Heh so I am wasting my time or more importantly right now gold then? I was doing it to get a quality lvl 80 set. I need to read up on the dungeons and armor available out there. Does the leveling in armorsmithing slow down as you approach 400? Seemed like up to ~300 went well enough. Got a little costly for the insignias for discovery at the end. But that was because I am only down to Timberline Falls level on zoning and lacked the mats for them.
rare sets cost 15 of the fine materials for each piece, as opposed to 8 fine mats for the same-tiered master craft piece.
You have to buy the rare insignia recipes from the crafting vendor NPC--I think it is the 3rd tier in his trade window. They start offering rare insignia recipes for the 3rd level of items for whatever the crafting discipline is (so, for armorsmithing, I think you start using them with steel)
You absolutely need to use these rare insignias to level past 390, as master crafted stuff no longer gives xp--but it is best to craft rare past 375, when mithril rare insignias become available, because you get a bit more than 2x the crafting xp for rare pieces. All in all, while leveling, the cost in materials to create rare is probably a wee bit more efficient than with crafting master, despite material cost, as you get so much more xp per piece (I do think that 1x rare = more xp than 2x master). It does slow down significantly midway through mithril crafting if you don't make rare, and are not farming the orrian mats for mithril and t5 fine mats.
as for what you may be wasting in terms of cash...it's almost a push, really. If you've gone out and farmed the fine materials for the insignias (easier for leveling, as you can use spammy materials. but maybe not best to make the things you actually want to use), then it is much cheaper. Of course, simply going by the absolute value of the materials and cost on TP, it's almost a wash. the rare and exotic insignia recipes cost karma for each one, so you will be losing some karma...but not a whole lot if you are at level 80 and have been eating daily pots and vials from dungeons. Karma is now, simply, too easy to get. Still takes time, though.
If it's about style and getting exactly the stats you want, then go for it. If you want to craft your own exotics--that is expensive, as it's 5 ecto and 5 t6 fine mats per piece. Ecto can be better used elsewhere and you will likely want them for other purposes later (considering that exotic sets are easily obtained from dungeons, and after you get used to farming a dungeon like AC, can net you more than 4g for a ~1hr run and enough tiers to buy boots or gloves, shoulders or helmets, iirc).
To be honest, I used a pile of ecto crafting exotic cloth for my main, and a few weapons on my warrior when I maxed weaponsmithing, and I don't really regret it.
I would advise searching for level 80 rare pieces on TP with the stats that you want, and making up any gaps by crafting the others. Then, farm AC for AC armor, that gives you power/tough/vit--which is almost demanded of warriors in dungeons. only AC and HotW (Honor of the Waves--the Norn Dungeon in frostgorge) give you armor with these stats. These are actually very easy, and popular dungeons to farm. I've honestly only done the first path of HotW, but it is very fast. Can be done in less than 15 minutes. I'm not sure about the others, but it's probably not as efficient as AC in terms of tokens and getting geared, because everyone runs all paths of AC, but apparently not HotW. You are stuck with those armor skins, of course, unless you use fine transmutation stones.
Anyway, that's the cheapest way to gear up and it is quite fast when you get the hand of it. You also get piles of money in the process.
We run these dungeons almost nightly, so be sure to hit the guild chat up if you want to tag along for one of them. There is almost always enough interest for AC or HotW or CoF if people aren't already doing the fractals dungeons.
