They're still good, but three things happened
1. "cursed" (non-insurable) versions of the Doom artifacts were released by the thousands in the last two years, as part of the Halloween 2006 and Magincia events. These can sell for about 5-100k depending on item, and are common enough that you don't worry about losing one.
2. The Doom arti drop was turned into a point system. Each boss kill counts a certain number of points. With each kill, you get a chance of an arti drop based on your point level (modified slightly for luck). If you get the drop, your points go back to zero. As a result, it's rare that someone with even 0 luck doesn't get an artyafter 10 hours of time in Doom (and more likely to get one after only 5 hours or so). This makes the Doom artis about 10 times more common than before, and their prices have dropped by 50-80%, depending on the arti.
3. Smith Runics got a serious upgrade 2 publishes ago, and changes made that made getting bods for higher-end hammers much easier. Add to this Arms lore being given the ability to increase base DI for exceptional by 5%.
As a result, one can craft some weapons that rank up there with the artifacts - in some cases, considerably better (from having a better set of properties). You still got to get lucky, but some of those weapons made by gold and agapite runics easily outclass the doom artifacts. The arties can still break cap on some properties, when crafted ones can't, but have more properties.
Consider a weapon with 40% DI (from being exceptionally crafted with GM arms lore), plus 4 other properties all in the 90-100% intensity range (say, SSI 30, Hit lower Defense 50%, Mana leech and life leech). This is now possible with a gold runic.
the end result is that the doom arties are a lot cheaper, and there are a LOT more choices of weapons to use.
