What am I supposed to do to progress maps?

I'm stuck doing tier 1 maps because nothing higher is dropping. I chose the atlas passives for chance at higher waystones and I've had no luck dropping anything above tier 1. Vendor only has tier 1s available. Am I really supposed to spend gold to forge waystones from multiple tier 1s up to tier 3? Is that the devs expectation or am I doing something wrong? I'm done doing tier 1 maps and getting no xp for monsters 7 levels below me.