Drizzit said:
Highly doubt they would destroy most good R/E in game since you can only choose 2 augmentations.
Just using a fairly highly coveted piece as an example,
Askar Korazin
DEF: 49 STR +5 Attack +12 Evasion +12
"Double Attack" +2%
"Store TP" +5
Lv. 75 WAR / PLD / DRK / BST / SAM / DRG
VS
Haubergeon
[Body] All Races
DEF: 45 STR +5 DEX +5 AGI -5
Accuracy +10 Attack +10 Evasion -20
Lv. 59 WAR / PLD / DRK / BST / SAM / NIN
Now, Lv.59 VS 75 is already a pretty big selling point.
Adding Double Attack +2% would make getting Askar Korazin for that completely worthless.
Adding Subtle Blow and Store TP +4 would make getting Askar Korazin for that, pretty worthless considering a difference of +1 STP.
Haub also offers +10 Acc without a furthur Augmentation, +5 DEX and pretty much equal defence.
So assuming we Augment a Haubergeon with DA+ and STP+, we get:
Askar Korazin
DEF: 49 Attack +2 Evasion +12
"Store TP" +1
Lv. 75 DRG
VS
Haubergeon
[Body] All Races
DEF: 45 DEX +5 AGI -5
Accuracy +10 Evasion -20
Lv. 59 NIN
As the key differences between them. So using Korazin, you would gain:
Att+2 Eva+12 STP+1 for DRG
or
DEX+5 Acc+10 for NIN and be able to use it 16 levels sooner.
While Haubergeon is a far easier piece to obtain than Askar Korazin, I'm sure this particular setup would drive the Korazin's effectiveness down a lot due to the general "difficulty" in getting it compared to a more standard DD piece.
It would come down to the player to decide whether the time and effort put into getting a piece that already has a virtually equal set of stats, would be worth the end result.