Path of Exile Crucible Expansion

What am I playing these days?

Some friends and I are playing Path of Exile Crucible league after a long hiatus, at least 3 leagues. We are playing ice spear/freezing pulse, toxic rain ballista and ballista witch. On day 3 we made it into maps, but work beckons and hence we are not going as hard as some of the more intense players. It was a smooth game launch and the only kinks I've noticed so far are some "Bad Gateway 503" errors when trying to access the trade page. The Crucible mechanic itself seems vastly overtuned and I'm expecting it to be nerfed at some point.

The crucible mechanic itself adds a tree to an item of affixes which can branch randomly. Criticisms so far is that this is mostly a league for crafters as the strategy currently seems to run the crucible on base items which can later by enchanced through crafting (or sold to crafters) if the random branching is fruitful. Either way, there will be some interesting items this league, for sure.