Empower / item rarity: only for supported skills ?

Hi,

i am playing for a while, though never posted anything. maybe this is the wrong category:

i wanted to find out, if general gems like "empower" (if improved and therefore gaining experience) or "item rarity" work
1. only with supported skills (mean you only get more experience/rarer items if a monster was killed by the supported skill)
2. OR also works isolated independent of the skill, like on an isolated socket that is not connected to another socket or a ring with a single socket

i couldnt find out in the wiki, thanks for any hints

It's a support gem, just supports whatever it's linked to.

1. According to the wiki page on Empower, http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Empower,

the quality of the gem only increases the amount of experience "it" gains, meaning only to the empower gem itself (at 20% quality would mean 100% increased exp gain = 10% -> 20% exp gain for the empower gem while the rest of the gems are 10%).

Item rarity gem, on the other hand, increases the chance of having higher rarity items dropped by monsters killed by your skill supported linked to that gem, not to all the skills on your character.

In order for active skill gems to get the supported features (from support gems), they have to be linked together.

Socket Links: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Item_socket

The only way for all skills to gain supported features is through passive tree nodes or ascendancy class nodes or items.

For ex. The heartbreaker dagger (http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Heartbreaker) gives the "culling strike" support mod to all "spells" you character deal while holding it.


Hope that helps!

yes thanks ... i obviously didnt read carefully enough - thanks again

Quality on enhance, enlighten and empower increases only the gem's experience gain. These gems don't do anything at level one and need a lot of experience to level, so you want to quality them to speed it up.

Empower level 2 gives +1 to level of all gems it's linked to. Empower can be leveled to 3 and can be corrupted with a vaal orb to hit 4 (the chance is small), so it can give up to +3 to the level of supported gems. It is most often used to boost the damage of caustic arrow, summon raging spirits and explosive arrow (at least that's what I can think of) and to boost auras like wrath, anger, hatred for more damage or purities to push them to the level at which they give +5 to maximum resist.