Revamp Potential?

Well said and I see your point. I did not mean that the garbage lines should be added, I only meant that the garbage effects were one way of trying to keep potential balanced. If ways to strengthen potential are being considered then it can also help to think about methods to weaken it as well. (fair is fair)

For example if we wanted to buff cubes to the max, there could be a new item called "God mode cubes". The player names their price and gains that much power in game. It would be super broken and Pay2win but at a minimum would take gambling out of the equation.

Conversely if we wanted to nerf cubes as much as possible then the answer would be to remove them. However since they are already ingrained into the game and people have spent $, its probably a little too late to try this. Maybe it could work on a new server or something?

Cubes are more than likely not going to be a good thing but maybe someday they could be.

There is still a lot of hope for potential though and on its own, I believe the system has an impressive amount of possibilities.

What you don't seem to understand is that adding junk lines does not weaken potential. It just makes it more expensive.
If you want to weaken potential you have to do things like remove Legendary rank, or make all potential lines have smaller numbers (e.g., instead of 6% it'll be 3% at Epic), or make potential add up in a non-linear fashion that makes for faster diminishing returns.
As long as the maximum potential one can get is untouched, adding junk lines or other hurdles doesn't make things any more "balanced".

Or you could leave potential as it is, but make it pointless to go beyond a certain level.
The reason potential was harmless at first is because the damage cap was low. You could reach it with just a few 3% and 6% lines on your gear, which you could get by hunting for monster-dropped equipment, or crafting your own. There was no need to cube for anything higher, because it would just be wasted.
When damage cap went from 1m to 50m, and monsters became stronger, that's when p2w took off. It became impossible to get anywhere 50m lines without cubing all your gear to Unique with at least 2 useful lines.

However, neither weakening potential nor lowering damage cap would be acceptable to today's players, so this whole discussion is meaningless. The power creep might be possible to slow down, but it can never be reversed.

The only "solution" to potential is the one Nexon is actually working towards, which is making its full power more accessible to non-paying players.