Crafting bench 100% necessary

What did the crafting bench in PoE1 actually?

Well, mostly not so much, especially not on high-end items.

The crafts were restricted to "affixes" (prefix/suffix) and were weaker than "natural" mods.
These crafts are basically in PoE2 as mods from "Runes" and on top, these runes don't take up any space of your affixes, instead, they are some sort of implicit. Expanding the type of runes would make it really good.

So, what is missing in PoE2 the bench had to offer? Meta crafting?
Not really, "meta crafting" is in PoE2 in the form of omens.
The actual problem is - these omens are way too rare. Not like "a little bit too rare" - they are "insanely rare" and thus the main issue is drop and balance-related, and not a mechanical thing.

Now the exception. There is actually one thing that is not present in PoE2 atm that made the crafting bench good - it's "(un)veiled modifiers".

If someone says "crafting in PoE2 is horrible because we don't have a crafting bench" - I am sorry, the bench is basically not crafting besides meta mods we can get with omens.
Crafting is in reality completely different because the crafting methods besides the bench are not there, compared to PoE1.

Beast crafting? Nope.
Synthesis? Nope.
Harvest? Nope.
Fossils? Nope.
Eldritch Currency? Nope.
Awakened Orbs? Nope.
Actual reforging? Nope.
Fracturing? Nope.
Special Currency (veiled/tainted)? Nope.

But the thing is, these methods weren't a part of crafting in PoE1 either,
instead, they were added later with their specific leagues or expansions.
GGG can now decide which mechanic will be added over time into PoE2, and more importantly HOW - with a cool league and a revamp for example.