Low level players have their stats scaled up to cp160, its basically what one tamriel did. Cp points beyond what skill you invest in actually increase mag, health or stam pool for the respective constellations up to a certain number as well.

While leveling, if you have on level improved set gear, you will hit harder than a CP160 Ranked Character. However, as that scaling goes away, that boost is removed. So, you have to use more skills, in a logical or synergistic pattern to do the same base damage.

Now, this is against story mobs and bosses. A lot of content can not be handled by a leveling character.

The Mobs and Bosses stay the same. This is so a new person to the game can enjoy any story content. It is the character that changes.

Those World Bosses are intended for groups of people. An L20 will not be able to solo them. A CP160 will not be able to either. CP300s or better, if they really know game mechanics, maybe. Now of course, some peeps are going to come along and state they can solo anything at L10 naked, until they show a video, take that as what it is, a fantasy boast.

The game is nice to you early on to allow you to learn the ropes. Hopefully, during this time you are figuring out how to block and dodge and synergize your skills and maintain your resources so you can do end game content.

Unfortunately we tend to end up with CP500 OR 800 players who spam light bow attacks because that can kill a story boss, eventually.

As I understand it base level of the game is CP160. Players from lv1-49 get a hidden boost to scale they current stats to CP160 which is a boost to HP, Satmina, Magicka and even a boost to damage so that you can actually kill some of the creatures or enemies you may encounter in the world.

Now once you hit level 50 all that hidden buff suddenly goes away. You will get your first 10CP also and will accumulate The next 100CP beyond that very quickly. You will see a significant drop especially in HP and if you are min maxing and dumping all your points into Magicka or Stamina you’ll see a base HP of ~10K HP. It’s enough to get you one shot or killed by easy mobs. The game gets harder if you can believe that but you can mitigate by wearing 5pc sets that are easy and relatively cheap to make yourself by that point. There is 4 trait gear that works just fine while you build to CP160 and the gear cap.

Now around CP100 you will have accumulated enough CP to properly make up for your lost buffs from pre CP levels provided you properly allocate it to enhance your DMG and mitigation.

CP160 you can start using the 6 trait crafted sets like Hundings for stamina or Julianos for magicka. Just 1 of those 5 piece sets alone changes your game significantly. You could also use sets like Mew Moon Acolyte for arguably better all around bonuses. You can also farm or buy decent overland sets like Mothers Sorrow or Briarheart and boost your stats even more. By this point you will overpower most game content with the exception of vet dungeons, world bosses, maelstrom arena and a few of the DLC dungeons.

Now you still get some minor stat boosts from CP160 until CP300 like weapon and critical damage boosts, they aren’t so big but those minor buffs combined with CP are significant. At CP300 you can play all but the hardest content easily. You’ll want to stay out of vet trails and vet hard mode dungeon runs but you can play everything else. Some people may give you a hard time because you only have 300CP but with proper gear and understanding of mechanics you won’t hold anyone back save for speed runners and scoreboard chasers.

Everything above that is a bonus but at that point you’ll need to spend a lot more CP to level up your stats because of diminishing returns and jump points. If you don’t know what jump points are look them up. The game rounds % down when applying points. You would think 9.97% would round up to 10% but the game only sees it as 9%. It’s very misleading but once you learn how that system works you’ll apply your CP more intelligently. CP applied and not hitting the next jump point is CP wasted.

Anyhow hope those explanations help.