I heard an advice once to level up your gear before dismantling to produce more parts and materials. From my subjective experience this seems to work more or less with rare items, though I can't say for sure.
As I care most for Ascendant Shards and other top-level materials, the question is mainly about legendary gear. So basically what I'm asking is this: is there a difference in material output between these options:
- Dismantle item right away;
- Level up item before dismantling, but without actually upgrading it;
- Level up item and upgrade (buy) it's skills before dismantling;
I can't seem to find any concrete info on this, and don't have enough legendaries to experiment yet (the ones from Queen don't produce Shards).