[Rant] This game's practically dead in terms of actual content.

Most of the time you won't get anything good.

This is purely anecdotal now, but most of the time, I have actually gotten things that are good with the few flames I've ever used. It's not incredibly unlikely for you to get good stats with additional options, like with cubes, that you have to Sophie's choice money vs power. The stat boosts are good enough that I could use something like Pensalir equips as a viable alternative to Empress and given how often they drop, I wouldn't have to flame them, I could just hunt until I get them with the stats I want. At this point (disregarding the hat/pants glitch), you can viably save enough for a crap additional option CRA set and flame them yourself.

Good additional options are abundant enough that you could feasibly always have a better than decent backup if you roll badly, or want to sell something good.

Like you said, additional options don't have ranks like potential, and it's much more feasible for you to get really good additional options from a drop than it is for you to get a legendary drop at all. So, additionally, if you were flaming, you wouldn't have to waste dozens of flames trying to rank up so you can get the best additional options, they're always available.