel like using expose armor for the gimmick mage strat (Sap > Cheap Shot them facing 90 degrees away so you don’t auto and break Sap, you’ll get a feel for it with a bit of practice > Expose Armor quickly off, restealth into ambush opener and you’ll eat most of their HP) you can drop those two points and actually put them into something like Endurance for lower cooldown on sprint which if you’re world pvping constantly in bursts is quite nice. Rogue doesn’t need all of it’s cooldowns to win fights, but it needs at least one usually. You feel HORRIBLE without at least evasion against melee or sprint vs ranged, or Vanish in general.
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/rogue/0053201-3203032022-05024303030012
This is a build for when you’ve just decided you absolutely hate casters/healers. The noticeable change from the above is like I mentioned with Lethality points. They here have gone into Endurance to fill out the Combat tree and enable accessing Improved Kick. This gives kick a 2 second blanket silence and can be refreshed with preparation. So if you want to get super greedy, throw a kick, prep and kick them on the cast when they cast again. Especially mages with frostbolt because they now can’t iceblock if you kick them on frost. It’s also just good for securing kills on healers because they’ll try to juke your kick. A blanket silence just prevents this from happening. The final point in Lethality went into Dirty Deeds of the Subtlety tree to save 10 energy on cheap shot further. This allows you to backstab into cheap shot if you time the tick properly and still kidney without a tea or renataki.
Some important notes:
Improved Gouge is an absolute must and you must learn to love Gouge as an ability. Using it with the talent gives you 5.5 seconds of disorient. This translates to roughly 60 energy due to the tick system for 45 energy and a combo point. You stall out the fight and it will regen you energy using it while you heal up with a bandage. It also can in some cases depending on how dumb combat timers want to be allow you to restealth in their face.
The reason I take Improved SS in the dagger builds is because sometimes you just can’t get their back and will need to do something. SS costing 5 less energy doesn’t horribly disrupt your energy flow while letting you do this though obviously with a dagger build you want to SS as little as humanly possible. ONLY when you have no other options.
Expose Armor in Classic is opposite how you’d think. It’s less valuable against warriors because it’s a flat number. It helps but not nearly as much as a mage where in a lot of cases you completely bring their armor to very low triple digits if not flat 0. It is a huge damage increase against squishies. Against warriors if you have floater points and are in a good spot, Slice and Dice is unironically a good move if you can’t kidney shot or don’t need to rupture again.
The reason I devalue Precision in world pvp is because it only helps mitigating dodge chances which while nice, in PvE gear you normally use for PvP you’re at no shortage of hit. It isn’t like it’s giving you a hit cap. So I tend to prioritize defense more than more offense. 5% extra chance to just negate a melee swing is very nice.
