I would be happy if they returned my ability to imbue the garbage I get in Doom... Artifacts ceased to be Artifacts when Imbuing was introduced and they became glorified trash. Give us back the ability to imbue things. This doesn't make anything overpowered now especially with reforging and the Shame/Cove/Wrong stuff.
I would agree with this, if they raised the caps and the weight limits. For example: A minor arty you would be able to imbue up to 800 and a major arty up to 1,000. I'm not sure if these numbers are any where close. I'm just saying, if you're going to go the imbue route, then I would lock loot in at 500 and build up from there. The advantage of imbuing would be, that you start from scratch and the disadvantage of imbuing an artifact would be, that it comes with fixed modes that can not be changed.
I would like to see examples of both systems, to see what's actually possible and what comes out. For example: If you take the arties we have now and set a cap on them, would they really be worth having even though you could add things to them with imbuing.
I think it might be better if you opened up the range of possibility and created a system that automatically built the artifacts where the individual artifact would set the caps.
For example: Take the orny and imagine that the system could make it random so faster cast recovery, cap 6, faster casting, cap 3, lower mana cost, cap 35, lower reagent cost, 25, resistance 20.
So, remember this is a named arty, ornament of the magician and one person could get what was above, which would be the highest or best or somebody could receive faster cast recovery 1, faster casting 1, lower mana cost 10, lower reagant cost 5, and any resistance in 15. So, now you end up with a kind of junky orny. So, you could increase the drop rate so more people receive artifacts but not everybody gets the best artifact.
And if you tweak the system you can produce better artifacts knowing what the limits will be ahead of time. So, perhaps they don't come out so bad some things could be made so they never change, like with the orny, faster cast 2 and lower reagant 20 is what makes it worth having. So, I would fix those 2 permanent because that's why it has the name that it does.