Recombinators was exactly what crafting needed

You couldn't just woke orb elevated mods from base to base and maven orbs had a chance to remove already elevated mods meaning you could easily brick items back then aswell.

You could get more elevated mods by finishing prefixes and the doing reforge keep prefix repeatedly since those harvest crafts were more available. You could also use augments on influenced items and block with crafts to get your 4th influenced mod followed by a Maven orb. That gets you 3 elevated mods. You can then block affixes again and get your 4th influence mod by using an augment.

The options avaible to us with recombinators are outside of any crafting method before. Almost all mirror tier items will be replaced by stronger crafts this league. Ele dps weapons? Essence attack speed with flat dmg mods with 3 to 4 tier 0 crafts. Rip anything on that market. Stat stacking Boots? Rip with new flat added mods that you can get. Aura stacker gear? Delve effekt for auras with global defence from grasping on a vaal regalia with 700es. No matter what item you want it's possible now and not even that hard. And we are still testing their limits. Once we know how to force certain mods on items its game over (we are already pretty good at crafting with recombinators)

This is all pretty true but not as accessible since it requires deleting items vs deterministic steps from harvest.

/r/pathofexile Thread Parent