If you do want to stick with self-sacrifice, try Blood Magic's Potion system, as it works out more efficient and/or powerful than just using vanilla potions. Sacrifice is a bit harder to set up, but provides a better blood output. Unless you're running something like Botania's Fallen Kanade or Geostrata's Regen potion crystal, then self sacrifice is IMHO a less useful way to do Blood Magic. In general, this mod adds more rituals and sigils to increase the quality of life as you play venture into Blood Magic. All features are best investigated through either the source code on GitHub, or through the in game manual.
You can then reforge the armour with the better shards and the extra sigils. Animus (previously NOVA) is an add on for the magic themed mod Blood Magic. The Ritual of Unbinding will take apart your bound armour, giving you back the filled sockets and any upgrades you put in them. You don't have to completely remake the armour again either. It'll still work out to an overall positive. There is a ritual that will provide you with regeneration while you are in the area, but that does cost LP to run. Using the orb directly is not an efficient method at all once you get past tier 2. Even sweet Juniper, the faun who occupied the fourth side of their little friendship-square, admitted the odds were that Fury was a merc. Charging the orb in the altar means that you can get the effect of your self-sacrifice runes to get more LP per click.
