I just had another go at making chainmail to see if I could stomach it. It is unbearable. You have to cut coil in to rings one at a time AND weave patterns (after a hideous combine step) one at a time. PLEASE revert this change!

To make a chainmail torso requires 10 steps. I have indicated how long each step takes and how actions are needed to perform that step. Even working it out took a very very long time.

Mine (30 * 20s per ore average = 10 mins) ->  smelt (30 10s batch action) -> wire (30 10s batch action) -> (coil 30 * 15s = 7.5mins) -> closed rings (2 * 15s action) -> combine to make patterns (90?!?! combine actions!) -> weaving (30 x 8s = 4mins) -> combining (4) -> combining (1) -> riveting(1 1m) -> assembline (1 1m)

Taking into account the combining of the rings, which was already horrendous, the last thing chainmail needed was a further 60 actions. With a total time to produce of well over an hour and more than 200 individual actions, many of which were previously achievable in bulk (weaving and chopping coil into rings) it is safe to say armour crafting is no longer fun.

It was already labor intensive, now no one is going to want to do it at all. It is a real shame.

I have to strongly agree with shatterkiss. As I understand it the exploits referred to revolve around brewing as you could just buy the ingredients from an npc and place in an autocontainer right next to them. Armor making does not have this problem as material acquisition is was the bottleneck. You can't 'exploit' smithing skills in the same way as you can't get materials fast enough. It is fine that making chainmail parts rapidly with autocontainers were faster than, say, blademaking as blademaking has paths back to ignots/stock. You don't have the same material acquisition problem.

In other words, personally, I felt the balance was good and hitting armor crafting like this really unjustified. It is horrendous to level now, even with stacks. Many of the steps can't be done with stacks anyway.