Once I’m back from vacation I’m planning on rolling a rogue (which I never played in vanilla) on a PVP server (I was a care-bear in vanilla). A lot of the guides I see list a subtlety dominant build for pvp but combat for leveling.
I know it will probably be slower but will I be kicking myself for trying to level subtlety to maintain an edge in world PvP?
It’s tough. A lot of your fights wont be single target and that’s all sub is good for. When you’re out of energy, sub hits like a noodle. Need those big white strikes that swords and maces bring. Plus combat has the better survivability
Whenever you see ANYTHING for classic wow that says the best way to do this or that… take that and realize we are min/maxing…
You are fully capable of leveling sub and not combat… and it won’t hinder you that badly at all…
Is combat faster? Yeah… (I think at least, because this is the general consensus, but I actually do not have direct experience, as I leveled sub most of the time and only combat for a few levels here and there)
But play the way you want to play, it really isn’t that big of a deal… you can still kill monsters just fine, and it even comes with it’s perks.
I think when people are hearing this advice they are thinking these things make a significantly more of a difference than they actually make…
That’s not really true…
My second 60 in vanilla was a rogue and I leveled sub.
You are able to delete mobs on single target and your stealth is faster and more effective… which can be very helpful with a lot of quests dealing with single target bosses. You can do a lot of group quests by yourself, where a combat rogue wouldn’t be able to.
You do have a harder time in multi-target battles.
But you have lower vanish and blind cooldowns that help a lot in these situations… and you can use them more often. Ghostly strike is nice too.
I’m leveling a subletly rogue and I’m up to 30 now. No problems at all with leveling. I’m always top dps in dungeons and it’s pretty fun. This is all assuming I don’t get hit with 3hr whitemane queues.
Dungeons =/= questing and grinding.
If you choose sub, gl with your drops and corpse runs op.
As I explained many times in the past, the problem with not going combat is that you’re giving up precision, a highly important talent you don’t ever want to be without until your gear can provide the hit on its own (good luck with that pre 60). Dagger itself needs hemo, which is gated behind level 30. But to get hemo with precision, you’ll need level 40.
Combat has no such problems. You already have the strike, and its talent is right at the top of the same page as precision. Ghostly strike, a fantastic skill, is only 11p in sub, as well. Combat can get both of these at 30, while precision/hemo are 40.
Thanks for all the info everyone, follow up question:
Is combat daggers a viable route to minimize weapon competition? Or is “frontstabbing” a technique that worked on private but isn’t applicable in classic?
I plan on running as many dungeons as I can but know most of my time is spent in the open world.