I've not used it since the update, if it doesn't refresh abilities too it incurs the risk of synth action failure having an effect on orb color (which can erroneously skew results) and disregarding that, would make the synth take longer on average than using the 100% progress abilities. Of course if failed synth actions don't attribute to color change then that'd definitely be a preferred way to go. After I saw the new updates (recently returned ~1mo ago) to clean slate I pretty much disregarded it and haven't looked back on it.