Crafting is even more depressing than farming for hundreds of hours and not getting a worthwhile drop. I watched a stream of a guy craft 3000 amulets and not get an upgrade. Hundreds of millions of gold, hundreds of hours of playtime to get the essences, completely down the toilet. The guy's current amulet is good, but it could be a lot better, but the nature of the game's single-minded concept of "a good item" makes it exceedingly improbable, even when rolling 3000 amulets that are guaranteed 6 of the highest end affix rolls.
There are no alternative paths to a good item. There are no interesting decisions to be made between different options that are mechanically and functionally different. It all boils down to two overly quantifiable figures: EHP and DPS. The fact that, for an item to be good, it simply has to maximize those two things... that's what's uninteresting about the game. The items don't lend themselves to mechanics, they lend themselves to numbers.
It boils down to this: item rolls 4-6 affixes, if at least 4 of those aren't from the pool of good affixes (CC, AD, CHD, IAS, AR, vit, or mainstat) then the item is completely useless. It literally cannot possibly be good without those rolls. And there's this massive pool of completely worthless affixes that no one would ever want ever. The result is that, even though a lot more stuff drops now, it is simply a matter of probability that the vast majority of it will be worthless. Which is not fun.
