When I levelled my
shaman, I found that dual wield sucked hard until I put some points in DW spec. Instead I stuck to the
[Ravager] and until 43 (and 4% hit), at which point I switched to some blue mainhand or another (I think it was the mini-thunderfury aka
[The Hand of Antu'sul]), and
[Flurry Axe] offhand. Flurry Axe with flametongue weapon works wonders since FT doesn't lose damage from being wielded offhand and scales quite fast with spelldamage, benefiting the ridiculous speed and extra attacks of flurry axe (you're get Mental Quickness, right?). Incidentally, I also found that the
[Edgemaster's Handguards] are absolutely superb -- I enchanted a pair with 15 strength and wore them well into the Outlands (yes, I twinked my shaman plenty).
Regarding
rogues, I must say that beelining to Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush is the way to go. More crit is all nice and dandy, but reliability trumps burst for levelling, and in the reliability department, combat provides close to pure goodness all the way to 40:
- Improved Sinister Strike is a flat buff to your meat and potato attack.
- Improved Gouge makes gouge a net energy positive (45 energy vs 5.5 seconds of peace and quiet for 55 energy back) and lets you get one more bandage tick in.
- Precision alleviates the nasty miss strings lowbie dual wielding is prone to, and amounts to exactly as much white dps as cruelty (and better yellow dps too -- thanks to the two-roll system).
- Deflection isn't all that great for dps (lol), but is strictly better than Lightning Reflexes, because of Parry haste and, most of all, Riposte.
- Dual Wield Specialization is probably the single best dps-buffing talent in the whole tree. Take it and rejoice. You'll probably only take 4 points at this time to take Riposte, though.
- Riposte is the single most energy-efficient damage skill in a rogue's arsenal. At a 10% chance per attack to activate, it's quite random, but works remarkably well with rogue-style AoE (aka, Blade Flurry)
- Blade Flurry duplicates all damage you deal when you're fighting two or more mobs, and 30% haste is just (a fat layer of) icing on the cake.
- Sword Specialization is a nice talent to have with a very fast offhand (since offhand swings proc extra mainhand attacks), but takes second place to filling the rest of DW spec and several higher level talents too.
- Weapon Expertise amounts to the same total +hit as precision, except it costs only 2 points instead of 5. Remember the praise for Precision...?
- Aggression is a flat, reliable boost to your Sinister Strike and Eviscerate. Can't complain.
- Adrenaline Rush is what you've been working towards, and you can now use the rather insane combo of AR, Blade Flurry and Evasion to handle packs of up to 5 mobs easily. In melee packs of that size Riposte lights up quite reliably, and the debuff it places helps a fair bit with survivability too.
After that, you're pretty much on your own. I'd say the next two key talents are relentless strikes and combat potency, but both are comparatively lacklustre as levelling talents (low hit rating and rare 5-point finishers considered).