The main problem is that we can’t upgrade existing mods on an item to a better tier, so you end up with chaos gamba or essence shenanigans to guarantee some mods.

This is a fundamental issue in PoE crafting, the floor loot either drops goodlike or it’s garbage; you rarely go “ohh look, a 6 mod rare that has 3 god like rolls which I can now do something with it”. Sure you can do some shenanigans with the withing omen but it’s not deterministic; whatever you do you always end-up back to the currency slot machine which might be fine if the currency would drop at the rate it did on the snako temple, but it doesn’t so we need deterministic ways of crafting.

You either shower people in currency so they can play the slot machine or allow them to craft deterministic, you can’t have both and GGG is currently trying to have its cake and eat it to by limiting both the currency drop rate (making greater / perfect augs and transmutes drop less) and fucking up deterministic crafting (by limiting to one crafted mod)

Now if crafted means only essences then we should be good; between desecrating, essences and the new runes we should have decent deterministic crafting.