I think that there should be a socket barrel kind of like the powerscroll barrel in Trinsic. Where we can turn in lower level sockets to get credits and then when we turn in so many credits we get a random high end socket.
I think you mean lower augments, traded up to more desirable augments
We are looking at many ways to remove all the "junk" items off the shard. We are crating recipes and tasks to incorporate some of these items