Even if the level of the item is above your level, NQ mats is fine provided that your gear is good enough to make up for your deficiency in levels (like starred master recipes). If you're under-geared, you'll have trouble even getting 50% no matter how good your rotation is. As for a workable rotation, I've found that a hasty touch and manipulation spam works well enough.

I normally try to stay away from relying too much on CS2. It's rng free, but if you end up up having to use it 4 or more times, you'll struggle to HQ your item. For a 40 durability recipe, you really want to complete progress in 2 or 3 steps only, so I normally use RS and a single CS2 (or 2 shots of CS2 if my craftsmanship isn't high enough; alternatively ingenuity 2 can be used to reduce it to 1 CS2).

Once your craftsmanship and/or level is high enough, you can complete progress on a 40 durability item with 2 shots of CS2, eliminating the need for RS.