We’ve gotten a few emails recently asking for some clarification on the subject of gems and it’s been quite some time since we’ve visited the subject, so we can definitely stand to revisit the topic. With all the new gear coming out of Icecrown, it’s important to know how to really give it a good spit-shine.
Epic or Rare?
If you can afford it, epic gems are worth the investment.
If you’re doing Icecrown Citadel, use epic gems. You’re doing the highest-level content this expansion will have to offer and the content is fresh enough that no one out-gears it yet. The difference between rare gems and epic gems could be the difference between another wipe or a fresh boss kill.
Let’s do some quick math.
The Triumphant Windrunner’s Battlegear set alone has eight sockets: 1 meta, 2 red, 2 blue and 3 yellow. Let’s say we use a Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, Delicate Scarlet Rubies, Shifting Twilight Opals and Glinting Monarch Topazes. Those eight gems give us a total of 93 Agility.
Now, if we use the epic versions of those same gems, we come up with a total of 111 Agility. Sure, that’s only a difference of 18 Agility, but if you’ve got three hunters in your 25-man raid and they’re all using rare gems, that becomes a difference of 54 Agility across your Hunter team for no other reason than people were just feeling cheap. For min-maxers, that’s not an acceptable excuse.
Sure, if you’re a casual player doing content that isn’t considered cutting-edge and you’re not really looking to squeeze every ounce of potential out of your character, rare gems are just dandy. But the big boys use epics.
Agility or Armor Penetration?
The short answer is: Agility.
If you’re getting Armor Penetration from gear, chances are good that it’s coming at you fast and furious. There’s no need to gem for it. If you’re not seeing a whole lot of Armor Penetration on gear yet, it’s not worth it to gem for it to try to compensate for the lack. You won’t get enough Armor Penetration from gems to make enough of a difference, especially not at the expense of the Agility you could be getting instead.
Socket Bonuses?
There is an Agility gem for every socket color, which means you can meet every socket bonus and not gem like a fool in the process. However, that doesn’t always mean you should meet every socket bonus.
Your first priority should be making sure you have adequate gem diversity to meet the requirement of your meta gem. For the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, that means you need one of each color (red, blue and yellow). Once you’ve got that, you’ve got some wiggle room.
If you’re short on Hit, use Glinting Ametrine in your yellow sockets. If you’re really short on Hit and the combination of hit food, Focused Aim and possibly the Draenei racial (for you Alliance folks) won’t get you there, then you’re allowed to use Rigid King’s Amber. No one should be in that boat though (and if you are, your Hunter card is hereby revoked), so the Ametrines should be sufficient.
If your meta gem and Hit are covered, now it comes down to whether or not the socket bonus offers more Agility or Attack Power than you can get from a Delicate Cardinal Ruby. If the socket bonus in question will give you more than 10 Agility or Attack Power, use a gem whose color will match the socket. The combination of the 10+ Agility/Attack Power from the socket bonus and the 10 Agility you’ll get from a matching gem will outweigh the Agility from a Delicate Cardinal Ruby alone, and typically those gems will cost less on the Auction House. (For some reason, red gems are almost always the most expensive.) If the socket bonus doesn’t give you more than 10 Agility or Attack Power, use a Delicate Cardinal Ruby.
What Gems to Look For
Now that you know how to gem, it’s time to look at what to gem. These are the gems you should be looking for on the Auction House when sockets need filling.
You’ve no doubt noticed by now that the prefixes on a gem denote what stats you’ll find on the gem while the suffix denotes color and quality.
Red Gems
- Cardinal Ruby – Epic
- Scarlet Ruby – Rare
- Bloodstone – Uncommon (and if I catch you using these at 80, you will be flogged)
The prefix you’re looking for on red gems will always be: Delicate. Delicate gems provide pure Agility, and work for any spec.
Orange Gems
- Ametrine – Epic
- Monarch Topaz – Rare
- Huge Citrine – Uncommon (you better not have these at 80)
The prefixes you can look for on orange gems are: Deadly and Glinting. Deadly gems provide Agility and crit rating while Glinting gems provide Agility and hit rating. If you’re hit capped but you need a yellow slot filled, go with Deadly.
