At what level do we start getting the legacy buff?

[Ryuushima]

I noticed some people saying that a great way to level since 6.0 is by soloing dungeons that are about 3 levels below your own levels.
This has mainly been said about 85-90 but I've also seen some people talk about 80-85. I was wondering however at what level this becomes viable, or better yet at what level do we start getting the damage increase against lower level mobs.

It would make sense if this buff always works since it would be odd to not be able to kill lower level mobs easily as a level 60 for example however my warrior is 73 and I notice that my damage ( while being slightly increased due to gear ) is still basically the same on level 68 mobs as it was when I entered northrend.

Don't get me wrong I am not saying level 68 mobs are hard to kill as a 73 but the damage increase buff is clearly not present while as a level 90 I see an extreme increase in damage against even level 87 bosses which is only a 3 level difference compared to the 5 I have on my level 73.

So if anyone has any information on this matter it would be more than welcome.
Thanks in advance.

edit : Also I was thinking about this for a bit more, might it be so that this buff is only active when doing previous expansion stuff? Since on my level 90 the 87 bosses I was talking about were in Zul'Aman while my level 73 was trying to kill lower level mobs in his own current level expansion.

[TheWindWalker]

As far as I know, there's no such thing as a "legacy buff" so much as a new part of the combat formula that checks your level and your target's level before applying a multiplier. Several times Celestalon and a couple other devs made a point of saying "we decided to instead change the combat rules for targets above or below you in level."

Technically, when you're level 10 you should be doing noticeably larger damage to level 6s. Gotta test that...

[JemiS]

It's for an expansion below you, but also has a level difference component.

At 62, you get a modifier that scales in Vanilla dungeons.

At 72, you get a damage modifier in BC dungeons that scales with level difference.

At 82, you get a damage modifier in LK dungeons.

At 87, you get a damage modifier in Cata dungeons.

[Ryuushima]

I did some testing just now before the servers went down. It seems there really is a "legacy buff".

My level 73 warrior did 1.5k-2.5k hits on mobs level 68 in borean tundra.
In Sethekk Halls my level 73 warrior 1 hit killed every non boss and did 35k crits ( 3-4 hits for kill ) on the level 69 bosses.

Also the completion experience bonus from instances is very high so I got 57k experience per roughly 3 and a half minutes in there while my exp needed to level is about 420k. Take note that this might go even faster on a class that isn't limited to charge every 12 seconds for a movement speed increase.

edit: Indeed JemiS it seems to be the way you mentioned, I saw your post after writing down my test But it's a very viable way of leveling at certain moments. Depending on the instances you can do in that level range because some dungeons simply take too long.

edit2: Curious how this would work experience-wise for 92-100 in WoD, though most people said dungeon exp is crap compared to WoD quests.

[Rivin]

edit2: Curious how this would work experience-wise for 92-100 in WoD, though most people said dungeon exp is crap compared to WoD quests.

It won't. MoP content isn't affected by the buff at any level.

[TheWindWalker]

Huh, well thanks for testing it out so thoroughly. I'm actually surprised they went through that much trouble but hey, now I got a thread to link next time this is asked.

[Deleted]

There's no buff, they scrapped that idea and changed the combat system instead, so it will always give you increased performance against mobs below your lvl.
For a lvl 90, performance against any lvl 89 and below mob is increased.

[ComputerNerd]

I have been asked about this too, and was unable to give specifics.
That post by Jemis in particular with the level thresholds and the (unknown to me) expansion threshold will be particularly useful information for me to relay to others.

Thank you all for helping to bring some clarity to this subject.

[Ryuushima]

There's no buff, they scrapped that idea and changed the combat system instead, so it will always give you increased performance against mobs below your lvl.
For a lvl 90, performance against any lvl 89 and below mob is increased.

Sorry Voyager, what you said is untrue as has been shown by my test and other statements.

[Deleted]

I have been asked about this too, and was unable to give specifics.
That post by Jemis in particular with the level thresholds and the (unknown to me) expansion threshold will be particularly useful information for me to relay to others.

Thank you all for helping to bring some clarity to this subject.

False information cannot be relayed unpunished.

[Todesbote]

There's no buff, they scrapped that idea and changed the combat system instead, so it will always give you increased performance against mobs below your lvl.
For a lvl 90, performance against any lvl 89 and below mob is increased.

Thats wrong.

It's for an expansion below you, but also has a level difference component.

At 62, you get a modifier that scales in Vanilla dungeons.

At 72, you get a damage modifier in BC dungeons that scales with level difference.

At 82, you get a damage modifier in LK dungeons.

At 87, you get a damage modifier in Cata dungeons.

True. Tested and confirmed by myself with my own chars.

[Ryuushima]

False information cannot be relayed unpunished.

Try it out yourself I'd say, it only takes 5 minutes to test anyway. Don't go calling information false just because you believe otherwise without doing any tests to back up your statement :P

[Deleted]

Try it out yourself I'd say, it only takes 5 minutes to test anyway. Don't go calling information false just because you believe otherwise without doing any tests to back up your statement :P

I have done that, and discovered that we do increased damage against lvl 89 mobs. That clearly invalidates his +2 lvl theory.

[Ryuushima]

I have done that, and discovered that we do increased damage against lvl 89 mobs. That clearly invalidates his +2 lvl theory.

As I said earlier.
My level 73 warrior did 1.5k-2.5k hits on mobs level 68 in borean tundra.
In Sethekk Halls my level 73 warrior 1 hit killed every non boss and did 35k crits ( 3-4 hits for kill ) on the level 69 bosses.

that shows that in the same expansion at least I was not doing increased damage at all against mobs that were 5 levels lower than me however mobs in a previous expansion that were only 4 levels lower than me increased my damage by about 10 times.

I am sorry for jumping to conclusions about you not having tested things at all but this clearly shows that we don't just do increased damage against any mob that is lower than us. Instead we do insane damage against mobs that are lower than us in a previous expansion.

[endersblade]

From the way I understood it, the buff only functions in dungeons, and has effect on MoP content.

[Mormolyce]

Sorry Voyager, what you said is untrue as has been shown by my test and other statements.

Well it's true that there is no "buff".

However it appears that the scaling is a combination of the combat rule change and a specific set of logic dealing with old content dungeons (and mobs? Unsure).

[Ryuushima]

And blizzard ghostnerfed dungeon completion experience by 65% with last nights patch. /sigh they really can't do things normally can they? We finally got an alternate way of leveling than doing boring quests/group dungeons and instead of leaving it like that or slightly nerfing it let's just throw a 65% nerfhammer over it which also severely reduces exp gained in a group dungeon.

[Overdispersion]

Slightly necro, but will a 93 get a higher dps boost in cata raids than a 92? My 92 pala can't really solo DS25HC and I'm not sure whether I'll gain a higher damage boost coefficient or if I'll just lose dps by losing secondary stats if I level him up slightly.