Hi
I thought of two ways to maybe improve the usability of exalted items outside of slamming them in the eternity cache to create legendaries.
New rune
Usable on any magic/rare/exalted item to reroll it into an randomly rolled exalted item of the same item subtype. This would probably have to set the FP it has within a reasonably amount. The amount of affix tiers should be just like any other exalted drop. CoF should affect this.
Droprate of the rune should probably be a bit lower than havoc runes. This could also flag the item, making it unusable in the eternity cache.
Nemesis Egg improvement
Second idea is being able to place a rare item in the nemesis egg. This would compromise the item, making it ethereal (or something), not being able to slam it using eternity cache. The item would randomly gain tiers and FP as usual from the nemesis empowering.
This would make some rares interesting to craft on and maybe also promote builds which exalted items are a decent option to legendaries, but normally a lot harder to get than said legendaries.
General thoughts
Maybe these ideas could help widen the opportunities while gearing. Most of the time it’s just way easier to get a decent 1LP+ unique and slam it and its better than most good rolled exalteds (not speaking of 2T7+ items).
The items subtype is probably most of the time why an exalted item might be a contender to legendary items and being able to target them a bit more could be good.