I agree with a lot of the points raised by Jorquin and Tajs, but I will say that even with the combined help of a lot of clannies tossing me components this wipe, it has often been the case that when we go to brew things we are still missing one or two choice components of certain spheres, often because they decay, the spell requires a lot of components (6 lows for some spells) or the components are hard to find. Exceptional combats, plants, and weathers, specifically. I can't count how many abjurations and divinations I've come across in comparison to these. Maybe my locator would love drowning in saints tears, but like Jorquin said, for prep this feels a little off.
Usually the only recourse to stop decays until I have enough is to vault these rarer components, and I often find myself vaulting lows as well, which I think is kind of ridiculous. And of course once you brew something, it will decay even in the vault, which makes storing actual finished prep for long periods even more infeasible. Why should potions decay if I can just store the components? Okay, I guess it takes up 10x more vault space, but most players wouldn't really care about that. All it ends up being is a hassle.
I think either recipes should be made a little easier, components should decay slower, more components should be sold in stores, or a better balance found for more lows and exceptionals of 'rarer' spheres loading on mobs. I got quite tired of farming the hierophant druid 30 times just to get 1 exceptional plant, or doing component runs and getting 20 pond ices. Tajs' point for making brewed potions not decay in vault would be super as well.
Looking forward to seeing what direction this goes.