Season 11's close, and you can already tell who's going to cruise through high Torment and who's going to get smacked around. Sanctification is the new lever everybody's pulling, but it isn't a "press button, win game" deal. The portals show up in the main towns, and you can also zip straight there with a Heavenly Sigil. Either way, you'll be feeding the system with sigils plus the usual crafting stuff, so it's worth thinking about your stash of Diablo 4 materials before you start clicking on your favourite gear.
Here's the funny bit: Sanctification is at its friendliest while you're still levelling. People act like you have to "save" it for later, then they spend hours slogging through with a meh weapon. Don't. If you happen to run into a portal at, say, the mid-teens or the 20s, sanctify something you're actually swinging. You'll feel it instantly. Mobs pop faster, bosses stop being a chore, and your build comes online way sooner than it normally would. You'll replace that item eventually, sure, but the time you save getting to endgame is real.
Once you're in endgame, Sanctification turns into the easiest way to ruin a good item. It's permanent, and that's the part that catches people. After you sanctify, you're not going back in to add sockets, you're not rerolling a bad affix, and you're not re-tempering because you got greedy. So treat it like the last step, not the first. I keep a simple order in my head: 1) Socket, 2) Temper, 3) Enchant, 4) Aspect, 5) Masterwork. If any one of those isn't done, I don't sanctify. And if the item is almost perfect, I keep a backup in the stash, because RNG loves turning "nearly there" into "start over."
If you're trying to sanctify often, you'll be living in Nightmare Dungeons and poking into Treasure Breaches for Obesite. Goblin events are still the "drop what you're doing" moment too, because mats stack up fast when you catch a good one. When you're fishing for a specific sanctified effect, don't test on your crown jewel item. Try cheaper slots first, like boots, and use the Opals vendor angle to keep the cost down while you're hunting. You'll miss a bunch. That's normal. The point is to miss cheaply, then commit when the outcome is actually worth locking in, and if you want to skip some of the busywork, a lot of players just look at buy game currency or items in u4gm options like u4gm D4 items while they focus on pushing tiers.