If your buying things to toss into forge to get commendations then yeah it’s a huge waste. However if you just got back from farming and don’t need to break down or sell blues/greens then you can get some nice items by junking them in the donation boxs. In otherwords the commendations are a good alternative to salvaging/selling junk items.
In the case of selling junk items, it’s still a net loss, though it’s not as big a waste.
So 3 lvl80 greens and 1 wrapper = 12 commendations. Let’s say that’s 5.24 silver (~1.4s per green you’d get from selling it to vendor, 1.04s per wrapper. this is actually a very forgiving scenario, most lvl80 greens I’ve sold seem to be 1.6-1.8 silver).
A Black Lion Key is 285 commendations. 285 / 12 = 23.75
So that’s 23.75 donations, each donation costing 5.24 silver. 23.75 * 5.24 = 124.45
That means, by generating Commendations, it costs:
1g, 24s, 45c for 1 black lion key.
Using the current gem exchange rate, right now it costs:
1g, 11s for 1 black lion key.
So even in the case you described, it’s a waste of money. A relatively small waste of money given the forgiving scenario, but still, a waste of money.
When you take into account the 5 BLK for 450 gem deal and a bunch of other scenarios, it becomes a much bigger waste of money.
