What is set items upgrade?

They just say the want to expand the current system for uniques onto sets. So its likely it will stay the same.

And this should be enough basically. There are many mid-game runewords. Plus upgraded sets in early/mid game is enough.

As mentioned, they dont want to revamp the whole itemization. They just want to make the old sets a little more viable. Depens on the needed stuff for upgrading then.