Set Adjustment Layer (like Set Matte)
Steal a page from the 'Set Matte' playbook and create a 'Set Adjustment Layer' effect. This would allow an adjustment layer to live anywhere in the comp and frees the layers you want to affect from being required to live underneath the adjustment layer itself.
A 'Set Adjustment Layer' effect would allow for an entire effect stack that lives on an adjustment layer to be easily instanced out to whichever layer(s) you want. It would make for a smoother workflow instead of having to copy the desired effect with relative links and pasting to individual layers since you would now be able to add/remove/mute effects all in one place.
If you're familiar with audio mixing, 'Set Adjustment Layer' would essentially be the equivalent to adding an aux send to a layer. Taking that analogy further, extra bonus points for being able to mix/blend the set adjustment layer with the original layer.
Lastly, the 'Set Adjustment Layer' effect should also have a button to 'Make Unique', effectively copying the effects stack from the referenced adjustment layer and recreating them in the current layer as exclusive effects disassociated from the adjustment layer.

3 comments
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SomeGreek commented
I'm actually starting to get angry that things like this haven't been included. So many things require precomping, but precomping breaks so many effects - set matte, texturize... After Effects is seriously lagging behind even free programmes like blender
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SomeGreek commented
This is really needed, and could be easily done if Adobe caught up with the times and allowed a nodal workflow in AE.
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Mikey Borup commented
I like this idea, but I'm not sure how this would work, or if there would need to be a major reworking on how effects and adjustment layers are rendered. Maybe it would be 2 effects, like a transmitter and receiver. Put the transmit effect on a layer and any effects on that layer will be sent to the receiver.