My understanding of adding rare ingredients to high level recipes is to prevent the dynamic where items are very easy to make after you have ground out the levels.

That makes sense to me. Even though the grind is difficult, it shouldn't be too easy to make tons of high-end stuff.

The problem with using Silver Flame and Yugoloth favor, however, is the same. Once you did the grind, it is trivial to go to the Favor vendor and just buy the pot. The cost is trivial to high end players. Heck, it is trivial compared just the essence material cost.

To me, using rare named drops made more sense. Not raid loot, but unbound items such as shroud ingredients, boot ingredients, seem reasonable. Runes from Reaver's Refuge isn't bad either.

Am I off base here?