it seems alot of these items are actually very good, and have some interesting unique effects. the only downside is that they're coming from a lvl 12 quest chain. And it'll be hard to justify some of the items over epic gear (which makes sense). altho some of the items are still very situationally useful.
I can see my barb picking up the bow str and bracers just for shooting at the queen. saves me crafting a min 2 returner. Additionally the heavy pick upgraded with maiming is a nice substitute for a GS offhand in epic. Slightly less base damage and 1d6 instead of 2d6 (holy tier 1) but you get two bursts instead of a burst/blast.
alot of these are very competive with GS items, weapons or accessories (which also have the same ML roundabout) which is awesome for newer players/characters.
Downside is theres no epic. the first four quests were alot of fun to play and very well done, I'd expect these next couple are similar. A few simple upgrades to these items and they would be extremely valuable epic items and highly sought after. Not to mention all the armor's we're seeing that are not used in the crafting process. There's real potential in almost all the items we've seen (trinket excluded).
I'd love to see a few of these quests go epic. Even if it was the last quest in both series. (as some of the other ones were a tad easy, but the end one and the minotaur city one could be quite challenging on epic) The weapons could easily be solved by keeping whatever fused property and simply gaining a base damage increase, an upgrade to existing properties, and a slot. Being able to craft/fuze then also epicify one of these items would be alot of fun (for me atleast). It creates a very custom made piece of equipment.
an epic bow that grants bow str? yes please (just keep it below some of the other bows in awesome sauce, and you're good to go)
the archery bracers? up the damage and give a slot done
staff? x3 crit and maybe taint of evil just to be fair
epic has been a nice addition with the last couple modules, giving capped characters a way to enjoy this new content. As most of the level ranges released so far, go by far too fast already. And to be honest, theres no way alot of the content can compete with some of the already existing experience ***** quests. Why run sentinals when you have deleras, or the droam pack when you have wis king? Or red fens when you have shadow crypt? The best thing about alot of those packs is the epic option. Now the droam pack has some VERY nice loot for the level, more so than the rest really. But the exp is lacking, making it alot easier to farm this and hand me down or prep for a TR. At level is more of a PITA than anything else. As you do outlevel the gear shortly anyway.
aside from a few select items from the previous mods, alot of the epic items havent been worth crafting. Sentinals was very build specific. Alot of the red fens items dont stack (spell casting sets), making everyone want the few good sets when theres actually quite a large amount of items. house P items were so so, but are more of poor man's epics compared to Von or DQ loot. These last two packs would have alot of desirable loot if it went epic. And honestly the items wouldnt need a very large upgrade to really make them endgame usable. They're desirable b/c they're unique, the purple background would more or less be a power adjustment to compete with other endgame loot.