Haha, I started on The Shining Blade mostly because I wanted Vengeance (2nd stage of the precursor, talk about masochism). I do hope The Shining Blade is not any indication of a trend for material requirements on legendary weapons though. "Insane" is putting it mildly.
I've put that on hold to craft The Minstrel instead and start preparing for Legendary Armour since I'm getting close-ish (still a few very painful bosses to learn: Slothasor, Matthias and Xera come to mind) to finishing the first collection on that. 50 Provisioner Tokens per armor part is just mean (and tedious), so better start early so you can spread it out if you ever intend to go for it.
While the armor might be expensive it will probably save me gold in the long run, being a Chrono main (and if the trend of stupid expensive Mesmer statsets/runes continues with PoF...)
Precursor scavenging is what killed the game for me originally. The material requirements were a joke, I got so pissedd off I sold the deldrimor steel and spiritwood plank I was supposed to use just to craft the first of the Hunter and used the money I got to buy the finished precursor on TP with money to spare. So Shining Blade isn't so much a trend setter as a continuation of it. I was only willing to go for it because I almost have enough T5 mats to craft the curios (also, must have swooooords). Legendary armors I'm unwilling to even imagine the costs and they're all ugly.
As for mesmers, if I knew my silvary will end up being a time mage I would've called her Thyme instead of Lilly.