Ascended armor crafting - marks or mats

I saw a similar thread a while back but it didn't get any answers, so I'm opening my own.

I have one fully geared character with ascended armor (Weaver, light set) and trinkets + legendary staff so I can play T4 fracs daily whenever I can. I'd like to take my two alts into T4 fracs and while I just swap trinkets from Weaver to Holosmith or Warrior, to play T4 I need my alts to have an ascended set as well (medium and heavy) because of AR (and a little bit because I want them to have ascended stuff, to be honest).

Soon I'll have enough frac research pages (88 I think it is) for a full set of armor for one more character. I have a good amount of time-gated recipes saved up (I have like 60 Mithrilium, 10 Elonian cords and around 10-15 Silk Weaving threads), and I'm not too poor (have just under 300g, but I'm leaving 250g aside for Gryphon). That said, I found the old-fashioned crafting process to be very expensive because of the insignias and I was looking at marks to see if I can somewhat alleviate the costs - only, it doesn't seem that much cheaper, esp. medium armor.

So what would you guys recommend, do another old-fashioned crafting set or go for marks?

I'd recommend to ask gw2efficiency whether marks or direct crafting are cheaper for the specific items you want.

As someone else said, you can use gw2eff to help. For example, these 2 comparisons for your medium chest piece:

Cost of Marks, making sure to add 4g for the vendor cost vs. Old-Fasioned Crafting

Just my 2 cents and feel free to use your resources as you see fit but I personally think Fractal Research Pages are far to valuable to use as method to save a little bit of gold.

I'd recommend to go via old school crafting if you have been unlucky for weeks and T4 fractals have not provided you with a single ascended armor chest.

300g is a nice gold pile to have, but realistically you only have 50g if you want to get the griffon. Why not do 1 more week of daily T4 fractals (even better if CMs are possible but not needed) and take home those 15-25g per day. Maybe you'll get lucky and have 1-2 ascended armor chests drop. Either way, you'll be in a way better position to decide what to do.

Downside: you won't be able to play your new class for a week. :/

@Cyninja.2954 said:I personally think Fractal Research Pages are far to valuable to use as method to save a little bit of gold.

Out of curiosity, why do you feel they have more value?

@Ewon.5903 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:I personally think Fractal Research Pages are far to valuable to use as method to save a little bit of gold.

Good point, I guess because they take a long time to acquire and:

A. are used in the legendary back piece Ad InfinitumB. are used in the Mist Attunement I and III (8 books and 16 respectively)C. are used in Cobalt weapons (if A and B are of absolutely no interest, these at least provide unique skins)

Now especially A and B are long term goals or at least something not everyone might be interested in pursuing, yet. If at some point you do decide to work on Ad Infinitum or buy the Mist Attunement upgrades, you might face a very long grind period if you spent the pages on things like armor.

You are essentially saving a bit of gold for potential very long grind times. Gold should not be a big issue to people who run T4 fractals regularly. At least not in the amount which normal crafting might be more expensive. Even more so that you should be swimming in ascended chests (both armor and weapons) eventually.

@Cyninja.2954 said:A. are used in the legendary back piece Ad InfinitumB. are used in the Mist Attunement I and III (8 books and 16 respectively)C. are used in Cobalt weapons (if A and B are of absolutely no interest, these at least provide unique skins)

Makes sense. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something other than the back-piece and augments I've overlooked seeing as I have both of those complete and don't use my fractal pages for anything (have more ascended items than I'll ever need). For players who aren't there yet, I can agree, they do have more value in your list.

I'll just make one note that the cobalt weapons are no more unique than the ascended armor. Both the armor and cobalt skins can be acquired through crafting.

@Ewon.5903 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:A. are used in the legendary back piece Ad InfinitumB. are used in the Mist Attunement I and III (8 books and 16 respectively)C. are used in Cobalt weapons (if A and B are of absolutely no interest, these at least provide unique skins)

Ah see I did not even know that. Well yes, if you have the upgrades and the legendary saving some gold is absolutely worth it.

@"Ewon.5903" said:As someone else said, you can use gw2eff to help. For example, these 2 comparisons for your medium chest piece:

Cost of Marks, making sure to add 4g for the vendor cost vs. Old-Fasioned Crafting

Based off of that, the cheapest medium piece is 48g (cheaper to stat change than craft direct because of insignia), and 4 Grandmaster Leatherworker Marks + 4g is 38g, which is 10g less altogether. Not that much of a difference, to be honest. I think I might buy the chest piece and legs and craft the rest.

Cyninja thanks for your insight, but I don't think I'll be chasing the backpiece or account augmentations any day soon - the augs are more probable, but I just want to play something else than Weaver in fractals heh.

Thanks to everyone for their help. BTW, I got an Ascended armor chest just today. I "wasted" it because I thought I chose medium foot armor last time and I selected medium only to realize I selected heavy last time. Doh! I could've had two of four pieces on my warrior. Ah well, it's still one piece less any way you look at it :D

@JackassTheX.6351 said:

@"Ewon.5903" said:As someone else said, you can use gw2eff to help. For example, these 2 comparisons for your medium chest piece:

Cost of Marks, making sure to add 4g for the vendor cost

vs.

Old-Fasioned Crafting

No problem, sure thing just thought I'd weigh in that fractal research pages have uses beside armor purchases.

If you write a polite message to Customer Support and explain the situation they might change your incorrect armor piece with the correct one. Make sure to keep it concise, to the point and polite (because being polite usually helps with people wanting to help). You might get lucky. It could take some days though.

Use marks if you want to craft expensive affixes like trailblazer/minstrel/celestial etc since you can select the stat on the armour piece at no additional cost. Personally, I crafted all my armour using marks and all my weapons using materials. The only thing that was added to the game that research pages is useful for is mist attunements and I had already spent over 200 pages before they were released anyway, so I cant say I regret using them.