I have grown to love the current pattern system again
One thing I miss about old niche colors is the variety of grey tones.
We had white (grey+grey), light grey (grey+black), dark grey (black+black), blue-grey (black+black, propably a glitch) and a pure black (melanism).
Now we have white, grey and black. We could have more variety, if a middle grey fur color was added. Mixing it with white or black would allow having light grey and dark grey coats.
For uses... I don't know