The new crucible is overall fine, but in a game that is basically an endless lottery for getting good equipment rolls - the drops are sorely missing. Both in context of gear amount and indirectly - money supply.
Alternatively perhaps you should rethink how gear upgrading and rolling works and give people fully deterministic approach and proper material/money/recipe supply - as “white” gear gems don’t really cut in comparing them to enchanting, not mentioning simply missing many good options available only via lottery.
Currently let’s say - I’m very happy I did a lot of crucible runs before this patch.