Purple Gems
- Dreadstone – Epic
- Twilight Opal – Rare
- Shadow Crystal – Uncommon (don’t make me come over there)
The prefix to look for on purple gems is: Shifting. Shifting gems provide Agility and Stamina, and these are the only gems that will match a blue socket and provide Agility.
Therefore, your options are:
- Delicate Cardinal Ruby or Delicate Scarlet Ruby
- Deadly Ametrine or Deadly Monarch Topaz
- Glinting Ametrine or Glinting Monarch Topaz
- Shifting Dreadstone or Shifting Twilight Opal
Jewelcrafters
If you happen to be a Jewelcrafter, don’t forget to take advantage of your Dragon’s Eye gems! You can use three of them and they’ll give you the best stats a gem can offer. Fill any red socket you have with Delicate Dragon’s Eyes until you can’t use any more. If you haven’t got three red sockets, stick one of those babies in another socket whose bonus is cruddy.
Go forth and gem.
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To meet the blue requirement you should mention the Nightmare Tear +10 to all stats, you can only use one but that’s all you need in most cases.
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Nice catch! I completely forgot about it.
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I’ve once read recommendations (for SV hunters) to aim haste cap after reaching hit cap.
As far as I understand, the idea is to have your steady shot cd equal to GCD, which takes 16% haste or 523/525 haste rating.
Taking retro pal / moonkin 3% buffs into account – 13% / 427 rating.
The further improvement of haste is supposed to buff autoshots and channeling spells only.
What do you think of it?
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While reaching the Haste cap will provide a slight increase to DPS, it’s not something you should actively pursue. There’s plenty of haste built into gear, and gemming for haste specifically will just mean missed opportunities to improve other stats that are more widely beneficial to us.
Haste should be considered last on your stat priority list.
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Thanks, I’ll remember that.
Btw, just to be sure, i consider ArP on my gear to be far from the top priority being BM/Surv specced.
Way to go or something worth reconsidering? )
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Armor Pen is really only a priority if you’re planning on stacking for an MM build based upon it. Otherwise, if you can get some, great; if not, don’t sweat it.
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And thank you again!
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I did some research today and found that the top 4 Marksman Hunters on my server gemmed very heavily for Armor Penetration. In fact, the number one hunter on the server gemmed EXCLUSIVELY for armor pen, in every slot, even to the point of ignoring +agility slot bonuses. That particular hunter is in the highest ranked Alliance raiding guild on the server. Any thoughts on this?
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The gear I have been getting has so much hit that I am farther above the hit cap than I have ever been, without any hit gems or enchantments. So while hit should always be the first thing capped, by the time you are in ICC, you shouldn’t need to gem for it.
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Sorry for the second post (hit submit by accident)
Are you sure you would use the Ametrine over the crit gems? Being a JC, I put +20 or +34 crit gems in my yellow slots. I know agility grants us crit and AP, but my crit being above 50% (while buffed of course) really seems to help my raid damage, even though the DPS seems lower when you look at the paper doll.
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The general rule of thumb has been, if given the option between improving a stat that is affected by Agility directly (like crit) or indirectly by adding more Agility, you’ll want to add more Agility.
It takes 46 Crit Rating to increase your crit chance by 1%. It takes 83 Agility to increase your crit chance by 1%. A gem with 10 Agility and 10 Crit Rating will increase your crit chance by 0.34%. A gem with 20 Crit Rating will increase your crit chance by 0.43%, for a difference of 0.09. However, you lose out on 10 Attack Power in the process. You’re better off going with mixed Agility + Crit gems than straight Crit gems just because the difference in crit provided is miniscule and the added Attack Power from the Agility will be beneficial.
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Agility gemming will give you more steady/regular damage overall then crit gemming.
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Also, crit is not affected by BoK.
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I use a Nightmare tear to active my meta, then stack agility in all remaining slots.
Dont need hit, my gear has way to much already, and i dont bother with gemming for haste.
