On the very odd occasion, I have stacked a group with 80s to PL a newby from 0 - 80 (did a mage and a fury as I just wanted to see if they were any good at 80)

Leveling was incredibly fast as I had 4/5 x 80s mentoring - I personally am from ol' skool (UO/EQ1/DAoC) and like grinding so I just sat in dungeons and pwn'd

All the 80s had a mix of epics / legends and all fully adp3/mastered, each having 180+AA - so they weren't too shabby...

Several problems which occurred - how do I explain this...
1) scaling
- Imagine a level 10 character - put that level 10 in all the latest and greatest lvl 10 epics and masters then put it against a lvl 10 mob - of course the mob just 'melts' - BUT - they still only have available spells up to level 10 and their gear (even if epics) are designed for level 10 mobs
- now the problem is, get a mastered/epic'd level 80 and mentor to level 10 - this character will not equal a mastered/epic'd lvl 10 character - it will equal a fire breathing, mob destroying juggerernaut as the 'scaling' of spells and AC et al is not the same as a level 10 with a masters and level 10 gear - it will be 'godmode'
- another thing - a 'normal' level 10 character has say 10 spells - a level 80 has say 30 spells - all these spells can be used if mentoring to level 10 - even if you only got this spell of uberness at level 80 - you CAN still use it if you mentor to level 10 - of course level 10 mobs aren't designed to be attacked with a level 80 spell (even if it is scaled) so they melt

2) When you get your toon from 0 - 80 - their skills will be useless - as an example, a character is able to gain 5 points in a skill per level - 80 levels x 5 = a max of 400 skill points for a skill - lets use an example of defense - so at 80 you 'should' have 400 defense - if you have less than 400 defense, a level 80 mob is more likely to either crit you or one shot you
- therefore, you will have to basically sit your toon somewhere, having grey mobs whack it for a while till it skills up to 400 (a good place being the TSO dungeons assuming you have a level 50 to cap the dungeon) - this can take some time
- now defense skills are relatively painless (i.,e., just grab a pile of grey mobs) the problem is for skills like disruption (the mage damage line) - why is this a problem? well - the mage hasn't been able to get a spell off for 80 levels as the bunch of 80s (mentored) have basically melted the mob before it even got close to the mage - so this means you have to find a bunch of greys - and spam spam spam spam spam s p a m /gag spam....s....pp..f..e..as..asdf.w.fgq.g.qfv.vds. /PUKE - now it's not just as simple as going back to a level 50 TSO dungeon as you will find that to get from say 0 skill to 5 works BEST on level 1 mobs, 5 - 10 work BEST on level 2 mobs etc etc etc - you CAN do the grey 50s but results MAY be slower and a lot of resists etc

3) you miss out on a lot of AAs - this is the real bummer with grinding in dungeons - yes, the levels comes thick and fast - but the AAs? no...once you have the disco and have killed the names and maybe completed the odd quest - there's nothing else left but grinding
- therefore, to get AAs you MUST lock which defeats the purpose of having a bunch of 80s pling the nooby

IMHO - and the way I have done it for ages now - start a new char - get to 10 - the instant you ding 10 - lock - do all the quests possible (use the wikia to get the quest timelines for each zone and tick them off as you go)

I have personally found that locking till somewhere between 32-35ish used to be enough (pre-bonus exp patch) - from there I unlock and just keep doing quests normally - this WILL get you pretty close to 100 AAs at level 60 (the current cap) [TBTH most times I actually waste about 2 AAs as I am stuck at 100 and still not 60 yet - hence why I say about lvl 32-35] - post exp patch, mobs give more exp now so I am now locking till about 40ish just to be sure - a good rule of thumb [pre-patch] was 3 AAs per level locked - so the math...

level 0 - 10 = 0 aa (quest and names below 10 do not give aa - any disco discovered at this time is lost)
- level 10 - 35ish = 3AA x 25 levels = 75 AA (locked)
- level 35 to 60 is 25 levels at about 1+ AA per level unlocked
- 25AA + 75AA = 100AA = cap at 60

BUT now there is more mob exp so I would increase your locking from 35ish to 40 (maybe even a little more)

Now assuming you made 60 and are 100aa - do KoS which is good for say 20 more, RoK is good for 20, Moors is good for 10 - so you SHOULD have about 130-150AA - this will allow you to fill the class line of AAs (70 aa) and the subclass (70aa) and start on the TSO AA page - you WILL have a very nice base to start doing some nasty damage no matter what class you play

If you don't do this - hope you like grey quest grinding

Is a lvl 80 character - with only say 80-100aa totally nerfed? - Hmmm....in pre TSO dungeons - no - you can get away with it BUT you will be missing the odd uber spell and you may be disadvantaged (i.e., you may use more mana for a spell line or have less HPs etc) - it SHOULD be ok if it's not a critical class (i.e., the main tank with a few AAs = a tank who WILL NOT hold aggro - full stop - no aggro holding = dead healers, then the rogues, then the casters, then the tank = ol skool DAoC FG death spam)

In TSO dungeons - your f%^&ed - don't care if the entire group is in full epic / masters - if you only have 100aa a piece your f567ed - good night buh bye thx4coming

Which means - you will have to go back and do allllllll those quests you missed on the way leveling if you want those chars to be worth something

/lock at 10 - do it - no problems with having the 80 lock mentor though - but he'she will be mentoring a 'locked' char

There is a bonus with bringing your warlock into a locked group - that being the warlock can do all the quests he/she missed thus earning more AAs for it plus all the undiscovered disco et al