I can see that to a certain extent if you're playing severely limited in paths, but for multi-path nations its HUGE. Tien Chi is a good example, lots of low level paths (1,2,3's to 2,3,4's) Couple boosters and you have capability of pretty much any item in the game at half cost.
I doubt its worth casting when limited to 1 or 2 paths, but 3 or 4 or a rainbow pretender and it definitely is... if you survive the repercussions
