The Automation plugin is now bundled with core, but it’s still the same plugin. Having a quick look at the current scripts and triggers it doesn’t seem like anything new has been added to help with this. 
Though the ability to set default notification levels for groups is still a core feature you could leverage, especially alongside the existing Automation for ‘add user to group through user custom field’ (I think you’d need to use a separate custom field for each group).
Did you try that out? And if so, what were the problems you found with it?