Adding upgrades to rare items

I have a rare sephis axe that had shocking dmg and +% towards giants. I always though you can add 3 upgrades to a gold item. I put on a vamp hilt and armor grip and it took away the shocking dmg. Rares drop down to two mods if you use upgrades?

All upgradable items have only a prefix and a suffix. So 1 in front of and 1 behind of the name of the weapon.

No, what happened is you replaced the hilt the axe came with. The axe you found already had an Shocking Hilt applied to it, so when you applied the vamp hilt it replaced the shocking one.

Weapon mods come in 3 different types.

- Hilt Mods: These being things like Icy Hilt, Vampric Hilt, etc
- Grip Mods: These being things like Grip of Defense, Grip of Fortitude, etc
- Base Weapon Mods: These being inherant mods that come with the weapon. These are your standard 15>50, 15<50, +x& vs X greature, etc.

you can exchange and change the 1st two type's of mods all you want - all you need to do is apply a new hilt or grip and you'll replace the old mod with the new one. Inherant weapon mods are never replaceable - you will always have these mods no matter what hilts or grips you apply.

Thus you can have 3 mods on a weapon, but you only have control over 2 of them.