is it even reasonable to get the essence for an ultimate skin shard without buying boxes

i mean. yea.

over the last 2 seasons i unlocked between 60 to 70 mastery boxes. i got a decent amount of skin shards out of them. 4 of them were legendary skins.

a week ago dunkmaster darius dropped from a box for me and i just disenchanted a couple shards for champions i dont play anyway + 1 or 2 ward skin shards and immediately unlocked it.

thats the advantage of sitting on shards until something good drops instead of rerolling it for most likely some shitty teemo skin.

i still have enough shards to disenchant and unlock red baron corki and nunu bot, if nothing better drops for me. legendaries are 1500 essence each.

it would be very well possible to unlock ultimates this way.

just disenchant shards you dont like instead of rerolling, if you want to unlock an ultimate. should take about 6 to 9 month of unlocking mastery chests depending how lucky you are.

I got a few from S ranking champions.

I have an elementalist Lux skin sitting in my loot waiting to be activated. I have 2375 of the 2950 needed to activate it so I need 1 legendary skin to trash in order to get it. I don't play Lux though, so I'm just going to let the shard sit unless I ever do pick her up.

Got 2 friend who did it, and amongst them one only play a little. They just rarely buy skin in their boxes as they only take the one they like.