Hence why I said I don't advocate strictly doing one method or the other. If I have time, then of course I'll go farm the mats myself.

But the way things are on my server at least, I'm still selling faster than I can craft for half the day. Mats cost average 3k, items sell for 10k+. I'm not competing with other farmers for hours to make an extra 3k when my retainer is standing around with open slots.

Maybe one day, I'll go super tryhard and build a stochastic model just to see how much downtime for farming I have. Too much effort for a game though.