Waystone Drops

This is kind of feedback but also kind of a question of if I'm just missing something.

I've been having a tough experience progressing through the map tiers because I can't get waystones to either drop at all or they drop levels lower than what I am currently working on. I've taken the first few atlas nodes to increase tier and drop chance of waystones but even running blue stones with the atlas passives, I will be running tier 5s and be getting tier 3 drops. I've adopted strategies like saving rare yellow stones for bosses or maps marginally juiced by towers, but even so I am lucky to come out of a map with even 1 of the same tier replacing the one I just used.

Some examples of this are the few rare stones I've used with 280-315% waystone drop rate, while completing and clearing every mob in the maps have netted 0 stones. The magic stones I usually run at T5 more often drop a T3 or T1 stone than they drop T5, 6 or 7.

Is there some strategy or somewhat obvious choice that I'm missing to progress maps? Am I supposed to regal every single stone hoping that third modifier lands on a suffix to boost waystone drop chance? What are we supposed to do to progress or even sustain maps.

Any feedback to me is appreciated, but if this is an actual issue for other people, there should be a more consistent way to get stones at least AT the current progression level of the quest. Having a single mob in the map have a guarantee to drop at least the same level stone as used on the map would be ideal. Not guaranteed progression, but at least not forcing me to go back into lower tier maps which feels like regression.