As usual, my complaint with median is always the end-mid endgame where you got all basic charm and farming signet until 500. While early endgame can be judge on how well you able to clear easy uber + getting their charm (which usually required you to switch around skill / gears), the one after required way too high part on luck / buy stuff and endless grind. Lets determined the powerlevel here:
At these stage, assuming you spent little time (20hours ++) and less lucky, you usually have:
1. Level 100 rune that being ignored (because jewelcraft no longer need to stockpile on them), Perfect gems for unsocket RW
2. Partial Set, completing whole set required time, luck or money
3. Decent craft (not godly) which usually you used random shrine with some blessing.
4. Maybe some SSU, most of the time it is not class specific.
5. Fully MO-ed gear, pre-MO RW, same decent jewels (not perfect), some random rare jewellery / unique (depending on your build)
6. Some elemental rune (no XiS yet)
Usually the solution to solve this gearing problem is to grind grind grind grind grind grind endlessly until you get XiS rune, great rune or lucky SSSU drop.
So here my solutions for said problem above.
1. Make lvl 100 rune as part of cube ingredient, higher quality, better result. It should be cheaper than signet since they drop abundantly
2. Reduce each set pieces' stats (to reduce text overflow), increase the partial combo (2 set pieces should give 4 stats bonus). To prevent abuse of multiple set, powerful affix should be only given by combination of class-specific gear + other piece. Refer to old median2008 documentation on generic set. Idea here is to slightly increase power level even when you are unlucky, but found several other classes' partial set pieces.
3. Assuming each shrine is more expensive than great rune, and cheaper than a TG, there should be solution for player to reroll unwanted shrine into their specific type. So proposal here is something like this: (hopefully solved 1st problem)
Any shrine (full quantity) + farm-able ingredient (lvl 100 rune for example) -> Type of shrine you wanted
This wont solve the problem that you need to endless reroll your craft, but at least it cut down time incase you want specific shrine type.
4. I dont have solution for getting SSU. I hope they disenchanted into 2 or 3 signets (i believe there was different disenchant value in m2008)
5. I know some people love to collect rare amulet and rings only to get disappointed with bad roll. Solution here is similar to Path of Exile's chaos recipe where you need full set of rare to get a chance to reroll your gear.
Rare stuff + Rare stuff + Rare stuff (set it to specific amount that not easily to be farmed) -> Rare reroll ingredient (maybe ring / amulet only?)
6. This is simple solution, make a single elemental rune RW. Power level should be higher than lvl 100 rune, but lower than current elemental rune RW. Should it be better than great rune RW or not, im not sure. This will help build that specific cant farm fauzt and toraja, but able to farm unformed land (tbh, it is not hard but drop rate is super terrible and boring)
Im know exactly development team wont have enough time for this, but so far I was so disappointed with rare affix pool rebalanced and craft improvement since it still required tons of time to properly craft your gear.
*I think I played median for 60 hours including lvl121 and 500 signets (legitly) and I dont think I want to spend anymore time with current drop / power level curve. Losing whole plugy stash and steam summer sales sealed the deal and made me quit. I do enjoyed the whole journey from start from level 1 until the grinding walls though.
