Wizard's Hats Fuels / Balance?

What are the intended consumable fuels for crafting a Wizard's Hat intended to be?

On a failure, I seem to be losing everything but the Bolts of Cloth. This includes...
5 Wax (Expected)
5 Mandrake Root (Not Surprised)
2 Potion of Focus (Wait a minute....)
2 Spool of Cotton Thread (wtf now?)

Given Artisan Tailoring Scissors, +5 Tailoring Station, 100 Tailoring Level (70.7 Proficiency/GM) my success chance is 75% with a 23% Exceptional Chance. That is a very high cost per item failure compared to pretty much everything in my Tailoring options except for failing to Masterwork an item.

Cotton Augmented Cloth Helm offers DR 1 and +4% Focus @ 4 Bolts of Cloth and 3 Wax, with only wax lost on failure.
Wizard's Hat is DR1, +2% focus and +0.1% spell crit chance with 2 Bolts of Cloth and all of the above items, with all of the above lost on failure.

Even after all of that, the base value of the Wizard's Hat is lower than that of the Augmented Cloth Helm despite being more expensive to create and more difficult to gather materials for.

This really makes the item feel way out of balance. Or was the Wizard's Hat never meant to be a combat equipment item, despite it's very obvious Combat Mage flair?

 

Ouch! Is this the only recipe where you lose all those other mats? I thought all that could be lost are the NPC-bought "fuels" ?

 

Aye, seems like a bug? I vote only WAX begone!