If the merit of crafted items as best items in game remains true, crafting should be difficult. In this case, grindacious. I hope they don't change it.
Don't use crafting if you don't see any benefit from it. If no one uses crafting, they might eventually know something's wrong with it.
Crafting is a horrable joke in this game. Just ignore it untill changes are made. Cost > Demand for such items is waaaaaaaay out of whack. You can get a blue item from the broker that droped for someone for 1gold. Same level item crafted will cost you a good 20 gold. Using level 20/30 items as an example, but its the same later levels, just bigger amounts of gold. Cannot farm runes for lower level items, drop rare goes to hell. Buying them off other people isn't cost effective. The items you make aren't really better then droped junk. Add to that the cost to level the craft, vendor materials, and recipies....
Crafting is just a money sink with no turn around what so ever. If they removed it all minus Alchemy, no one would even care / notice.
I believe this is part of the oversight of "westernization".
They improved drop rate of dungeon, but did not improve drop rate of crafting materials. There is only one outcome, that is what we have here.