Home » Itemization » Gemming for Success
This is a guest post by Dervisch.
Gems come in three primary colors, three secondary colors, meta, and prismatic. The three primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, give bonuses to a single stat (e.g. Dodge Rating, Stamina, Spell Power). The secondary colors, orange, green and purple, give smaller bonuses to two stats. Meta gems are limited to head slot items and give a large stat boost as well as an added bonus feature. Prismatic gems are mostly for those lucky jewelcrafters, but Blizzard has released a few gems that give a boost to all stats or resistances as well.
Gems can be broken down a few ways, but let’s start with hunter and NOT hunter. Truly, there is no reason for a hunter to wear a blue gem. The only category that an argument can be made for is the Solid family of gems (e.g. Solid Sky Sapphire or Solid Majestic Zircon). But really, even with those, you’re better off grabbing a secondary color gem to help out with another stat as well as fill your socket bonus. Unless you’re a Jewelcrafter, step away from the Prismatic gems! The best prismatic gem listed on wowhead gives +6 to all base stats. When compared to a +20 agility gem it’s not going to give you the same return on DPS.
To get the most DPS from gems, Hunters should use the following stats depending on spec, PvP or PvE, etc.: Agility, Attack Power, Hit Rating, Crit Rating, and Resilience. I shy away from socketing for Armor Penetration because it’s fairly situational. If you have a boss wearing a dress then an Armor Penetration socket is going to waste. Sure, for some bosses, like Patchwerk, they’re not a half-bad idea, but an Agility or Attack Power gem is far more universal.
I’ve purposefully left Haste off of the list because right now (with the current Steady Shot nerfs) Haste gives a smaller DPS return than Crit. Think of it this way: if you have to choose between a stat that affects nearly every shot in your rotation and one that affects a woefully underpowered shot, which would you choose? Haste only affects Steady Shot because hunters can’t reduce the 1.5 second global cooldown. Sure, your auto shot will also be reduced, but the overall effect will be minimal based on the number of sockets available on gear. In addition to this, Beastmasters will already be at the soft haste cap between the talent Serpent’s Swiftness and their ammo pouch.
Now that we’ve got the preliminaries out of the way, let’s get down to the big question: What should I put in my sockets?
Red Sockets
For a red socket, you should choose an Attack Power gem (BM/MM) or an Agility gem (Survival). If you’re not at hit cap (263 Rating/8% for PVE or 164 Rating/5% for PvP without heroic presence or talents), reach for an orange gem with either AP/Hit or Agi/Hit, as above. For those who PvP and need additional Resilience to help with those pesky crits, try out the Empowered or Lucent type gems. However, if you have enough open blue or yellow slots try to keep the red slots filled with red gems because Agility and Attack Power give you the most bang for your slot.
Yellow Sockets
PvPers will almost always want to use Crit or Resilience since Hit Rating has no use for them after a measley 5% (though you should take the time to cap that out if you need to). But asa word of caution, for now, there isn’t a way to stack enough Resilience in gems to matter. According to wowhead, the Epic Gems coming out in 3.1 will offer +20 Resilience Rating. Since each percent of Resilience takes 82 rating you would need five sockets to get over 1% (four gives you .98%, five 1.22% ). Thus, the argument for socketing Crit is still stronger. If you need a little boost it’s still not a bad idea, but Resilience gems aren’t going to save your bacon if you’re trying to solo Wintergrasp.
For PvE, once you’ve attained the Hit Cap socket for Crit. For those that use Go for the Throat to keep their pets focus-fed you’ll need about 33-35% Crit while raid buffed with two points in the talent. After this time it’s best to use orange gems with either AP or Agi in the same fashion as you would with a red socket to optimize your DPS.
Blue Sockets
Blue sockets can be a bit tricky. If the socket bonus is nice and makes up for the DPS loss from a blue/purple/green gem then that’s your best bet. For purple gems you can choose between Stamina and Agi or Stamina and AP, as above. You could also use a green gem to help with Hit Cap or get you that last bit of Crit to keep your pet focus-fed, but there are many cases where it’s worth eschewing the socket bonus for the additional DPS of a red/yellow/orange gem. Just remember to check that you don’t need a blue to fill your socket requirements for your Meta gem before you cross-socket for a different gem.
The only time I would recommend using a gem that has Stamina is for PvP or PvE sets where survivability is the main goal. Sticking some extra Stamina in the Icy Scale set for killing Saphiron can help the healers out a bit, but it’s really the only place in the current content that you need those pieces (to start with, at least). However, I do my Thrusting Hodir’s Spear daily in my frost resist set to increase my hitpoints because I’m really awful at that quest. Even with this said, a solid blue is probably not necessary; a green or purple should help enough.
