I can't decide what to do with heavy gear: dismantle or sell. It would depend on how many mats are needed for later gear and whether it's more convenient and not a huge loss to just sell the stuff and later buy some worthy gear upgrades.
I mean, any conversion of resource items up or down costs money, so it seems like a choice of either being poor or rich.
I'm also playing on difficulty 2/4, so maybe always having the latest and best gear isn't that important.

The whole crafting feature is so complex (I don't like that kind of complexity, I prefer neat and simple) and trying to compare prices between different vendors is a pain (and apparentlya some vendors give you better prices for certain goods), so maybe you can help me decide what to do with, for example, swords and axes looted from a battlefield.
Would I regret not having converted lots of stuff into mats?

Thank you.

EDIT: When I say buying, I mean buying or looting and such. Bascially anything that is not crafting.

ive actually never even thought of dismantling gear, theres so much junk u can dismantle. i just sell everything tho since i have the carryweight mod i have kept some gambesons bc hey fashion :D

but fwiw i have crafted several swords, a couple armor sets, some gambesons etc, so far needed a single thing i didnt have or couldnt get by dismantling it. ofc i am a packrat & the carryweight cheat helps me out there but imo the weirder rare stuff you prob wouldnt have in other weapons/gear anyway.

so basically: sell it all :D

I'm under the impression that crafting's generally the superior option, especially if you find the special witcher-school gear blueprints.

That said, quest, found, or bought gear, so long as it's your level, is most certainly usable. Just wouldn't call it ideal.

The most important items to dismantle early on the game are any type of silver swords for the ingots, make sure you always have a couple in your inventory as they are needed for every single one of them and quite expensive otherwise.

Hm, I did a quick check about some endgame armor mats needed, and apparently the mats don't rise in quantity as in certain other games. So for example I proabably won't have to dismantle gear into leather, since I directly find various types of leather anyway. I will just keep whatever I find that isn't of too much weight, sell the heavy stuff, dismantle the rare heavy stuff.