Is There a Reason to Exalt

I have have never gotten anything above a 5 tier with them, often tier 9 or 10. Is this by design or just bad luck?

Are there other options to adding mods to non-influenced gear without rerolling an item?

I use them for maps to get +1mod when im too lazy to reroll, exalts are useless now

Cluster Jewels, that's where I use em. Many times I've had a good exalt take a jewel from 20 or 30 chaos to 2 or more divine.

So after spending weeks rolling to get 2 mods you need on an item then a solid 3rd to make it rare, and finally a bench craft, is there any way to get solid 5th and 6th mods?

Depends on the item and the mods needed. Something like spell suppression has no tags so its more difficult to target.

Prefix/suffixes cant be changed bench craft is a step in a lot of crafting processes because it allows you to save those 3 great prefixes or suffixes you already have but its also quite an expensive process. Eldritch currency on eater/exarch influenced items are also quite good and allow you to easily target crafting on prefixes or suffixes.

But PoE crafting is pretty convoluted. Its a steep learning curve to really learn all the ways to craft good items. And even then most steps will have some layer of rng as well.