I don’t know about you, but I’m knee-deep in Jewelcrafting, and when the nerf-guillotine finally comes down on my gem-encrusted neck, I’m going to have some serious mulling to do. Solid Dragon’s Eyes will not longer be the filler gem for red and yellow slots, and as such I’ve been forced to take a good hard look at the socket bonuses my gear offers, triage-style.
I initially wrote out a huge list of combinations and what to do for each, but after realizing how repetitive the list was, I decided to steal a page from Ambrosyne’s book and make a flow chart.
Behold, my crappy flowchart:
I think you can see where I’m going with this–stam is king.
Two caveats:
(1) This is hyper-simpilized and assumes that you’re not heavily depending on gems or socket bonuses (despite the jokey line) for being uncrit.
(2) I couldn’t find a good way to express this, but if you have two gems slots and one of them isn’t blue, unless the socket is +12 stamina, put Solids in both.
Remember, we have flexibility with our gemming that other tanks can only dream of. We don’t need hit or expertise for our threat, so we don’t need to gem for those. Our two biggest gemming targets are first achieving uncrittability, and then piling stamina up like there’s no tomorrow. Take advantage of it!
I agree with the chart however there are 2 things they forgot to mention.
Yellow socket = If you have still a long ways to go to get crit capped, grab the 16+ yellow gem instead.
Only when your very close to def cap, then would you would use the Enduring Forest Emerald as long as you make sure you hit 540 def, if not stick to the 16+ def gem.
Summary: New tanks would be using the 16+ def gem to get crit capped, whereas seasoned tanks with lots of def would be swapping out 16 def for the 8defense + 12 stamina gem for yellow sockets.
For red gem, i’d definately go for the Regal Twilight Opal for 8 dodge with 12 stamina. However if i have issues with threat, i can instead go for the 8 agility + 12 stamina gem that was introduced in one of the more recent patches.
It was discussed on tankspot that the agility + stamina red socket gem yields nice threat benefit at the expense to a negligible loss in dodge which was well worth it especially if you wanted a way to get more threat without sacrificing too much avoidance.
Another rule for gemming is, if you need to proc your meta gem, try and first aim for gear color sockets. If that did not do the trick, then use prismatic with the gem colors you need in order to activate the meta gem. Prismatic should primarily be used for stamina gems, or the other use i had mentioned.
I have seen many gem cutter tanks who once crit capped, just spam all their sockets with Solid Dragon’s Eyes and 24 stamina socket gems, totally ignoring socket bonus as long as their meta has already been activated.
As long as they activated their meta gem by making full use of the minimum color sockets, then yes i would see no problem ignoring the remainder of the colored sockets just as long as the stamina gain through solids outweight the bonus stat ( stamina ) through socket bonus.
There 3 types of stats a Paladin is concerned with.
1. Health (e.g. stamina .. stamina .. stamina )
2. Avoidance (e.g. def, dodge, parry, agility)
and mitigation ( armor, block rating, block value )
3. Threat (e.g. strength, hit rating, agility, and to a lesser degree expertise)
The gemming precedent is as follows:
1. get def capped
2. proc your meta gem with minimum number of colored sockets in your gear. Make sure the gear color sockets you use for bare minimum give you the better bonus stats which would usually be stamina.
3. Avoidance stats are mostly gained through gear, although you could grab some extra avoidance in order to get def capped, or to meet the minimum colored sockets to trigger your meta as is based on the geming rules i laid down earlier. However keep in mind that once your meta gem is activate and your already def crit, stamina gemming is the best way to go as the general rule.
4. Never gem for threat. This should be gained through gear only. The best threat stats you would want is high strength and hit rating capped. Agility contributes to your crit which is fine but takes a lower priority. Expertise is at the bottomm, so when considering that HP, avoidance/mitigation and the other more important threat stats, it is safe for you to ignore expertise as the benefits in threat is negligible.
The only excption to rule 4. about gemming for threat is the 8 agility with 12 stamina red gem which i mentioned was a reasonable compromise if you wanted a little extra threat with neglibile avoidance loss.
