Ultimate skin shard costs almost as much to activate as it does to just buy it outright

Disclaimer: I've gotten plenty of high-tier skins from this system that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise and I'm glad it exists. This thread is to outline why, currently, the economical strategy is to just take the free stuff and never put money into the loot system.

2950 OE to activate. 3250 RP to buy.

Disenchanting shards gives 104, 150, 195, 270, 364, or 650 OE (ignoring the exclusive ones because lets be real, we cash those in when we get them).

Let's be generous and assume an average of 200 OE per skin shard (but in exchange, ignore the chance of getting other stuff from a Revel Orb or whatever event thing we're talking about, and assuming we don't re-roll any).

You can buy 12 Revel Orbs for 2500 RP. Using the average, that's about 2400 OE. If you're willing to be more generous, consider that a 1:1 ratio of RP to OE. At which point you can consider spending 2950 OE and the Ultimate skin shard (which would give you 650 OE, aka worth 650 RP), or just spending 3250.

But what of the 5500 bundle? The grab bag gives 1083 OE, and there's 26 revel orbs if you convert the tokens. Assuming you don't get another grab bag, or that the value of it is counterbalanced by how generous I was saying 200 OE on average per orb, that's about 6300 OE for 5500 RP. So a considerably better ratio, maybe even enough to cash in 2 Ultimate skins if you already have the shards. But if you wanted the Ultimate skins enough to spend 5500 RP in one shot, you could have just bought them on release and then cashed in their shards for enough OE to almost make up the difference.

Think I'm lowballing the OE gains? That's fair. I would contend that if you did your own calculations, you'd find that it's always more efficient to buy skins when they go on sale, and for the skins that don't go on sale, it's better to just gradually save up OE and get them for free.

I'm contentedly sitting on a shard for Elementalist Lux right now and with the missions and such, I'll probably be able to cash it in in 6 months or so. So in that sense it's pretty cool for Riot to let us eventually get that skin for free. I just want to acknowledge that the system currently isn't really worth putting money into, in case anyone hadn't noticed.

tldr: if a skin goes on sale, just buy it on sale. If you get a shard for a skin that doesn't go on sale, just save up free OE until you can cash it in.