You can farm mistress pets pretty easy in your tier barring RNG spawn chances. People also sell their pets loot rights in ooc during Halloween events so its easy to get the lower tier ones pretty fast. Also don't forget to farm a few 100 Dragons Major during DL. (you get caught in a endless spawn cycle at Ice/Earth)
Doing this 2-3 times a week for 20-40mins a run is not bad at all. That short amount of time for an average of 4-5 Gods Majors is pretty amazing if you ask me. Try getting that many essences in that little time between farming tokens and the low boss drop rate. in t4.
When your doing combines with weapons you already have. Make sure it is wiped clean before combining. Lost epics on accident doing the us combine and just had to live and learn and get it all over again. Takes a few seconds.
Tried to create some t9 armor and every pattern i buy from cloth-plate all shows the exact same recipe for every piece. I bought patterns 2 days ago for my zerk and they worked fine from the recipies on the wiki.