This guide will discuss staying Level 1 when creating your Twink character. We’ll examine stat scaling and enchants, as well as what classes and races are best suited for this strategy.

In Case You Don’t Have Time To Read It All

Level 1 Rogues have really high Agility scaling to Crit Chance and Dodge Chance, and can get a ton of Enchants to boost it up into the high 40% range for Crit Chance and nearing 100% Dodge Chance without buffs or anything. The other classes don’t have nearly as good stat scaling, and neither do the other stats for that matter.

1 Agi = 0.43% Crit and 0.87% Dodge

Why Level 1?

So you can do a lot of crazy things at level 1 by getting big damage enchantments on all your gear, then getting summoned everywhere so you don’t level up from exploring. Dueling people and ganking people who turn PvP on in lower-level zones is all fun and games, but level 1s can actually beat higher level characters in certain stats — because they get the best stat scaling in the entire game.

Almost all stats have a flat number they add to your character regardless of your level or class. For example:

• 1 stamina gives you 10 health
• 1 Intellect will always give you 15 mana
• 1 Agility will always give you 2 armor

But the 2 main stats that scale based on your level are Intellect (through the Spell Crit Chance stat) and Agility (through the Melee/Ranged Crit Chance stat as well as the Dodge Chance stat).

For da Trolls out there looking to lean on your Regeneration racial passive, yes, it appears that Spirit scales to your level. But it seems as though it’s reverse scaling which gets better the higher level you are; while I could only verify that the current Spirit regen formulas out there don’t work for level 1s, I couldn’t even decipher a proper formula myself. It’s not great scaling though, even for Warriors, and the absolute max health regen you can get in combat as a level 1 Troll Warrior is probably gonna be like 5 health per second based on my testing.

Intellect also scales fairly low, with 1 Intellect giving almost exactly 0.2% spell crit chance to the various caster classes. The maximum extra Intellect you can get as a level 1 through enchants and gear is gonna be 49 (give or take a few depending on class) which will add 10% to your spell crit chance. Not too exciting, seeing as your spells will only crit for 1.5x the base damage or heal.

Agility is insane though. But only for Rogues. For a level 1 Rogue:

• 1 Agility = 0.43% crit chance and
• 1 Agility = 0.87% dodge chance

By phase 5 you can stack 61 bonus Agility through enchants. This means a passive +26.23% Crit Chance and +53.07% Dodge Chance! If you want to get into temporary buffs you can get 50%+ crit and 100% dodge chance, but that’s going to involve outside help like Grace of Air Totem for Horde, Blessing of Kings for Alliance, Spirit of Zandalar buff in phase 4, or Omen kill buff from the Lunar Festival.

Problem is, other classes don’t get nearly the same treatment. The runner-up for Agility scaling is the warrior, who only gets 0.15% crit chance and 0.25% dodge chance, though the Hunter beats the Warrior for dodge chance with 0.43% per 1 Agility. The rest of the classes are much lower in all regards, and generally don’t see much benefit from stat scaling.

There’s also a faction and race prejudice here too, because different races have different starting stats. Night Elves beat Dwarves by 10 agility, so Nelf Rogues have 4% more crit chance and 9% more dodge chance than Dwarf Rogues, and the closest the Horde has are Trolls who have 1% lower crit chance than Night Elves and 3.5% lower dodge than Night Elves.

All this will get way way crazier in Burning Crusade and later expansions, with insane scaling on the new stats of haste rating crit rating, dodge rating, and all that jazz. Anyway, let me know if you’ve got any comments or thoughts on the subject, and remember, go crazy!