Help With Quality Gems

Hi! I'm really quite new to this game, but it's quickly becoming one of my favorites. I have a lot to learn, but I'm slowly getting there. I'm trying to figure out which skill gems on my current character are gonna be best to quality up. Does anyone have a link to a site or forum post that list the difference between normal gems and their max quality versions? That way I know which gems to invest quality into? Also maybe another link that list which gems are most important to quality, like where I'm going to get the best returns for time/exp and gem cutters prisms. I know there's a vendor recipe for level 20 gems to quickly get them to max quality. But still want to know...

A) The difference just from a learning standpoint.

B) Which gems I'll get the most return on. As far as I can tell gem cutter's prisms aren't super rare, but they're also not exactly common either. So at this point I don't think I'm going to have enough to do all my skills any time soon. Even with the max quality vendor recipe.

C) I want to figure out if there's any gems that go from being not so great, to being awesome with quality. I highly doubt there's gems that go from useless to amazing just by upping the quality. But idk, it also would't surprise me if that was true on certain builds.

Any info anyone could give here me would be super appreciated! Thanks in advanced.

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Skill_gem

This link should answer most of your questions regarding Gems, leveling Gems, and quality for Gems. Just scroll down and you'll see a list of all gems. Just hover over the ones you're interested in and it'll give you information about the skill itself, and how Quality affects it.

About the GCP (Gemcutter's Prism) vendor recipe, I generally hoard any quality Gems that drop and sell them once they hit 40% quality when added up all together. A 20% quality gem can be sold for a single GCP, though.


https://poe.ninja/standard/skill-gems

This link should help with figuring out the better gems to keep, and which are currently popular with builds (especially the Level 21 gems). Just click whichever League you are currently playing in the top right.

Ah, forgot to mention, despite quality being a factor for gems, Using a Vaal Orb on a Lvl 20 gem is also something people will do to strengthen it further. Corrupting the gem and make it a Lvl 21 gem, or a 23% quality gem. But the chances of it messing up and having an adverse effect is very likely, so corrupt at your own risk. Information about Corrupting gems is also in the first link, if you're curious.

Thanks, that's super helpful. And I do the same thing with quality gems to get gcp's. But that's really good advice. I also do it for the 40% flask recipe for glassblowers baubles.

I wouldn't even bother with the 1gcp lvl 20 gem recipe.

The time it takes to level a gem to 20 is generally worth more than the 20gcp to max a gem - at least for a newer player and practicality.

I had planned on using the recipe myself, but considering I'm well over 70 by the time the gems max it's easier to buy what's for sale when you can find what you need.

GCPs are rare enough that you should never use 20 of them to max a single gem. In this league I currently have 18 GCP remaining and I've used around 15 to upgrade my equipped gems. Many of them I've already leveled to 20 a second time. Had I simply used the GCPs to increase the quality of already leveled gems, I wouldn't have even two gems at max quality yet.

If you trade things will be different because chaos orbs are much easier to come by than GCPs.

You need to manually Q20 only the main skill. Mostly because in many cases downleveling it to 1 by the recipe can make the build unplayable.

Support gems are ok for the Q20 recipe. Because they are very easy to be put back to work - leveling to 15-16 takes a little, the 4-5 remaining levels you'll gain slower isn't anything crucial for the build.

Of course, if having a shitton of GCPs, just manually Q20 all of the gems.

Since the wiki has had performance problems recently, I also recommend looking here:

http://poedb.tw/us/gem.php?cn=Active+Skill+Gem
http://poedb.tw/us/gem.php?cn=Support+Skill+Gem

This site doesn't have all the extra information like interactions and the scaling table is a bit harder to read, but it's very stable and provides much easier filtering.