I see a lot of constructive feedback of the crafting system, so I wanted to make sure I wrote down my overwhelmingly positive experiences with it so far.
What I like most about it is that I have some clear goals for my gear (thanks to @ZaeN your VK guide is sick) and I’m able to make consistent progress toward that goal. My play sessions tend to start with some monos, where I pay a lot of attention to all the gear that drops and scan for a few affixes that I know I need. Between echoes, I’ll quickly try to craft anything I picked up that looks promising and shatter the rest.
Sometimes I feel unlucky. I fractured an item with a rune of cleansing today… Don’t usually use those, or craft on normal bases, but I wanted to try it out. That one was silly and didn’t really bother me because I didn’t care much about the item to begin with. I’m sure I’ll find more winged helms with perfect crit avoidance rolls. I also fractured an item today on my first modification trying to add a t1 affix to an item I found with two good t5s already. That one hurt. I felt really bad about bricking that item so quickly. Was I too greedy to use a stability rune instead of a guardian? The frustration and sadness of losing that really promising item really caused me to stop and think about my methods for crafting and if I can improve them at all.
Other times I feel like I’ve won several lotteries in a row. Succeeding 5 or 6 crafts in a row already feels pretty good. But when I see some item I picked up as magic all of a sudden surpass an exalted item I never thought I’d replace… I’m jumping out of my chair and dancing. Personally, I enjoy the contrast between crafts that don’t work out, and the successes that make my character stronger in really visible ways.
Here’s the thing: the materials are so plentiful that I don’t feel any stress about experimenting. All the time, with everything I’ve found. Sure some of the set affixes are rare and take some time to find. But I still feel like I have enough Leviathian/Purifier/Protective shards to roll the dice on any reasonable crafting base I can find. I love that the tools and ingredients are all plentiful. Since I get to experiment so many times, the 1% fractures really do feel like they only happen 1% of the time.