The weakest (and least used) gem in the game.

Oh yes Enlighten. It's worse than sticking another gem in its place until level 5, hardly worth using to target level.

However, it does give some benefit once leveled, so it might just beat out Chance to Flee.

As for Smoke Mine, yeah its hard to pull off constantly, but its great for known threats. Jumping you a screen away from a strongbox, an escape when a facetank doesn't go well, dodging Touch of God, Vaal Smashes, etc.

Chance to flee!

"

Perq wrote:

Smoke mine seems very clunky to me, even tho it seems nice on the paper.

Heavy strike with its annoying knockback

Cast on Death? D:

Portal gem is pretty useless too

Shock nova - lolpleaseIratherGoArc. Or anything else

Enlighten seems pretty dumb too, tbh.

smoke mine can be used to open strongboxes a bit safer. it doesn't help vs freeze though, the most dangerous box mod, hence making it rather lackluster. can also be used with mediocre efficiency as a get out of there button vs bosses. but at the end of the day it's unreliable at best. so i find myself agreeing with you.

heavy strike is annoying but it actually does some nice damage. that is why i didn't consider it.
only wish people would have some sense to pin monsters against a wall instead of knocking it around in the open which tends to happen in 90% of cases. maybe too much to hope for though.

cast on death should definitely be on a top 5 list. but i think this gem is not made for any serious builds though otherwise it would work for minions and totems.

i actually use portal on both my rampage charachters. i do have to agree though. it is indeed a very bad gem with very limited usability beyond halfway through normal mode on a fresh league charachter. i don't know why i still use it at lvl 84. honestly.

shock nova has been used in ee trap builds to also trigger the shock ailment. haven't seen many people use this lately though. it falls into the same category as heavy strike with the annoying dead zone in the middle.

enlighten can be used to level gems faster on the weapon switch. i find this useful quite frankly. if only i had the time to actually level up one of those gems beyond 1...

i think my current top 3 is pretty solid so far but it's certaintly not written in stone =)

edit: what is ecom i see people referring to? i can't find any gems matching that abbreviation.

ECOM(S) - endurance charge on melee stun

one of the most weird candidates as this stuff is awesome but here you go

btw - enlighten is perfect to level up gems in a +1 staff. if one wants to get gems quickly to lvl20 it really makes a difference

My votes are for Cast On Death for sheer backwards thinking, why plan to die? Wouldn't a gem that helps you kill faster or remain alive longer be a better idea?

For simply not ever using, I've been playing since closed beta and I've never used Cold to Fire. I'm not even sure I understand it, so perhaps there is an application somewhere, but it seems to me that you could just amplify your existing fire damage instead of adding cold and then cold to fire.

For dumbest, Portal. The fact that it's pretty rare (I've never had one drop) is the only reason to have one.

Why dissing portal? It's quite good on MF characters. Saves you 1000s of portals in the longrun and portals you pick up can be converted to ID scrolls. I always buy it so I can rush friends without using 30+ portals.

"

DTD_Hiro wrote:

For simply not ever using, I've been playing since closed beta and I've never used Cold to Fire. I'm not even sure I understand it, so perhaps there is an application somewhere, but it seems to me that you could just amplify your existing fire damage instead of adding cold and then cold to fire.

The point isn't adding cold to fire, its turning cold to fire.

Now that AoF is back it's pretty awesome. Ice Spear-Cold To Fire-Crit Damage-Burning Damage with AoF burns hard. Throw in Ele Prolif and Fire Pen with a 6L/Tabby, I'm hitting burns around 90k that proliferate.

All good points I suppose. I haven't played with the "Herald of" gems yet, and as for Cold to Fire, I also suspected there with something you could do with that and The Three Dragons mask, but never looked into it.
I was shooting more towards the "And Least Used" portion of the post.

I've never had an issue of being low on ID scrolls, except maybe in the first 10 minutes of a new league or race. Portal has always just seemed unnecessary to me, like a salad spinner.