Item Set Gems

I made this suggestion as a post in an Item Set thread, but decided it should have its own post.

People seem drawn to the idea of set items. The concept is a nice idea, but with the open-endedness (is that a word?) of PoE, it's a bit too limiting. And besides, where's the variety if everyone is running around in the game wearing the same items? And so, I want to make the following suggestion: Set Gems.

This would be a new class of Gem, socket-able into anything. It would not require linked sockets to work. The idea behind it is that if you have more than one piece of equipment with a Set Item socket, you begin to gain cumulative bonuses. So, having 1 Set Gem gives a very mundane bonus. having two of the same set gives you a larger bonus. Three even larger, and so on. In order for the set to work, each gem has to be in a different piece of equipment. Having two in the same piece of armor would only grant the 1-gem minor bonus. And, of course, the gems have to belong to the same set.

This would expand the role of gems in the game. We have gems which grant skills. We have gems which augment skills. This is gems which grant gear bonuses.

And easy starting point would be to have 4 set to start with - 3 sets of 3 gems the same color, and 1 set with one of each color. But the door would be left open for up to 7-gem sets (pretty sure a few belts have sockets) which would really gives some bonuses... but remember, that's 7 skill gems you won't be using.

I like the idea! They could be similar to support gems, but like you said color based. Upon leveling these gems it could increment into +1 point per level. Each additional level would require more stat requirements in that section be it STR, DEX, INT.

STR Based Set gems would be Red.
Example:
1 gem grants +1 STR
2 gems grant +1 STR, +1% Melee Physical Damage
3 gems grant +1 STR, +1% Melee Physical Damage, +1 Life
4 gems grant +1 STR, +1% Melee Physical Damage, +1 Life, +1 Armor

INT Based Set gems would be Blue.
Example:
1 gem grants +1 INT
2 gems grant +1 INT, +1% Energy Shield
3 gems grant +1 INT, +1% Energy Shield, +1 Mana
4 gems grant +1 INT, +1% Energy Shield, +1 Mana, +1% Increase Elemental Damage

DEX Based Set gems would be green.
Example:
1 gem grants +1 DEX
2 gems grant +1 DEX, +1% Evasion
3 gems grant +1 DEX, +1% Evasion, +1 Accuracy
4 gems grant +1 DEX, +1% Evasion, +1 Accuracy, %Run Speed Increase

The more rare sets could start with a better overall starting +stat, like straight to +damage or armor, or could even go into a magic find set where the %Loot Increases, Drop rate increases, Quality of item increases, rarity of Gem/Orb drop increases, etc. :) Hope this contributes a bit to the article. would be great to see something like this along with Set Items! :D