I know, it’s an odd question with one of (i believe) the most hated expansions, However it’s always been my favorite.
A few years ago I leveled my monk to some level, obtained Pandaria raid gear and I believe I level-locked him so that I was “legit” for that content. However when new expansions release they throw your level all around and item levels start getting wonky.
I’m mostly just curious what others opinions are on this and what level you think I should level-lock again while I continue to grind Pandaria and do dailies/dungeons/etc.
My current trinkets from Pandaria say the effect will stop working once I hit level 50 (49 and below) so my assumption is that’s probably where I should stop at 49? I also hopped on my main (60) and all the mobs are 50. One of my biggest concerns with hitting 49 is will my Panda raid gear still be viable? They’re all item level 45.
Liung-KhazModan if you’re trying to check my gear out to help, And thank you very much in advanced 
Level 35 is the magic number you’re looking for. That’s what level 90’s scaled down to in SL, and is also the point at which you start receiving severely reduced xp from MOP content outside of Chromie Time.
For all intents and purposes, level 35 is the new “max” level for MOP content as far as I can tell. This comes with the caveat that I haven’t tried to level lock and twink anything after the new system was put in place, but as far as I understand the system, this should be accurate.
There are legacy items where the abilities will work until level 50 so that somebody can’t take a trinket or something with an effect that might scale to the point of breaking the game into current content, so they just limit the level at which items will work across the board to make it easier. It’s the same thought process as breaking legacy tier set bonuses above a certain level.
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As Zipster said, 35 is the MoP cap now without Chromie Time.
With Chromie Time, however, it will scale up to 49. (As soon as you hit 50 you get kicked out of Chromie Time and can’t turn it back on.) However, because of the Shadowlands starter quest, it can be better to lock at 47. Once the Shadowlands starter quest is available at 48, things can get more obnoxious.
There are a couple of advantages to going the Chromie Time route. First, it will give you access to LFD for Pandaria dungeons. (Without Chromie Time, only BfA dungeons are available.) The second advantage is that you can temporarily turn it off if you want to solo a raid for story.
I honestly have no idea how raids interact with Chromie Time. I’m not sure it matters that much. You’d have to find a full group of people who were still eligible for Chromie Time (so 49 or lower) to have any ability to use it to clear if the scaling works. So, I’d work on the assumption that at least as a practical matter, the MoP raids will only scale to 35.
The other thing to be aware of is that because of the level and stat squish, you can’t really outgear anything until you start getting BfA end game gear. (And more practically, at 60 and Shadowlands end game gear.) That’s why I like the ability to turn Chromie Time off if I need to overpower something. You start getting an overlevel bonus when you’re 5 levels over an expansion’s natural cap (and not using Chromie Time).
Just as a note, some areas of MoP are used in BfA, so that’s probably why the 60 saw level 50 mobs.
Without using Chromie time, I usually start Pandaria at 28/29. I pretty much skip everything in Jade forest and head for Halfhill to start on my farm.
Mats you can grow on the farm sell very well even now.
I have the account bound thing you can get from the Tillers Quartermaster at Revered on my first toon that went through that gives double Tillers rep to all characters on your battle.net account. So creating a four plot farm only takes about 4-5 days.
I have leveled in Pandaria as high as 37-38 if I was also trying to level a profession. Mobs got easier after 35 but were still in the range to give some rep.