Tonight I hunted LFG to do heroic Violet Hold for a chance at the epic bracers. For some reason my bracers and helmet have been the two most difficult things to upgrade.
It didn’t take long before I was asked to heal and sent an invite.
Upon inspecting the group, I noticed something about two different players… They had gear without gems in them. Why is that? Do people not realize what the gem slots are for? Are they too lazy/cheap to use them? Gem slots are essentially FREE stats, and the best part is, you choose which stats you want.
Now at this stage of the game it really doesn’t matter since, generally speaking, any player can ding 80, move their player to the auction house and smash their head into the keyboard and manage to outgear heroics, but it’s just the point.
So if there is any confusion, let me try to help out:
Certain pieces of gear will have circles under the stats. The circles will be blue, red, yellow, or meta. Go to the auction house, look under “Gems” and check everything out. Find the gem that provides the stats that are important to your class and buy it.
Note: You DON’T have to match the color of the gem to the gem socket. A blue gem can go in a red slot. But if you do manage to match up the colors then you get the ‘bonus’ that’s written on the gear. If you’re going to stray away from the best gems for your class just to get the set bonus, make sure the bonus is worth it. Otherwise just screw the bonus and equip the best gems.
Go to the mailbox, retrieve your gem. Open your character window. Hover over the piece of gear that you wish to gem and push these keys at the same time: Ctrl Shift Right-Click. It’ll open the item’s gem window. Now just drag the gems from your bags to the gem slots and click Activate or Socket Gems or whatever it says.
There you go. You just upgraded your gear.
You don’t have to throw 35 gold gems in there. There are green gems that cost significantly less gold that still provide a nice boost in stats. There really is no reason to NOT gem your gear.
