Something I'm not clear on with sockets. Are the abilities you get random from that list? I just used the tome I had on Akainu and it unlocked recovery boost as an option. Would that always happen or is it RNG there too?
sooo
sockets are a team thing,basically the sum of all the sockets of the team will give to your entire crew a given bonus.
as you already know,you get sockets either from feeding to a character a character with his same name (all akainus socket an akainu,all the luffys socket a luffy)...what socket you get is random every time,and you have to choose each time what sockets to keep and what to discard forever
there are 10 sockets..of this 10,only 6 are useful in some way in the meta, lock,despair,orb, cd reduction, damage reduction and autoheal..the others are more or less garbage and there to add some sweet rng to the whole system.
about the single powers
lock & despair do what you think they do,every level cuts one turn of despair or lock from the total inflicted to your crew...first level is 10mthen 15 and then 20 for the lv 3 which is the max
orb increases the appearance of matching orbs on your team..usually a lv 1 (5 sockets) is enough since lv 2 and 3 (10 and 20 sockets) only add a slight percentage to the rate..that being said,being a fuji user myself,i can say you can definitely feel the difference between a lv 1 orb,lv 2 or lv 3, especially when using a captain that relies on orbs to do damage,like fujitora
Cd reduction is IMHo the luxury socket...technically it can make the difference between life and death in a run,since having or not having a special ready at the right time means a lot...but still, there are not many instances where you are really gonna miss this sockets IMHO..if you really need it, you are probably just better changing something on your team...but in terms of meta, aka what the majority thinks, it's one of the better sockets.
damage reduction was once in the "garbage" tier with the other 4,but has been re-evaluated by the community..that's because, much like with cd reduction, being able to tank a hit or not is crucial and can save or doom a run..so while you usually plan a team without considering them, they can actually be useful an it's not a bad socket to use,but it's usually considered in the lowest position in the "decent sockets tier" together with orb
autoheal this is REALLY useful,and a must have on as many units as you can..except maybe on cerebral characters since both crocodile and inuarashi thrive with low hp. They just have one issue..they are reall useful only at lv 4 or 5,and to get there you need a LOT of sockets (24 for lv 5, aka 1000 hp per turn)..so a lot of investment, that's why you usually try to put it on anything that has at least 3 slots and it's not cerebral...and even cerebral can have an use for them since if you use a special that lowers your hp to 1 to have the maximum burst possible with crocodile, you can be killed by hp cuts from the boss,meanwhile even with just a lv 1 autoheal (100 hp), you can survive them no problem...that being said, there are cerebral units that are gonna see play on various non cerebral teams,like raid kuma,legend doflamingo or invasion shanks...so they are usually the main target for those autoheal sockets on your cerebral team.
So should I just accept the recovery boost for now or will that stop me from replacing it with another down the line?
nothing stops you to repleace a previously acquired socket,just consider that once it's discarded,it's lost forever
augmented recovery is a garbage tier socket though..except for maybe in a legend ener team (yet not on global) so it's not gonna be missed