Synthesis Improvement Suggestions

Hey all,

Tl;dr for Mark's sake:

1. Synthesis maps as memory chains? (Cool thematically, imo)
2. Synthesis/Recombinator orbs? (More limited but interesting, imo)
3. Special synthesized item bases with slightly different mod pools.

For more detailed explanations and reasoning, see below.

So I've been thinking about Synthesized items for the last bit due to the Vivid Vulture situation. I don't think being able to reroll implicits is necessarily bad, but it does present a situation where the best is always incredibly tedious and time-intensive to reach, as opposed to just smart crafting and investment. Now, I am not a master crafter, these are just observations I've made while watching content creators, so of course this is just my opinion. I think the imprint into implicit reroll is essentially a boring crafting method. I think synthesized items definitely deserve their own niche outside of this.

I did play during Synthesis league, and while the memory map was somewhat complicated, I always thought it was cool as well as the fractured/synthesized items. I really, really liked synthesizing items, and I think it was a lot more fun of a system than how they currently exist in the game. My suggestions are as follows:

First, remove synthesis unique maps as item drops. Instead, there could be Atlas Memories that take you through synthesized maps like the old memory chains in the league, and at the end it would be one of the unique boss maps. This is a little arbitrary, but mainly just a cool thematic choice in my opinion since memories were the theme of the league.

Second, item synthesis rework. Synthesis bosses drop an item, possibly called an Orb of Synthesizing(or something flavored differently, like Breachlord blessings) that can be used to combine multiple fractured items into a new synthesized item. This would also, in my opinion, be the perfect way to bring back recombinators. Perhaps there is a rarer variant of the orb from Uber Venarius or the like that can recombinate synthesized items only. That should also prevent it from being too obscenely busted since typically items that are fractured or synthesized cannot be influenced and thus would not always be the best choice. Obviously, synthesized items aren't currently always the best choice, but I do feel like it is someone common that mirror-tier items are simply 3-implicit synth items. I think recombinators are an interesting way to make cool items while creating an item sink and relying on RNG. This leads into my next suggestion:

Third, special synthesized bases. There are a lot of ways this could be taken, but the basic idea is that rather than combining fractured items into a random ordinary base that is just a name and art, there could be different synthesized bases that line up with certain mod pools. This could function like precursors et al, where the components each have mod pools associated with them and so can create different, interesting combinations.

I think these would make synthesized items a more interesting but separate crafting avenue where you could grind for cool items or get some random insane drop. It just feels like most synthesized items that drop aren't really interesting in their own right at the moment, rather just a base to be rerolled until you have 3 implicits.