Meta Sockets
There is only one meta gem that hunters should use: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond. The Agility isn’t optimal for BM/MM builds but it’s still better than the other gems available. Some may argue that the Persistent gems grant stun duration reduction making them better in PvP, but if you’re getting stunned the likelihood that you will survive the stun and get back to range is rather low. The longest a stun can last is 10 seconds and at that point a one second reduction is unlikely to save you. On a shorter stun there isn’t enough time being shavied off to make a noticeable difference. Hunters were built for DPS so it’s usually a better bet to increase DPS rather than try to avoid damage with our gems. There are a few other meta gems that may look tempting but I have not included these because of hidden cooldowns or lack of optimization.
Finally, should you use an Epic, Rare, or Uncommon gem?
The answer to this is up to your bank account and the auction house on your server. If you can afford to stick the new, shiny Epic gems that are coming out (hopefully) in 3.1 into your heroic blues go for it! But for most of us it’s Green or Blue gems in Blue equipment and Purples in Purples. The new perfect cut gems are good to use these in Blues that you may not have for long.
Prismatic
If you’re a jewelcrafter there’s one more kind of gem to consider, the Dragon’s Eye. Pure AP or Agi gems will give you a considerable DPS boost and the fact that they’re prismatic means that they can be put into a blue or yellow socket and still give you the socket bonus.
Gem Family List
Red
Delicate – Agi
Bright – AP
Orange
Deadly – Agi/Crit
Glinting – Agi/Hit
Lucent – Agi/Res
Wicked - AP/Crit
Pristine – AP/Hit
Empowered -AP/Res
Yellow
Smooth - Critical Strike Rating
Rigid - Hit Rating
Mystic - Resilience (Kharmaa’s Grace)
Green
Jagged - Critical Strike Rating/Stamina
Vivid - Hit Rating/Stamina
Steady - Resilience/Stamina
Purple
Shifting - Agi/Stamina (currently no blue version of this gem in game)
Balanced - AP/Stamina
Another option for Blue slots I use are the purple Infused gems (+AP +mp5).
Infused Shadow Crystal – Green quality – +12AP +2mp5
Perfect Infused Shadow Crystal – Perfect green – +14AP +3mp5
Infused Twilight Opal – Blue quality – +16AP +3mp5
Infused Dreadstone – Epic quality – +20AP +4mp5
I run mostly heroics and 10mans w/o someone having Replenishment. I like that it gives me 2 stats that helps my DPS (less Viper time), instead of Stam (nice, but doesn’t help directly with DPS). Only thing is that it’s in such small amounts of mp5 it’s not apparent that it’s all that useful.
Would love to hear what you think about that option.
Thanks.
Of course most of these gems are not available on the live realms yet…
I think posting the Blue Rarity Gems currently available on the live realms would be preferable to teasing with items that are unattainable until Ulduar is released several weeks from now with possibly different stats then what is currently datamined.
@Gwolf — Those gems have actually been on WoWHead since Wrath came out: http://www.thehuntersmark.net/2008/12/01/gear-enhancements-for-hunters-gems-wrath-edition/. Notice the post is dated back to December? (And I certainly haven’t edited it since then, heh.)
@Gwolf- Actually, the post Lass listed is one of the reasons that I used the purple gems. Also, I feel that guides should be useful for more than a few months. With 3.1 being the next big patch I felt that it would behoove me to make this post a little durable. I listed the gems by “family name” so it’s more of a keyword list than a table of gems you need now.
@Zny- Mp5, stamina, and whatever other blue gems you throw in those sockets they’re all pretty much going to waste as far as DPS. Since a hunter isn’t likely to use a blue gem we’ll compare the stats from Epic green/purple gems (oranges to oranges, or in this case plums to plums?). A +4Mp5 gems yields 240 mana in a 5 minute fight and a +15 STA gem gives you less than .5DPS (if you spec for it and to be exact it’s more like .3214DPS or a little more than 96 damage in a five minute fight). Your best bet is always to cross-socket (use a red/yellow/orange gem) if you can do so without gimping your Meta-Gem or losing a nicer socket bonus. When one of those two things would occur, I recommend a STA gem because at least they offer survivability. +15 Stamina is another 150 HPs, which isn’t enough to matter, but it’s a consolation prize.
My math teacher always hated me for not showing my math; so here it is! (And please check it!)
Math on Hunter vs. Wild
(15*.3)/14 = .3214
+15 STA gem *.3 for the talent gets divided by the 14 AP/DPS ratio.
