Potential Equips VS Makered Equips

What I plan to do is just potential stuff first, and work on getting overall much better instead of focusing 50+ cubes into a single item like most people. Then once that's all done, start working on one piece of gear at a time, either by hunting them with potential, or by makering them. Once potential scroll price deflates, i will probably potential gear that isn't even pre-potential'd.

For example:

For my dual blade, i will just try and get it a full set of gear potential'd, that at least works minimally. Then i will hunt or maker tops and bottoms until I get that settled. For gear such as top/bottom, I will only continue with it for endgame if it is 3 slot bonus. Stuff like a chaos zak helm, weapon, etc I will prolly accept a 2 slot bonus item for a while since those are harder to replace. While this isn't proven, my theory on cubes making items 2 slot --> 3 seems to only happen when the rank changes as well. I believe it's impossible for an epic 2 --> epic 3 or anything like that, but it is possible for a rare 2 --> epic 3 or an epic 2 --> unique 3. This is much rarer and harder than trying for 3 bonuses right away. Since the 3 bonuses are there, it's just a matter of NX before I get nice ones.