Good god man, I swear you treat my comments section as your own blog sometimes, haha. Also I’ve said all that before. :P
:p sorry. My hard drives haven’t arrived yet so… hm… *makes self comfortable in new home :d
Having just hit 80, I’ve been mulling over gemming strategies but not reached any conclusions that I really had faith in. One strategy I had started to follow was to gem each item to its strengths so if I had a strong effective health item, I’d gem it with stamina, if I had a strong avoidance item, I’d gem it with defense or dodge and if I had a strong threat item, I’d gem it for strength or hit. The one exception to this rule was that blue slots would always be gemmed for stamina. The thinking behind this strategy was that as I progressed through the content and gathered more and more pieces of gear, I’d keep the old pieces for my specialist sets and they’d be ready gemmed for the purpose.
Like I said, I’m not completely happy with this approach and have also considered a more traditional approach of gemming all my blues for stamina and everything else for avoidance. Fortunately, I’ve not gathered too many socketed items yet for my mistakes to prove expensive.
Good to see my gemming isn’t total fail. Also, YAY CRAPPY FLOWCHARTS. Though it’s not Friday! Flowcharts are for Friday!
…anyway.
Josh (warrior tank) used to say, “As far as I’m concerned, every socket is a blue socket.”
There should totally be a tanking meta activated only my a crapton of blue gems.
It’s time for a new subject on this Blog..I’ll start it off for you…”Why I love Rogues” by Rhidach…
Falowin if we raid tonight I will definitely have a post on that topic up tomorrow.
Great post and discussion here… I just wanted to chime in and complain about the +6 expertise socket bonus to the T7 helm… UGH!
Oh well , it’s official then… my gemming sucks…
I have been adding the +8 str/+12 stamina gems for my red slotters, but… I happen to be pvping as prot, so I want/need all the Block value i can get my hands on to put out some sweet ShoR Crits (my actual record… only 9.3k self buffed with kings and just 1600 -1700 block value)
Well are you a pvp tank Logan ? That would probably justify your gemming.
If not then yeah that was a poor choice :x
=P nop, I happen to have multiple sets of armour, one for raw avoidance, another for maximum HP, and a Block heavy set (I get about 1800 BV unbuffed now, didnt take my meta into account)
So we do or don’t need hit and expertise??? The article says no, but the comments say yes.
I mean it makes sense that we wouldn’t since most are “melee spells” and to a lesser degree holy damage isn’t resisted as most others. But lots if not all of our attacks are melee and even Avenging Shield and Righteous Defense works off hit to some degree (so I’m told?).
Just got my answer for EJ. It is pretty important. Thanks!
All our attacks work off of hit, but only auto attack and HotR work off expertise. Don’t gem either because you’ll get the hit you need from gear organically, and expertise can generally be ignored altogether.
Congrats on the wow.com linky love. You chart is simple, yet amazing. I took a look at my gems after I read this and it looks like I used the same formula, however, I am one of the lucky ones that still gets all of my socket bonuses. Yippee!
Zexro – We should not gem for hit rating or expertise.
We should however make sure we get hit rating capped through our gear stats as this ensures our threat spells do not miss which they will if your hit rating is not good. It also doubles up to increase our threat. By this i mean over a long period.
For instant threat, we get that from our block, a good example of this would be using Lavanthors trinket then using our shield slam ability which gives nice high instant threat.
Simply put, Hit rating is more about not missing on your spells and keeping consistent threat throughout the encounter.
As for expertise, i am not saying it doesn’t help at all, as it does give you threat, but the benefits is very negligible so tankadins in general avoid the stat altogether as we aim for better itemized gear with more valueable stats.
You would not want to get a stat that has little to hardly any benefit over the other superior tanking stats, and that is the reasoning we just simply avoid them altogether.
But sadly, whether we want it or not, Blizzard is stuffing it into our gear …. Anyway comparing 10man Freya’s Tank helm versus my Valor helm, Frey’s is much better even despite having the expertise, as the other relevant stats totally put the Valor helm to shame.
So basically, just ignore expertise when looking at gear, and just see the other stats whether they are better then your current tank gear to know whether to get it or not.