I wish rares would make a comeback

[Ruvanal]

I too really hope the affix pool improves not only for rares but for crafts too as well as these new tempered items if they make the final cut and if they are rare affix only like crafts

I would not recommend concerning yourself with the 'tempered' items. From my understanding of the post that Isolde used to describe them, I would assume that they will be for the modding community only. My understanding of them is as follows:

1 The 'tempered' items will not randomly appear in the game.
2 They use the same data structure as the rare/crafted item use.
3 When the game generates a 'tempered' item it does not call any of the functions that are used to put a random affix on the item.
4 from point 1 the only way to get one would be a cube formula and from 3 the item will appear 'blank' unless you explictly assign affixes to the item in the cube code for generating the item. The only randomness would be for affixes that have a varible range on one of the mods that makes up the affix (e.g. "Savage" gives dmg% of 66 to 80).
5 from 4, it would not matter what the affix pool really looks like as these items would not be getting their affixes in a random way as the rares and crafted items are.