Originally Posted by Tinwhisker

If you don't like melee, you don't like melee and nothing anyone says is going to make it fun for you if you don't find it fun already.

That said, here's some tips I use to make leveling fast and easy with little downtime.

• Spec Combat and take talents like Endurance and Unfair Advantage.
• Use your cooldowns (AR/BF/Evasion/etc); there's really no point is saving them.
• Don't stealth around, pretend you're a fury warrior. The XP you get from not stealthing past mobs makes leveling faster than just skipping them... Plus, they drop stuff.
• You shouldn't need to eat much, but you will have to bandage. Shamans can heal themselves, rogues have to bandage. But you shouldn't have to eat much more than any other class.

As fight lengths increase, your method of startup becomes less and less important.

Ideally though, you would use SnD to consume those first CPs from your opener (be that either 1 or 2 CPs) and then begin 3s/5r/5e (or whatever your rotation is). SnD is your biggest damage boosting ability and the faster you can get it started, the higher your total damage.