The economy has a boring conclusion under the current paradigm of omens and mirrors

As I play more of the game and I get to understand the economy, power curve and items better (currently 350hs in), I am finding more and more frustrated with the late game lack of interactivity. In particular, i am frustrated with the lack of viable way to engage in crafting.

I believe there is a single issue that prevents crafting from being accessible to the everyday player: mirrors. Mirrors enable money printers for the highest echelon of players, or anyone that can actually get their hands on a mirror item.

It is by simple laws of economics that the mirror services should not be an infinite money printer, and as copying items makes sense for BiS, endgame gear, it only makes sense that it only makes economic sense to dupe BiS items. This forces an access gate of astronomical prices of the actual items to get started, ie, 5k divines or so, and another strong marginal cost gate, which is the mirror.

In any case, it marks the endgame max cost for most players at an order of about 400 divines (mirror + 100 or so divines as the service fee) for BiS rare items. This is both because they are good enough, and because the next step would be this same item, but let's say, rolling a vaal on it. So 10x more expensive for the try, and considering 80% of the times you will not get an improvement, that'd be 50 times less expensive than the next, actually BiS item.

Crafting materials necessary to create a mirror item are the core cost driver for mirror items. This is because you can easily buy 4 T1 prefixes for what is to the rest of this process, effectively zero.

Now, the key argument I want to make is that I want to craft, and 350 hours into the game, the only thing I can do is gamble because anything else is too expensive. If I ever get an actual useful omen, like a whittling, I would sell it and buy more gear, as to meaningfully take a piece of gear that I can afford to the next level I would require more divines than I have farmed in my entire playthrough.

So this is my logic. At the moment, omens are impossibly expensive, and this is the only way to meaningfully craft. Anything else is gambling, with most steps being just a sieve of low probability outcomes. Omens are also that, but at least they are incrementally useful. Fixing a single prefix is impossible unless you're mirror crafting (as the economy forces you to do this, or you can buy a cheaper mirror item).

In my head, I would expect that an endgame, BiS item would cost no more than 400 divines. This is still an exorbitant price, but let's say it's manageable for BiS, which is much more than you actually need to complete all pinnacle content. This would not necessarily be true for chase items that require specific strategies, only for rare crafts. I think we can all agree that this is a reasonable max price, as right now this is the case with mirror items - so effectively this is what is happening today.

The only difference is that I can only dream about using the omens. If they dropped more commonly, I could use them and craft instead of just waiting till I can pay a mirror service. This would enable me to incrementally improve my gear, trade it or whatever. The concept of building BiS items is still there for those who don't want to do it, so there is profit to be made (also, removing uncertainty, etc.).

Now, for the actual argument I'm making, as long as mirrors exist as they do now (ie, infinite dupes), the mirror sets the cost of endgame rare gear cap, but it also sets de cost of crafting endgame gear at 10x the price of a mirror service or so, to gate this mechanic. It also disables the possibility to have an exceptional gamble like a BiS vaaled item because you would lose the possibility to mirror it. Instead of gambling a 400 divine item, you are gambling a 4000 div item with the potential of turning into many more!

Some questions for the developers:

- under which circumstances are you supposed to use crafting? which percentage of players should have the resources to do this?
- do mirror services make sense from an economical perspective? what is the point of capping the price of items... while making those who control these items the kings of the economy?
- What is the purpose of item duplication? is it keeping the cost of the BiS items down? why is this important? why has it been done this way instead of by a sort of 'probabilistic crafting' with an EV of about 400 divines?

My thesis is that omens (and crafting) will not enable regular (or let's say, top 5% players who are doing t15) to do crafting in any meaningful way unless the mirror cap is removed. Currently, the omens only make sense as an input to a mirror craft, as they take like 200 divines+ to fix a single affix, potentially much more.

I think there are a lot of solutions that could be implemented, including tiered materials that can apply only up to a specific item level, materials that would preclude an item from being mirrored (without corrupting them), or any other number of mechanics that would create a more engaging endgame craft for the vast majority of players. The power level of the items would in general grow but only a bit, as every player would still require to spend significant effort to improve the items, and the sale potential is limited as only one person can be using it at the same time. Right now, if you manage to make a mirror quiver or bow, you can sell it to the entire server, and it is by far the cheapest way to get endgame gear.

Thoughts?