I don't give a shit about patinas and just use a French press I got from Ikea. But I do have a programmable kettle set to 70 or 80 °C, virtually only use loose leaf green and oolong teas, and steep two minutes for the first steeping and 90 seconds for each subsequent one. (For black tea I just crank the temperature to boiling and keep everything else the same.)

That probably makes me snobbish enough to confuse people who don't drink tea but amateurish enough to annoy the snobs.

In the end any approach is fine as long as you like the result.