Yeah, Discord replacing forums and places like ModDB is definitely terrible. I hate it too.

For me I kind of approach modding in reverse, almost. I tend to first canvas as much as I can and put together a collection that I like, and then I will playtest and if I run into specific issues I'll look for further mods that solve them as I go. For me it saves me time because I know right off the bat there's going to be things I want to change, and I don't need to play vanilla first to know that.

Also a note about that document I linked: it's very very far from being comprehensive. It was made to save me time on the Discord because users kept asking about mods to add onto the baseline HACR pack. So I have omitted a ton of essential mods (as you could tell) simply because they were already in HACR base. But it's something at least.