I didn’t include pets because then I have to account for spell power and that’s messy. Give me a day and a computer with excel (sadly, I don’t have that right now) and I could bang out an average.
Mp5: Using a 4Mp5 gem it’s .8 Mana per second *60 seconds in a minute *5 minutes = 240.
I apologize in advance if my math is off tonight. I think I’m catching a cold >.<.
I know it’s hardly the main thrust of the post, but the Spear thrusting quest’s damage is percentage of maximum health based, so you don’t get anything from doing it in your resist set, in fact doing in naked to avoid repair bills is the way to go.
[...] The Hunter’s Mark (written by our rattling possess WoW Insider Hunter editorialist Larissa) also has a newborn gemming pass for Hunters. [...]
[...] The Hunter’s Mark (written by our very own WoW Insider Hunter columnist Larissa) also has a new gemming guide for Hunters. [...]
The mp/5 option can look appealing for gems, but is itemized so expensively that you get very little of it on hybrids. Keep in mind as well that you AND your pet are gaining some survivability with the stam, a double benefit that mp/5 does not extend.
As to stam for dps increases – your math is correct for the paperdoll character sheet info. 14 ap = (or used to =) 1 dps on the character sheet. That does not reflect ap scaling on your pet, on your shots and stings, and a host of other quandaries. Back in BC raiding, EJ theorized that 3-4 ap was one dps for hunters, though I’ve no idea what the rough number would be now.
“If you have a boss wearing a dress then an Armor Penetration socket is going to waste. Sure, for some bosses, like Patchwerk, they’re not a half-bad idea, but an Agility or Attack Power gem is far more universal.”
It’s worth pointing out that all bosses have the same amount of armour now – 13,083 armour exactly. (As tested with the use of beast lore on Maexxna and found to be the same on other raid bosses by the guys on elitist jerks. (Source: http://www.elitistjerks.com/f15/t37584-wrath_boss_armor_testing). So although ArPen maintains its position in my view of being a mediocre stat, it’s a consistent mediocre stat.
As a hunter using a 11/53/7 build for MM (cuz survival isn’t fun), should I go with AP gems or AGI gems? Why?
Thanks.
@Dervisch/Excess
I should’ve specified that I’m BM, so definitely no direct DPS upgrade from Stam from Hunter vs Wild
Too bad the Relentless Earthseige Diamond’s requirement isn’t having 3 Red Gems, otherwise I would not have to go for a purple/green. Alas I only have 1 (perfect infused – 14AP 3mp5), and it’s a +6agil socket bonus that it fulfilled so I was hoping to make the best of it.
I’ve never done the math for mp5, thanks for that. Looking at my paperdoll numbers I’m getting 59mp5 while not casting, and only 3 while casting. I was going on the every-little-bit-helps mantra, but it does seem just too insignificant. The little extra bit of survival for the hunter and the pet just might be worth more.
[...] The Hunter’s Mark (written by our very own WoW Insider Hunter columnist Larissa) also has a new gemming guide for Hunters. [...]
Excellent post on gems, thank you. My main’s a warrior but I have a hunter at 80 and advice like this helps me not be a total newb.
One quibble, though, unrelated to the gems: damage the dragon does during Thrusting Hodir’s Spear is percentage-based, so it makes no difference whether one does it in full Stamina gear or naked. Well, except for the fact that if you fail, you have to pay for repairs on that epic stamina gear… Better to do it in the buff.
Why don’t you consider the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (+21 Critical Strike, +3% increased Critical Damage) a viable alternative to the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, particularly for an SV hunter?
@ Those making the correction for Thrusting Hodir’s Spear. REALLY??? I’ve done it naked a few times but it always seemed that I died super quick. Could just be because I’m so awful at that quest though! I guess that makes sense in the eyes of a game designer though because poor mages/priests/warlocks would be super squishy. >.< Note to self: check flippant remarks for accuracy.
@ Salami – AGI ends up giving more DPS than crit does. If you think about it every point of AGI gives .552 crit and 1AP (also dodge and armor which give some survivability) so you’re kind of getting twice as much out of it even if it’s only half as much crit. If you’re low on crit as a BM it’s not a bad option, but I don’t think most survival hunters will need the extra crit. Blizz has been pretty free with the crit rating so far. Oh, one more thing, AGI plays off Survival talents like Lightning Reflexes and Expose Weakness.
-Dervisch
[...] The Hunter’s Mark (written by our very own WoW Insider Hunter columnist Larissa) also has a new gemming guide for Hunters. [...]
[...] Round Three Submission: Gemming for Success [...]
[...] The Hunter’s Mark (written by our very own WoW Insider Hunter columnist Larissa) also has a new gemming guide for Hunters. [...]