"Smart" infusion is what I've been doing, or just running with what I have. The point is, I didn't have to play that way until Forsaken. I didn't have to play that way in D1. Bungie said they wanted to make the infusion process feel "meaningful," which is nonsense because it's using the gear you WANT that's meaningful, not the infusion process. Enhancement Cores only do two things: Slow player progression, requiring more of a grind, or require the player to use weapons/armor that they're not comfortable with or is just plain ugly (looking at YOU Tangled Web/Scatterhorn). That's IT. Like I said, they can keep them if they want, but they should be for Exotics (remember Exotic shards from D1? Like that) or Masterworking (take them back to what they were). At least then the process of gaining and using cores is OPTIONAL, instead of necessary.

[quote]You only need high level for endgame activites. Anything lower level doesn’t affect your effectiveness.[/quote] Really? So infusion is meaningless for newly dropped content such as raid lairs, the forges, the reckoning, etc., when they drop? Of course your effectiveness is tied to leveling your kit. Simply telling us to use trash weapons that happen to be higher in power level than what we like to use, isn't going to cut it when there existed a competent system for leveling that gear before this newly implemented throttle. But then, we've talked about this every which way to Sunday. I, for one, am tired of flogging this dead horse. #Bollocks

All the activities you listed are endgame. But as an example: You want to do reckoning t3. You have a light level of 673 and you can clear t2 without issue. You get an item level to drop later that day at 678. Do you infuse? Or keep it and wait? Infusing it makes almost no difference in your ability to clear t2, and makes no difference to t3 as you’ll have to infuse the same piece AGAIN later to be effective there. This is smart infusing.