Undocumented recombinator change today

There was a method of forcing affixes to stay by using non-natural mods (ex strength essence on int gear) via the recombinator that has been in the game since it launched. As of today it no longer works.

Was this an intended fix and/or change? It felt fair and was a nice way to save certain low weight mods when crafting or fracturing.

Tried to replicate and I was creating items with zero prefixes and suffixes.