For those of you are unaware, in WoW some players create characters called 'twinks'. They are lowbie characters (usually lvl 19 or 29) that use the massive amount of gold and other resources gained on players main accounts to get the best possible gear (and enchants) for their lowbie characters to enable them to wreak face in Battlegrounds (War Song Gultch typically). They are seperated into 'brackets' (10-19/20-29/etc.) so that you don't have extremely low level characters fighting against max level characters. The reason for bothering to create a twink is that it is much easier to gain honor points at lower level Battle Grounds (BG's) than it is for higher level ones.
For example, I have a lvl 19 twink Blood Elf Rogue that has more honor kills than my lvl 70 shaman...when that rogue gets to the max level (70) I can spend all the honor points I gained at lvl 19 to buy very powerful equipment. The other advantage is that it is just fun as hell to demolish normal characters that have roughly 1/4th the stats of my twink. In a way it can be thought of as a way of explioting without actually violating the TOU or EULA (so no worries about getting banned over it). The only drawback is that again, you need lots of gold and need to spend lots of time making a lowbie character powerful enough to take full advantage of this situation.
Because 1 stat in agility (or previously other stats as well) give more of a benefit to the character the lower level they were; in the most extreme cases players were creating level 10 twinks (often rogues) whose agility was so high (thanks mostly to enchants and similar gear buffs) to increase their dodge rating to 100% (or even higher!) thereby making all melee attacks against them miss.
In the latest patch they've nerfed twinks so they don't recieve as much as a buff from stats as they used to, this applies to nearly all twinks, except for rogues, as for some reason agility is not yet affected by the nerf (rogues use agility more so than any other stat). So to make a long story short, most twink characters have been significantly nerfed, except for rogues, which have only been
slightly nerfed. Read the cut and paste article below for more details.
Patch 2.4.3 and Twinks- Let's Take a Look at the Numbers
By Tidal
Published: July 2, 2008
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What do you want first? The good news or the bad news? Let?s start with the bad news?
When Patch 2.4.3 goes live, the level 10 twink as we know it will cease to exist. Blizzard has decided to nerf Parry Rating, Block Rating, and Defense Rating- a fatal decision for our sneaky little friends that love to never get hit.
?Parry Rating, Defense Rating, and Block Rating: Low-level players will now convert these ratings into their corresponding defensive stats at the same rate as level 34 players.?
What does this mean? According to WoWwiki.com, the benefit you gain from a certain amount of rating is calculated by dividing the amount of rating by a certain value, depending on your level and the type of rating. For a single point of rating, the formula is:
1/(value*(level-8)/52)=benefit of 1 point of rating.
The value is 1.5 for Defense Rating, 15 for Parry Rating, and 5 for Block Rating. So what the nerf does is that the ?level? number changes from whatever it was to 34, meaning you will need more rating for the same benefit.
For example, a level 19 Warrior with a shield that grants 5 Block Rating will yield:
5/(5*(19-8)/52)=4.73% block.
But after the nerf, the benefit he gains will be:
5/(5*(34-8)/52)=2% block.
Also, a level 10 rogue with a dress that grants 15 Defense Rating will yield:
15/(1.5*(10-8)/52)=260 defense.
After the 2.4.3 nerf, the benefit he gains will be reduced to:
15/(1.5*(34-8)/52)=20 defense.
Because level 10 characters used to calculate with very small amounts of rating needed to gain a large benefit (due to the 10-8, instead of 19-8), this nerf hits them the hardest. In fact, it makes it equally hard for them to gain benefit as level 19 characters.
The actual effect of this nerf can be calculated by the change of level values;
(34-8)/(19-8)=2.36, and because the formula is reversed ( it calculates the amount of rating needed for benefit, not the benefit itself) we make it 1/2.36=0.423. This is the multiplier of the nerf, so the amount of nerf is 1-0.423=0.577, 57.7% at level 19.
In the same fashion we find that the amount of nerf at 10 is 1-1/((34-8)/(10-8))=0.923, 92.3%.
Basically, Parry, Block and Defense rating at 19 is not as spectacular anymore, but still useful- whereas these ratings become obsolete at level 10
On the bright side, for those who cherish the idea of a level 10 twink, agility still scales excessively for rogues and haste and crit have not been touched.