I have a crit chance of 50% which is nice
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It should be noted that at medium-high gear levels the dps-per-point ratio of crit approaches that one of agility. That means that even aiming for a socket bonus of +6 agi, a Deadly Ametrine (+10 crit +10 Agi) will give you more dps than a Delicate Cardinal Ruby. Like if 1 Agi equals 1.6 dps for you in the spreadsheet, and 1 Crit Rating equals 1.45 Dps, you´d better have 10+6 Agi and 10 crit rating than 20 Agi alone.
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Hell, at ICC gear levels, for a MM Hunter, it gets as low as 3 Agi per yellow socket for a net gain in DPS by pursuing the socket bonuses.
Obviously, blue gems should never be used with the exception of a Nightmare Tear unless the bonus is just astronomical (like 10 Agi/20 AP or more).
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As someone else has already mentioned don’t forget your allotment of one nightmare tear.
That one gem will enable the Relentless Earthsiege meta requirement and is better than any other blue gem.
So check your items for best combination of a single blue socket/decent socket bonus/other sockets being red and use a nightmare tear there.
Chest pieces are usually a good starting point as they have large stat allocations and the socket bonuses tend to be fairly chunky, leg items are also good candidates.
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For a yellow socket a 10/10 gem will outperform a raw agility gem as long as the socket bonus is of a relevant stat. There certainly isn’t 10 agility worth of difference between the two gems.
For the blue sockets and meta requirements a Nightmare Tear should be the way to go, preferably in a socket with a relevant socket bonus. Once the meta is taken care of it’s red gems all the way as far as blue sockets go.
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Since I’m one of those people who HAS to activate the socket bonus or I’ll twitch, I bought the cut for Tenuous Dreadstones (Agi/MP5) on my JC. Stamina isn’t a DPS boost for a MM hunter, but that tiny bit of MP5 is a smidge more.
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Excellent guide, thank you very much.
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To the bat mobile!! (Sorry, I simply couldn’t resist.)
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i was just wondering if this gem setup of all agility gems would apply to BM hunters as well?
the reason is that i read someting in an old post on this website that BM hunters should be using attack power gems.
thanks
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I wasn’t quite sure at first, since I hadn’t seriously played BM in quite some time (I use it for soloing/farming, so I don’t care enough to re-gem for it). Agility is good for any of the three specs, but I couldn’t quite remember if AP edged out Agi slightly for BM or not, and if so, by how much.
I plugged some random T9 equivalent gear into a spreadsheet, BM spec, wolf pet. The difference in DPS between using Agi gems and AP gems was about 30 DPS in favor of AP. If you’re raiding as BM, you’re clearly not looking to min/max (otherwise you’d be SV or MM), so it’s up to you if you want to gem for Agi or AP. Using Agi gems will mean not having to re-gem if you swap specs, though.
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Additionally, AGI stacks with buffs such as Kings when raiding. AP doesn’t. Something to consider.
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ok i hate sounding stupid for asking this, but what do you mean by min/max? i’ve heard the term before but could never figure out what it means.
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Minimize/Maximize. To minimize the downside of, and maximize the upside of every facet of your character’s performance. Essentially, to wring every last minuscule drop of DPS out of your hunter no matter the cost, effort, or complexity.
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A quick check in the hunter spreadsheet tells me that, in either case for me, Agility is the way to go for BM as well. Although, the difference (in value per budget point) is small.
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I’d just like to put in two cents and say I’m a Marksman hunter who gems for arm pen. And you know what? It works! I’m keeping with or destroying hunters who are my gear level or higher who gem for straight agility. I’m at 61% passive arm pen rating; the main thing I lack is haste, but that’s my own stupid fault.
Just wanted to point that gemming for arm pen is still a viable option; I consider the two paths about equal.
