Changing magic items to have 3 affixes?

This might be a dumb idea, but like many others, I’m struggling to see the value in crafting while leveling. It often feels more practical to just buy a decent 4-affix item from the trade site for 1 exalt, rather than spending a Regal and an Exalt to craft something with a high chance of a bad outcome.

The gap between magic items (with 2 affixes) and rares (with up to 6) feels disproportionately wide. I recall Jonathan mentioning—either in the Ziz or Dropped Frames interview—that the expectation is for players to use a mix of magic and rare items throughout the campaign, and not be fully rare-geared by the end of Act 1. I don’t have an issue with that approach, but with only 2 affixes, it’s tough to cover core stats like life, resistances, and defenses on magic items.

I wonder if allowing magic items to roll up to 3 affixes would help with early-game gearing. I’m constantly flooded with Orbs of Augmentation, while crafting with Exalts feels inefficient and costly during the leveling process. Not sure if that cost dynamic is even relevant, but it might be worth considering.

In a related matter, I don't understand why a Orb of Alchemy gives 4 mods while it takes Transmut+Alc+Regal+Exalt to also give 4.

Really a Regal should give you 2 mods, so that the end result of both processes is 4 mods without having to use Exalts. That way you only ever need two Exalts to give six mods.

This applys importantly to Waystones, especially when preparing for Nexus.

This also makes me wonder why in the Economy an Exalt is worth or than an Alc? It should be the other way around.

The reason for that is Transmu+Augment+Regal is a cheap recipe for looking for a good 3mod base, then if the item is potentially good, you slam exalts to it.

Alchemy is like "lottery ticket" to have 4 mods without expending trans+augment+regal+exalted to 4 mods.