Do the rewards come even close to the mats wasted on them? I hadn't done any before because I was saving my rubedite. Seems like this is geared toward long term players who have a lot of mats to waste.

Yeah, I feel like the armor writs chew up too many mats. I never did them as I was leveling the skill because it seemed a waste to me to waste more than 20 ingots usually, and I doubted I would get that back. The thing about these type of writs is that at some point with the provisions and alchemy you can sink points into getting more out of your mats. So you can hang onto what you make or use it give it away if it's extra. But that's not the case. Plus they want far more than the other writs. 2 this, 2 that and one other thing. That's a lot of mats. Today I thought okay, well maybe the reward is worth it now that it's 2 void and 1 rubedite since void is easy to gather for me now. Then then change it. Frankly for what rubedite goes for, they could never match it reward wise, and clearly they are not even remotely aware any prices within their system or they'd realize it's actually not logical to ask for that many of anything rubedite. Even just one item that is rubedite takes around 10 ingots.