Great guide! Most of it can be applied to Synthweave and Armstech too! The eternal question, whether straight up crafted or custom gear with mods is the way to go, should be seen in perspective to crafting costs as well. At least while leveling. Imagine you have a full set of custom gear and want to reach the same amount of stats offered by an artifact tier 2 item. You not only need a different professions for that (cybertech/artifice), but also a much greater amount of artifact crafting material. I'm armstech, and I have gotten up to lvl40 on my main character. I managed to RE quite a few prototype (blue) craftables into artifact quality schematics. And here is the catch. You only need 2 of the purple compounds for weapons. Even barrels require 4. Armoring.. 4. Mods... 4. Enhancements... 4. So using a custom chest armor and pitting it against a ready-to-go lvl35 crafted artifact one displays very well how much more effort it is to reach the same stats. Sure, as it was pointed out, the stat distribution might be off for trainer-bought schematics, but there are indeed ALOT of schematics out there to be found. Many of them, especially for armstech, are just very rare. Personally, I'm a fan of artifact gear while leveling. If you equip them right at the lvl-requirement they boost your stats and prowess immensely, and additionally, net you the same quantity of stats as blue prototype gear 4 or 5 levels higher than your purple item.