What did you enjoy most about endgame prior to 0.31?

Recent patch has completely disrupted the flow of endgame, has divided the community as a whole, So rather then giving my own personal complaints and nitpicks and asking for yours, How about we simply talk about the features we enjoyed that we no longer get to "enjoy" about endgame. I'll start

#1 Towers/Tablets - I loved the change they made to towers in 0.2, where the harder the map you ran, the more that tower would buff surrounding maps, making it very worthwhile to run a hard 6-mod map on that tower, say you failed it? guess what you can just try again! I loved that, after completing you would slot in 3 tablets and buff all surrounding maps, and this meant I could use any map that I pleased in any of these buffed nodes. What I loved even more about this system was the fact TOWERS COULD OVERLAP MULTIPLE NODES, So 1 tower uses 3 tablets, say I find a node overlapped by 3 towers? well dang that's 9 tablets affecting 1 single node now that's some good loot and a good area to farm.

#2 This falls into last point BUT NOT BEING LIMITED TO 3 TABLETS

#3 Knowing what Nodes had in store - I loved being able to look at a node and know ok that's gonna have a breach, or ok that ones gonna be irradiated and have an expedition

#4 Not having to do a boss every map - new system is even more sketchy if you want to have access to those 3 tablet slots

#5 Progression not being halted by the amount of time needed to dedicate to each singular map - Could run a 4 mod map without a boss on a node affected by 9 tablets and get a boatload of loot in say 10 minutes, Now I can never have the option of having more then 3 tablets, if I want the 3 tablets need to run 6 mods, And there's a boss at the end so need to be on top of my game not mistime dodges etc, now I could run 2-tablet 4 mod maps, So say I try to do the same as before this update? Well I don't have the option of avoiding a boss node, So if I wanna run a 4-mod map I only get to slot in 2 tablets vs 9 before, and depending on the map it could be the worlds easiest boss that I insta kill the second it becomes vulnerable, or a wack boss that has multiple different phases and goes invulnerable at last bit of hp to do some final wack attacks on me I wasn't expecting and now I've died, but hey it was a 4 mod map I still have revives so no biggy, respawn kill boss and Oh I have less loot then I did prior to update because I only have 2 tablets + atlas nodes to help!!!!! Keep in mind if you are running 6 mod maps now and you do die, can redo the map but can't have access to tablets, so another time sink

#6 Tablets actually dropping... Really glad I had 2 quad chests of tablets prior to this update... have had 1 tablet drop since update

So please reply and let me know let everyone know what YOU ENJOYED THE MOST ABOUT ENDGAME PRIOR TO THE LATEST UPDATE 0.31, please try to keep nitpicks to a minimum and don't argue, if you don't agree with what someone else personally found enjoyable, keep it to yourself, this isn't the place, simply just want to know what people enjoyed the most about endgame, that is no longer in the endgame as of 0.31.

Prior to 3.1:
rare icons

my 2 cents:
Rest of the changes were pretty lateral (aside from max juicing nerf to bring up casual gamer drops as tablets can be used on all maps - which is a good change for the longevity of leagues)

to be clear, im fine that bosses are now required, but their loot sucks and I can't see the rare mobs that actually drop currency unless I full clear which nobody wants to do cause it just feels bad

also ritual tab drops being bugged is super bad

personally, hated the max juice 3-4 tower setup grinds (in fact, I only did it once just to see, it was 100% worth doing, but also 100% required to get good atlas RNG which is bad design

/edit
this also made the atlas tree feel terrible - since you can't see rares, essence portion just don't matter anymore.

Didn't really enjoy anything in last patch, but in this one, we are just being tortured by
-tablet sustain. no tablet = no late-game content = boring game
-new tower system. no more juicy map and mapping efficiency has crashed
-has to search entire map to find the rare monsters, boring

I don't enjoy eating a bread but i really miss the bread when u now gimme shiiit to eat.

I like both of those takes, Im split with bosses, I find 50% of bosses to be a joke, other 50% to have dumb parts to fight like going invulnerable at the end of fight and you have to dodge some final attack, or most slams from bosses being a 1 hit, if you dont know what to expect its game over, but the more you do bosses, the more you know what to do and its less of a panic/guessing game, I wish bosses had more clear indicators of what was gonna happen, where attacks were gonna hit, so I know where and when to move, don't find stuff clear enough.

I initially loved the fact we could apply tablets to maps, but then I started thinking won't this actually have a negative effect?
like prior to update a map could be affected by 9 tablets easily.
Now there is a cap of 3 tablets... Like how is this not a downgrade? thats how I keep looking at it, then remember I gotta run maps with 6 mods to even access those 3 tablets... And the tablets not even dropping... even instilling maps to get increased pre cursor tablets 90% increased chance, nothing.

All I can see in this recent patch are clear down grades, clear hinderance to the amount of progression we can make

I like the bread analogy, I like to look at endgame as 1 big race, everyones trying to get the best build possible everyone wants, sadly with how limited drops are, how hard the needed omens are to find, To find the exact gear required with exact mods is on par with winning the lottery, you need these omens you need to craft to achieve what you want, which is why trading is required in leagues, you will never get exactly what you want without either crafting or trading, Ive ran 100+ rituals this seasonn, have found 2 omens of whittling thats it... Don't even know why SSF is an option if these are the drop rates for such key critical items.

Prior to this update, Comparing mapping in 0.3 to mapping in 0.31 is like you trying to win a race against Usain Bolt, you ain't gonna win, ya you'll reach the finish line but Usain Bolt got there ages ago, and he already has 10 divines! you just got your first xD

the 3 divs I got with old currency drop rates.

pre 0.3.1: About to quit league, knowing my next hours would be on worthless maps before I can properly play maybe 10 maps.
post 0.3.1: Will continue possibly until 0.4 because I can now login and just play, 6-mod, instill, corrupt, and go, and I can switch out tablets to try them out and use better ones for citadel vs open maps vs tight maps. I can actually move on the atlas and find unique maps and citadels, and citadels spawn more often, so I'm basically killing pinnacles like 10x more often than before and every single map is worth it.