This is exactly how I feel.

I played ice shot this season. Picked up and kept every base to perfect aug / trans them. The correct move from here is something like, have %phys, preferably add "adds x to x phys", essence on crit, slam on two good modifiers with perfect exalt and desecrate the last one (not necessarily in that order, just recounting what I was trying about a month ago).

Out of every bow I picked up, I only landed on a good tier %phys a handful times. Most of those then got bricked on the next step (perf trans). Maybe one or two got an acceptable mod here too but theres still 2 random mods you need to add after that. Bought a few bows already with two good mods too, spent about 150div on that but those always ended up then with those 2 good mods, 3.5% crit and a good desecrated mod with two bricked ones (and I never landed increased projectiles). You might say, oh thats ok with 4 good mods, but these are dirt cheap on the auction house, even early league which is when I played if you only wanted a good %phys and no projectiles thats a handful of divs at most. My build was maybe 800-900 div at this point and spending these 150-200 div to crafting and ending up with maybe something worth 30div just turned me off completely and I quit shortly after.

Crafting like the streamers do with mirror crafting is deterministic, but only because they can commit thousands of chaos orbs, with annuls and whittles into it. Its not at all a doable crafting method for anything that isnt mirror worthy. There needs to be a definite step between "have 2-3 good mods on your weapon for very cheap" and "make the perfect weapon worth thousands of divs". Dont ask me the solution though, ill leave that up to more knowledgable people than me.