50k? You realize it’s incredibly easy to get that amount right? Literally just auction every green or blue you find that isn’t a leveling item and is more of a cosmetic, keep relisting it you will make gold. There’s also a lot of money prints with disenchanting people probably aren’t utilizing anymore which means there’s a profit margin to be made there.
If it’s that low of a cost most people don’t care. Like in what world is 40-50k a lot of gold? I made 50g an hour doing BRD runs and bought 300g in consumables a week on Classic. That’s a lot more of my actual gold than 40-50k should be for most people. You can solo all the raids you are able to solo, vendor all the loot out of them and easily make 10k+. It isn’t much but it’s a good starting income and that’s per character. Doesn’t even take much to get toons to the point of doing this either.
It’s boring but it works. Once you have actual gold you can make it work for you, but that’s just a low income gold method that works for people. You get so much gold just playing the game and doing damn near anything that 40-50k should not be a huge stretch.
The legendary power represents about 10-20% of your character’s power. So, to answer your question simply: No. You are severely harming your DPS by running no legendary.
So how can you get a legendary without spending 50k you don’t have? Many people gave partial answers here, with a lot of sass attached. So I’ll try and summarize it.
The legendary power does NOT scale with item level. So a 190 legendary and a 272 have the same legendary power effect. What does scale up is the STR/Haste/Crit stats on the base item. Your stats like Str, Crit, and Haste for any 1 piece of gear are probably only 1-2% of your overall dps. So - sacrificing the stats of a 220 piece to wear a 190 legendary is a significant net gain in power.
Low item level base items often cost less than the materials to buy on the AH. Often pocket change, because crafters are required to make multiple low-tier items to gain access to higher tiers.
Finally, the price of legendaries in your marketplace is directly tied to the price of [Korthite Crystals] because high tier legendaries require 40x Korthite Crystals each; which is the lion’s share of the material cost. So if your server’s legendary items cost 50k it’s likely that Korthite Crystals sell for ~1200-1400 each.
Korthite Crystals are more or less time-gated, meaning character can’t just farm a monster or harvest a node to generate them. Korthite Crystals are ONLY used for crafting legendaries. You should not be hoarding them in your packs and bank, they are worthless to you as a resource. Sell your Korthite Crystals to generate gold to afford your legendary.
Have fun in 9.2 and welcome to raiding!
Not a big fan of how legendaries were handled in this expansion.
When it was random drops I think it was better, because at least you could get something without having to drop a month’s sub worth of gold on it.
I don’t think blizzard understood players when they asked for professions to matter again… this doesn’t make them matter, this makes them bloody mandatory and awful, and if you didn’t pick a crafting profession enjoy burning away all your gold. 
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If your spec uses a covenant legendary, you get it for free just by completing a part of the story. the 190 base items are reasonably cheap on most servers, and that gives you 85% of the benefit, because the power does not scale with ilvl.
No, all you have to do is find a guild, learn to play your class and you’ll get AOTC and KSM within the first four weeks of each patch
I preferred random drops too - but that’s mostly because I don’t like grinding currency in the worst game mode they’ve ever designed (Torghast). I don’t have an issue with crafters making base pieces. In fact, I hope moving forward crafters can just craft BoE items from raid using mats that drop there instead of them just being drops off trash
Just buy not on-par ones. It’s fine, especially if all you care about is Normal/LFR. I only spent like 11k on my whole lego at ilvl 235.
It’s fine.
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I have to say you are being incredibly dismissive and very troll-like here.
Depending on the item in question, leveling ONE legendary piece (for example, leather pants):
Yes, you can make a level 190 item IF you can enchant, leathercraft AND skin on your own.
That means either buying materials on the AH or having multiple toons with leveled skills.
I found level 190 legendary (at least for my class) was far inferior to a level 200+ Korthian gear, especially as those were far easier to level. (I don’t raid or mythic)
To get to the next item level, you have to make the same thing 15 times. So that is:
15 x 5 Enchanted Heavy Callous hides
15 x 5 Heavy Desolate Leather
15 x5 Heavy Callous Hides
15 x50 Desolate Leather
15 x12 Orboreal Shards (at 100 gold a pop).
The callous hides drop more than they used to but are still not easy to come by.
The above adds up to one big headache, for which I blame Blizzard’s stupid design.
And to level up the suite so you can make items for friends/alts – bah is all I say.
I can see where the OP doesn’t want to spend the money (I know I won’t) but he also mentioned ‘on par’ item level, which level 190 isn’t.
On my server, just checked, you could get a level 190 as low as 2500. 210 for 5k. 225 for 65K and after that it shoots up to 100+K.
I don’t blame the sellers. Making those things is expensive and time consuming. And one would think the game would be more about oh, playing, than doing chores for farming for mats and/or money just for one piece of gear that will be outdated.
Those mats are not easy. Even for someone like me, with a few toons who gather as they go about their travels while I play.
So please, don’t be dismissive of other people’s time. It’s rude and very short-sighted.
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ahh so get a guild who’s nice enough to carry you for free. Gotcha
Buy a token and pay for the legendary its basically the way Blizzard designed it.
No, get a guild, try out - make their progression team and get benched if you don’t parse 70 or higher
There is no reason you have to buy the best legendary base piece. They are only marginally better than each other.
However, i’ve noticed its not worth buying a lesser one most of the time, as the price differences between tiers are minimal.
you have no idea what a prog guild is really like dont you?
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You could easily make the 50k gold to buy the base piece before 9.2 comes out just by doing the daily callings. I get anywhere from 1500 to 2000 gold on one character per day and up to 6 to 7k gold per day doing them on 3 characters and that’s not counting all of the vendor trash that adds up.
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Lol i play 5 toons and I made 262s for tank and dps specs for all of them it’s called drunk torghast where you don’t think
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he’s not wrong, though. shadow is not a fun spec to play in torghast.
Tank specs are infinitely more boring
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Craft one of the cheaper pieces. Normal doesn’t really that high of an ilvl.