And yet it’s entirely possible to get into monos without a single one of a specific +skills affix. Sometimes it can be incredibly frustrating, I’ve had this happen on several character.
Yeah, that’s not an issue if you’re crafting on the character that is going to use the item, but is an issue if you’re crafting for a different character (though there’s no benefit to doing that).
Yes, it changes from ‘how the heck do I get the stuff I need’ to suddenly ‘I don’t need anything anymore at all’ in moments. Because individual rare affix shards are mostly important during the stage where you still got rare items. The moment you get it once to T5 it suddenly starts to switch… but you theoretically still could upgrade it with better affixes besides it.
But usually before that happens you start to get exalted items which warrant using them instead, and the second you an item with a T6 rare affix… well… what do you need those affixes for anymore? You can’t improve it, it’s ‘beyond perfect’ for crafting already! You’ll never ever need to adjust it again unless you find a better T6 or even T7 item.
And since the majority ot items only will have a single rare affix as well it’s not even the second one which is in need to be adjusted, simply just… a bit awkward overall suddenly.
It’s the same issue with smooth item progression which PoE 1 fare (and they hence removed in PoE 2). The Tabula Rasa. Since their sockets are a main decider of how powerful an item is getting a Tabula Rasa makes your entire experience completely different for progression compared to… well… ‘normally improving gradually’, it just skips it all.
That’s the feeling I get from LE itemization, exalted items are a bother plainly spoken, I’m not against ‘going beyond craftable things’ but it’s just… not feeling right how it’s done.
Maybe with the exponential increase being turned upside down (T1 to T2 offering the highest increase rather then T6 to T7, hence making them less ‘mandatory’ then baseline outfitting a character properly) or increasing the tiers substantially (T16 instead of T15 is a vastly less gradual increase after all) but the sudden absolutely massive jump in power from ‘rare’ to ‘exalted’ is kinda awful, as it de-values the majority of crafting the moment you get into that range.
Speeding up the leveling a bit, but yeah, not much upside. Though I’ll say… it can lead to personal challenges like PoE has done, like the ‘Level 36 uber elder kill deathless’… which Kudos to the guy doing it, that’s an achievement.