How much does each green engram cost? I can't look currently.

450 glimmer per green tier armor engram

So with that in mind, it would be 11,250 glimmer just for ONE node on ONE piece of gear currently. It may be slightly different in HoW, but each node is 25 wires/essences/plating currently on most gear. I think there are 5 armor nodes on a piece of gear? So that would be 225,000 glimmer to upgrade a current set of vanguard/faction gear to max, and still not be max level. I just think there should be a better alternative.

Well, you also get Cryptarch points for every engram you buy. And if you have farmed enough to get extra glimmer for buying engrams, you should have picked up [i]some[/i] loot along the way that will also give you materials, so you shouldn't have to buy all of them. BTW, if you have all the Plasteel Plating you'll ever need but want more Sapphire Wire, transfer the blue tier armor engrams that your Titan collects to your Hunter. The Cryptarch gives armor based on the character that brings the engram to him, not on the character who found it. Also, equip green and blue tier items when you turn in Bounties to unlock the upgrades (Don't actually purchase.) and you're supposed to get extra materials.

I know all this, my suggestion is for people to have to avoid this grind if they already have other classes with large amounts of items or to make a method of cost effective purchase of these materials as they did with all of the planetary materials.