Overall I really like the new crafting.
My suggestion for further improvement of the game is to make an item akin to the Asheron's Call 1 item breaker (dont remember the name). What I mean is that we can carry a dissolver item in our backpack and then use to break down things for essences while still in a dungeon or elsewhere. This saves a lot of hassle running to and from the crafting hall to dissolve items. We still need the dissolver ingredient to do it.
A quick and dirty dissolving session from a LoD run and about 15-20 spare items in inventory gave me 1000+ essences. I was kind of worried if it would be hard to grind out new essences but it seems this is pretty ok. Also got 8 of the new collectables that I need for later.
Another thing I noticed was that its now possible to drag the Collectable bag over the shared ingredient bag in the bank to dump all your collectables at once.
Havent really made any items yet but got my crafter to level 280 pretty easily once I understood how it works.
More flexibility in the crafting system is what I've been waiting for, so I'm pretty happy.