An Idea for Fixing Crafting

So, we all know that Crafting right now is kinda borked. Chaos/Annul/Whittling Omens are so expensive that using them for anything but the highest tier, most expensive mirror crafts is not worth it, and anything else is just copious amounts of RNG. However, I think this is actually a very easily solvable problem. It just takes a bit of backward reasoning to identify WHY crafting is in such a state.


Why is Crafting So Bad?

In short, crafting is bad because the good omens (that let you control RNG a bit) are expensive. Your normal player with a 1-2 div item isn't going to use a 5 div whittling omen to try to improve their gear. That's just madness. So, "crafting" for most players just consist of slamming stuff, a bit of recombination, or maybe a wild no-omen chaos here and there.

So, in short, crafting is bad because the stuff that helps crafting, omens, are too expensive.


Why are omens so expensive?

One part of this is obviously the rarity, which GGG is fixing next patch. However, a less-mentioned reason is because Omens are in HIGH demand, in bulk, by top-end crafters making some of the most expensive items in the game. So, our average player Joe needs to compete with the highest end crafters with two sponsors investing hundreds of divs into one craft. They use the exact same omens, and the crafter will obviously pay a premium for them, therefore massively reducing supply and driving up the price.

This, then, makes using these omens completely inaccessible to most players, since most of us can't complete with the Beltons of the world. This, of course, is the crux of the problem.


How do we make omens cheaper?

So, the question I need to ask is this: why should we make players compete with mirror crafters on the same pool of scarce resources, just to make crafting enjoyable and less of an RNG-fest?

You can create an entirely different tier of omens for these players. Call them "lesser omens" or something, and make them capped for the best modifiers they can grant. Maybe these lesser omens can't give you the highest two tiers of DPS stats or the highest two tiers of critical stats. Something like the following:

Omen of Lesser Whittling Lv55
While this item is active in your inventory your next Chaos Orb will remove the lowest level modifier and replace it with a modifier that is <= level 55.

Or you can even have rarer lesser omens like this:

Omen of Lesser Skills
While this item is active in your inventory, your next Chaos orb used on a weapon will remove a random suffix modifier and replace it with a +skills modifier. This modifier will be +5 if used on a two-handed weapon, or +4 when used on a one-handed weapon. If the weapon already has a +skills modifier, the chaos orb will always replace that.

To prevent end-game crafters from using these omens for tech, you can make lesser omens give purple stats or something that disables normal omens from being used on the item as long as they are present.

Of course, these should be tweaked to prevent abuse. This would allow you to define "tiers" of crafting and make more casual crafters not have to compete with end-game crafters anymore. End-game crafters should not want these omens and thus will not drive up their price, allowing more casual crafters to use them to make crafting better for their needs.