Deterministic Crafting for Basic Endgame Gear Needed

As someone who has continued to buy packs, this is the first league I won't be playing/buying. I'm a parent who has to prioritize the game backlog. What did it was the removal of the homogenizing omens with nothing to replace it. This is 2025, you need early deterministic crafts that enable builds, especially for people of limited time. 0.3 was the first patch I killed all the bosses/arbiter (except uber) or interacted with trade. (to buy omens/bases/uniques) My gear was mediocre at best, but I made it.

Some people enjoy making their own gear, and there needs to be a deterministic way to get basic endgame gear. I don't care how you balance for higher tier gear. Some people just don't like buying gear from trade. I have a personal connection to my gear when I craft it, I enjoy that.

Deterministic crafting and WASD were the reasons I got Last Epoch, and I thought PoE2 was going to have. If the plan going forward is to gamba for basic endgame gear, I may be stepping away from this game. Exalt slam is gamba, not crafting. I never played PoE1, and I see this claim they will bring weaker deterministic crafting with new leagues. We will see how that shapes out if I return.

If you can't get basic endgame gear deterministically, that encourages casuals to only go for meta builds to not risk wasting their time. I want to play what I like, not what is meta. If you want to encourage build diversity it currently requires deterministic crafting for basic endgame gear, unless you shift more power to the passive tree from gear.

Just nerf homogenizing omens to prevent rolling higher tiers. Still enables off meta builds, but doesn't break late endgame crafting.

Gamba for scaling in the endgame is more reasonable, but I want the security of at least basic stats going into endgame if I'm going to spend time playing. Definitely needs to be solved in time for 0.5 endgame changes.

This will likely be my only post to the forums, I don't have time to deal with giving my thoughts every league/patch. But I thought giving my two cents as a casual before I bounced permanently from the game was a good idea.

Thank you!
Nice points!
Note that GGG does not put much effort into balance yet since every patch introduces new skills and supports.