How y'all manage to minmax without checking the text I'll never know. Unless everyone else isn't compulsively maximizing stats, which seems just impossible. Or people are minmaxing and still missing the text which seems even more unlikely. I'm thinking now that people check the numbers, calculate the item's worth, read the ability, forget the ability entirely and purge it from their memory, and then use the item for those numbers, which is why everyone is not learning about Hornet Ring/Brawn for the first time in the forums, but is almost always reminded about them.
So if you want to help the users out, the solution isn't a bigger, flashier "tits or beards will grow!" message but a crisp after-battle boldtext message "Item X has done Y. Which is your fault. Because you put it on." message. The former will just be missed when the item's stats are reviewed, but the latter is clear because nothing else in the game is distracting you from it (current brawn shield/hornet's ring changes are obscured by combat spam and the former were or still are bugged to proc for npc combatants, making it even more obscure).