Understanding Faction and Tomes

I’m a new player and am not sure I understand this correctly.

For a PVE character, if I want to use an elite skill that is not yet unlocked, I can:

Step 1: Buy a Golden Flame of Balthazar from a player and use the 3000 faction points it gives me to unlock my chosen elite, and then

Step 2: Buy a profession-specific elite Tome from a player, and use it to learn that newly unlocked elite with my new PVE character.

Is that right?

Yup.
12chars

Or capture it with a signet of capture the old fashioned way :P

Excellent. Thank you.

normal flame of balthazars work as well, only 1k faction though.

Or you can PvP and earn your Balthazar faction that way.

zaishen elite is an excellent way to make quick faction if u wish to unlock a skill quickly. just trap it. or you could go have a little fun in costume brawl until u get up to 3k faction

This.

Buying a Flame of Balth is silly. The time it takes to make the amount of money to buy it (which I imagine is no trivial sum, at least a few plats), you could farm zaishen elite, or even just regular zaishen and get the faction yourself. Then you would have faction AND money.

Zaishen Challenge take 30 minutes for 6k faction with this. I used to trap the basic Zaishen with just one trapper (and select the team I was facing), but this build will work for either.

They would probably need far more than 3k faction just to make those heroes and builds available in the first place.

But the basic point is true, getting 3k Balthazar faction isn't too hard, even a single run through the training challenge nets about 900 faction if that's as far as you have progressed in PvP.