Learn from my mistake...

[pandalishus]

EDIT: Reading the below, it occurs to me that what I was trying to communicate may not be clear. Suffice it to say that you'll use about half the mats to make a rare that you would for an exotic, but that the upgrade will will be only 1/3 as good as going straight to exotic from masterwork. Aside from the cost or orichalcum, there appears to be no compelling reason to upgrade to rare. It's just not a worthwhile upgrade given the mats.


Original (unedited) post:
Comparing numbers a bit, and I discovered (after the fact) that the upgrade from a Masterwork to Rare trinket is NOT worth the mats (or possibly even the gold). Some rough estimates:

Stats:
Masterwork > Rare = +8%
Rare > Exotic = +16%
Masterwork > Exotic = +25%

Given that we want to have exotics, the rares in between are mats/gold that could be spent on exotics. With this in mind, consider the following:

Globs of Extoplasm:
Masterwork > Rare: 3
Rare > Exotic: 5-1 (salvage the rare)
Masterwork > Exotic: 5

OR

Gold
Masterwork > Rare: 20x
Rare > Exotic: 3x
Masterwork > Rare: 60x

So basically, you wind up dropping a LOT of mats for an 8% boost when you could actually hold off and later spend twice the mats (compared to the rare) for 3x the boost (compared to the Masterwork). This is actually opposite from the usual MMO paradigm: the last tier is actually a for more significant boost than the usual "1%."

tl:dr: If you can wait, skip rare trinkets entirely and go straight to exotics.

[Lanir]

Yeah, I have no idea what you are talking about.

I'm sure it will make much more sense once I get to 80 and I actually get my crafting up to max. Which, right now doesn't look like crafting would be worth it. I enjoy doing the crafting, but I keep thinking that it might just be better to sell the mats or keep them for others to make the items for me. In WoW I would max out the crafting on my toons only to find that there was very little reward for doing so. Sure I can make items for my lowbie alts but my main sees very little benefit. GW2 is looking to be the same way, unless I am totally off base here.

[Vejuz]

The TL;DR is this: Don't buy level 80 rare jewelry, buy level 80 exotic jewelry instead.

[pandalishus]

Yeah. What I was trying to get at (POORLY) was that, unlike most MMOs where the final tier of gear is a marginal upgrade for a significant cost, in GW2, the last tier appears to be a BIG jump for a reasonable cost.

Exotic jewelry in GW2 winds up being a serious upgrade for a not-so-serious cost. Rare upgrades wind up being lackluster upgrades given the cost (at the moment). Basically, you pay 10x more for only 10% more on rare jewelry, but pay 20x more for 25% more on exotic (AND you save the cost of buying a rare only to replace it with exotic). In WoW, the cost of the final tier was prohibitive. Not so in GW2 (yay!)