On pRF the upgrading is serversided AFAIK...
On some talics the success/fail packets are fixed while on others it's encoded with random(?) offsets and is giving WPE a hard time catching them. I'm using a block/modify method.
So far the best upgrade is +5 intense using tier 3 gems. Attributable to pure luck
+2 intense w/o any gems can be done on some talics but not all. The talics sometimes get removed from your inventory (if you've got them stacked there) once you log out, sometimes it doesn't remove the talics. Meaning if I only had 1 talic in my inventory that's what's going to get upgraded and I won't lose any talics. I guess it's the item's "safe" upgrade range that allows this method. Beyond that range the packets just get weird on me. I've had epic fails even with tier 3 and tier 4 gem sets.
Had to do a lot of farming to do this experiment... Sadly my results remain inconclusive.
So far: failure but no talic wipe and item destruction on certain talic/item combinations... I'm basically safe on Rank 4 upgrades on intense and rank 5 upgrades on normal... I lose talics/gems but i don't lose the upgrades or the items on the aforementioned upgrade levels
For those of you who know that particular set of packets I'm talking about, you've probably gone through this experience already.