The argument that the core scarcity needs to change has been made - and largely ignored. It's time to present a different angle on improving the core economy and availability, which I've done. I think it's a little naive to believe that players aren't spending cores to masterwork. What you're implying is that the vast majority of used masterworks are either curated weapons (including pinnacle rewards) or catalyzed exotics. While I am willing to accept that the previous stated weapons might be in the simple majority, it is not overwhelming enough to make the statement that players don't masterwork. Additionally, in a straight core cost comparison, masterworking a single low level weapon will cost you more cores than infusing an [i]entire[/i] armor set. You can't argue with those numbers. The simple fact is that availability is not increasing. Nor are cores going to be removed from infusion or costs reduced below the existing 3 cores. You might as well accept that. To argue the contrary is to beat a dead horse. Its time to look at adjustments to other costs to help players keep their cores and be more comfortable with using them for all the existing purposes. You may not see it this say but reducing the costs of masterworking even to Y1 levels will reduce strain from infusion and can give players more play-style and loadout options for activities. That in turn leads to more cores being earned via breaking down dropped gear and completing applicable bounties.

Imagine having two bottles, each with an opening at the top and they're connected with a narrow tube near the opening. One bottle is sealed and the other isn't. Naturally, one bottle fills up faster than the other. In this scenario, infusion is the bottle you're filling directly while masterworking is the bottle being filled with a tube. Water is enhancement cores. Making the masterworking bottle smaller would reduce the [i]need[/i] for water, but not the [i]speed[/i] at which it fills because it only fills through run-off from the infusion bottle. If there's not enough water to fill the infusion bottle, there won't be any for the masterworking bottle. To solve this, you would either separate the bottles and fill them both directly or you move the tube near the bottom of the infusion bottle so that you need less water to start filling both bottles.

Again, issue isn't masterworking. Infusion is what's demanding all the cores because between the two features, infusion is the one with the most immediate benefits. Unless you're lucky enough to have hundreds of cores, you're not masterworking, and chances are you aren't anyway and just hoarding cores for the next power increase. Cutting masterworking's core cost is nice, but it doesn't fix the situation because masterworking isn't the feature breaking the economy on cores. If the solution doesn't involve infusion's cost somehow, it's not going to solve anything.