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I used to always assume that Agility was the best choice for hunter gemming, but after reading up on how it affects Attack Power, I changed my stance on it. I had assumed that hunters got two Attack Power per point of Agility, in much the same way that plate DPS classes get two Attack Power per point of Strength. As per WoWWiki, this is not the case — it’s only one to one. So a red 20 Agility gem will give you 20 Attack Power, whereas a 40 Attack Power gem will obviously give you 40. The almost negligible amount of crit gained from stacking Agility (83 points per 1% crit) is not worth gemming for when you can use straight crit or mixed Agil and crit gems to get better results. Likewise, even with Kings scaling, 40 AP is better than 22 AP per red socket. Stacking Agility is still good for Survival, but our MM and BM hunters have all regemmed for pure Attack Power in their red sockets, and all have reported a substantial increase in their DPS.
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I’m not sure why BM hunters are now considered the redheaded stepchildren of Hunters. I’m the only BM spec in my guild and consistantly out DPS all but one hunter in my guild and that one out dps occasionally. my gear is not better in fact not as high gear score as them. I think you just need to know how to play the spec.
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Eh, there’s nothing difficult about modelling the effect of Agility vs AP/Crit. And there’s no reason to believe that the numbers shown in the spreadsheet are incorrect. Of course, the numbers will be slightly different for every hunter but I have yet to see AP come in on top of Agi for any spec. A general DPS increase can come from many factors, contributing it to gem choice is folly unless the spreadsheet supports it.
As for the current state of BM: I’m at a gear level where MM and Surv comes out pretty even (I go with whatever complement the raid best at the moment). For me a switch to BM would put me down a good 1000 DPS though, so right now it does feel rather lacklustre. That said, it’s all about the content you do the attitude of your guild. If you’re comfortable with your spec and your guild is as well I don’t see an issue with it.
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As I get better gear (232-245) I am finding less and less gear with hit, and more need to gem with rigid amber. You criticise this hard in your comments. Am I missing something? Thanks for your article!
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If you are having trouble with hit at that gear level, get the badge trinket. Alos, if you are Alliance, remember that Dreanei being present will give you a full 1% hit (and there is no way there isn’t a Dreanei in your raid). Also remember the talents to help your hit. I have used those talents for a long time, but recently I started dropping it, and my hit is now like 15% with NO talents, gems or enchantments that provide hit. My gear is Icecrown level gear, so your hit should be coming soon.
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Gemming for hit isn’t necessarily wrong, it depends on your personal situation. The reason why you want to get the hit through gear rather than through gems is that in the item budget on gear hit would come at the expense of crit, if you gem for it you get it at the expense of agi or agi/crit gems and agility is always worth more than crit. That said, until you’re hit capped hit will yeild you more umph than agility and you need to get it somewhere. Hit food isn’t any better than gemming as that’s also hit at the expense of agi (provided you eat Dragonfin otherwise). The enchants Icewalker and Accuracy (on one-handers) are both good options for hit but if you already have that / is using a 2-hander it’s time to start looking at the gems. Try to gem the hit gems in yellow sockets if you can though.
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http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41976 (titanium weapon chain) also provides hit rating – and is way cheaper than accuracy. Assuming you’re just shy of cap, this is a cheap alternative ’till you get an upgrade that has a bit of hit.
Also: if you’re shy on hit, the Triumph badge trinkets are loaded with it, while not ideal use of your trinket slots, are certainly an option of shortcutting to hit cap if you’re a fresh 80.
In case it wasn’t mentioned above. hunters require 262.32 rating (263) to reach hit cap before talents, 163.95 (164) rating if you have 3/3 focused aim (talent), 131.16 (132) rating if you have the draenei 1% hit aura available. Anything over these numbers is wasted (Hit is never a soft cap, though its tricky to trim it exactly to these numbers.
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Gemming for Armor Pen locks you into MM, Gemming for Agility means you can dps in both MM and Survival equally well. This utility far outweighs any small loss in dps for not going full arm pen.
Oh and if you get a new bit of gear and lose a bit of hit remember enchanting your hands for +20hit temporarily is a lot cheaper than regemming
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Personally I’ve found stacking arm pen still produces okay DPS for other specs, though obviously not as good as agi (surv) or AP (BM). But that’s why they’re secondary specs
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