personally i think it depends what you want out of it.
Green DE: “I want dust and don’t mind DE’ing more than I need?”
Blacksmithing, the green quality blacksmithing tools cost 1 core alloy (10 bismuth) each. pros: cheap! if you max out the green quality DE wheel, you can get more dust from a successful DE.
cons: you won’t get one of the KP catch-up items every time in fact, in my experience it’s like, half the time.
Blue DE: “I want shards and don’t mind DE’ing more than I need?”
tailoring bracers.
pros: the bolts of cloth are pretty cheap. if you max out the blue and green quality DE wheel + go into resourcefulness in the shatter essence tab, and stack resourcefulness on your enchant tool/phial etc, you can smash shards into dust for a profit.
cons kp items still aren’t guaranteed and resosurcefulness shard-crushing can be a razor-thin profit margin business if you’re not actively tracking the ebb and flow of shard prices. the “extra mats” aren’t particularly useful, rank 1 leather and the like and not really in a quantity high enough to eg thaumaturgise into anything useful.
Epic DE: “i don’t mind losing a bit of cash, want refulgent crystals and i want the KP items with the minimum of fuss.”
buy darkmoon cards on the ah, convert to a deck (or buy the decks outright if cheaper), max out the epic DE wheel, DE.
pros: the decks aren’t super expensive and the raw cards are usually even less so; every purple is a guaranteed KP item, so if you’re running eg myu’s weakaura and know you have access to 411 catch-up KPs, you can buy exactly 411 decks/suites and know you’ll get a KP from each one, you also get a bit of leyline residue/writhing sample/viridescent spore/crystalline powder with the purple DE wheel maxxed out which is useful right now because leyline residue is super pricey, plus all the refulgent crystals you’ll ever need. On fresh enchanter alts, I usually cap out on KPs using this route so that I can get enough artisan’s acuity to pay for the alt’s OTHER profession’s tools/knowledge books.
cons: while the decks/suites are surprisingly cheap, refulgent crystals are plentiful from m+ and delve farmers and usually don’t sell for cost. you can’t shatter them into dust or shards, so you’ll still need to buy those off the AH. can be time consuming if you’re working in high numbers (a /use Ace of … macro can help with the converting suites into decks, but there’s a cast time).
