At least with LDoN smithed armor, you get decent tribute.
What level smith are you and what level is your character? I may have some tips for you for leveling up.
My druid is currently leveling up smithing farming Hollowshade Moor for the no-drop Wailing/Shrieking substances. Pretty easy for a level 60 to clear out the islands when the Owl/Dogs are ruling. Humming Orbs will take you to 168. Harder for a low level character to get the drops.
Past skill level 168, on another character, I did a more than a few sessions with Fine Plate. I farmed the leather padding. You have to buy the rest of the ingredients (MQ ore does not drop anywhere). That takes you to the 180s or so.
After that skillups get slow, and I do the odd LDoN plate when I have Temper Materials and a buyer or user. After DoN came out I got a few skillups on those too. I have 3 or 4 DoN plate arms gathering dust on my bazaar mule. I have sold a few though to cut costs. Nice thing about High Elf DoN, if I farm the fungus sap for the Expert armor, each arm combine (triv 212 iirc) costs me 24pp for Mithril, much less than the Fine Plate combines, but then you could sell Fine Plate back to NPCs for a good portion of what it costs.