I would suggest that you keep an eye out for items with 3 or 4 charm slots and use them even if the Armor factor is lower than other items you have.
Remember that an item with 4 charm slots filled with Gold Charms = 4 additional levels of stat points. I primarily use Ydra (str), Joph (agility), Zand (survival), Vorr (Constitution), and Koor (intelligence) charms in my gear and use my normal points to round off the character stats.
