Gem Faqts. Part Deux

As a jewelcrafter I get asked to cut gems for people all the time. It's pretty rare that people know which gem to get cut, and I end up making suggestions alot. If I did not, you would see pug tanks out there with spirit gems, I kid you not. It would have happened had I not intervened.


So to make it easy I have a cheat sheet of what gems are best for what class. It was a bit incomplete, as well as not fully updated for WotLK. I've finally updated it for 3.1



Before you check out the chart I ask that you consider a few things first;


I assume you know how gemming works.
If you are not sure you know it, check out my first gem post HERE , in which I make idle promises to post this chart in short order.Now you know I procrastinate. Whatever lol.

I assume you are Hit and Expertise and Defense capped.
If you are not sure, check my post on hitting things properly HERE, special thanks to Dr. Steve Brule. Defense is only for tanks, of course. I don't have any posts on Defensive caps and what they do/how they work, but this should be self explanatory, be uncrittable at least or else please stop tanking, kk thx.

I assume you wish to max out your toon.
The best gems for your class means you will be stacking one gem exclusively. If you are a healer, you may be gemming differently, depending on your situation. If you find yourself running OOM really badly, you may be choosing Mp5 gems rather than stacking up the Spellpower. Generally though, a well geared toon has fairly balanced stats and will be gemming to max out their capabilities.Maxing out involves considering results after buffs. I.E. A Strength based melee will always take STR over Attack because it is affected by Blessing of Kings.

Maxing out will generally mean stacking one single stat, I.E. the same gem in all slots.

There are only 4 exceptions, in order of occurance frequency, on why someone would not take the single gem that maxes out their class/spec.

♠You need to gem for expertise or hit, or defense

♠You need some other colored gems to fulfill your meta gem requirement. A Siren's Tear (+6 all stats) can be a viable gem to fulfill this need for some classes, but is not indicated in the chart.

♠You are desperately outbalanced and need to stack up Mp5

♠You have some super awesome socket bonus. This one will probably never happen. Socket bonuses are nice but very very rarely outperform gemming to max your toon.

Without further ado, here is the Best in Slot gems list. The top gem for each class is indicated with an asterisk *
Stack that gem in every slot with only the 4 exceptions


click to enlarge


It should be noted that if you are a Feral Cat Druid, Armor Pen will only outperform Agility gems if you are over 300 ArP. This is not difficult to attain, and the vast majority of kitty-cats will be gemming for ArP.

As if you didn't already know, the stats that gems have are inherit in their colors. What you may not know is that the mixed colored gems take stats from their primary colored gems. For example, Blue gems will have Sta/ Spirit / Mp5 or Spell Pen. Now if you mix a yellow or red with a blue to get purple or green, the purple or green ones will ALWAYS have Sta / Spirit / Mp5 or Spell Pen in addition to whatever stat comes from the "color tree" of the other gem, be it red or yellow.

There are not mixes for all stats, for example, there is not a purple gem with Armor Pen and Mp5, despite Armor Pen being a "red color tree" stat, and Mp5 being a "blue" stat.

Gems of a certain stat will always have the same suffix, except for Unique quality gems.
Any gem named "Delicate" is going to be a pure Agility gem no matter what expansion it came from and no matter what quality it is.

If I made any glaring errors, please let me know
Peace Out Dawgs!

[Edit: Thanks to Cazenovia for noticing an error with resto/balance druids blue gem choice,
Lilitharien for help on healer Metas, Lilitharien and Janaan on Discipline Priest info and Blkthunder for tank gem info ]