Apparently Green and Purple are Great; Blue Sucks

[Soatok]

I found this guide that does linear regression (in a log scale) of the various gem colors.

https://gameplay.tips/guides/6369-gemcraft-frostborn-wrath.html

Image showing growth rates (regardless of starting point) on a log-2 scale: https://gameplay.tips/uploads/posts/2020-01/1579270552_5.jpg

Image showing the actual powers on a log-2 scale:
https://gameplay.tips/uploads/posts/2020-01/1579270607_4.jpg

I wonder why there's such a disparity between colors.

[Ray]

That guide doesn't weigh in how those "growth rates" of specials take effect in battle. They all do different things so its not wise to weigh them against each other in this fashion. This guide is a new player trap and i wish it was taken down, as its on steam under guides too.

Green is designed to be put into traps where its initial "on hit" damage is significantly reduced so it needs a high modifier on its special growth rate to compensate.

Similarly, purple scales quite well because it needs to keep up with the scaling armor of the monsters. Despite it having such a decent modifier, most informed people rarely ever utilize purple when they have yellow available because of how effective yellow is.

Then you have your blue gem which you believe is weak. Blue's sole purpose is to act as a SLOW to give your main gems more time to fire. It can be quite effective even when several levels below your mana farm or kill gem. I'm pretty sure the slow effect also stacks with White Out for an even greater slow modifier.

Its also important to note that blue gets more effective in its role the higher the value of slow, no other gem works like this.

A 50% slow means they take 2 times to walk the same distance as one that isnt slowed,
75% means 4 times,
80% means 5 times,
90% means 10 times,
95% means 20 times.. etc

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Soatok:

I wonder why there's such a disparity between colors.

The analysis ignores a couple of very important points.

1) Blue and red have the exact same effect regardless of monster strength.

For example, a gem with 100 poison damage will kill a 100 HP monster, but will barely scratch a 100,000 HP monster. However, a gem with 20% slow will slow both of them by the same amount.

2) As for yellow, it appears that only multiplier is plotted, while the percentage chance also increases when upgrading. Furthermore, the multiplier works off of the base damage, which should be taken into account. The value that should be plotted is "average extra damage"; that's what's plotted for green and purple.

[Azzy]

Purple lol. Armour is only effective early game. Late game your critical hit gems deal enough damage that they render even the thought of armour reduction obsolete.

Blue is useful even without investing in the skill, just have a blue trap and 2 blue amps before your mana farm, and they are slowed for pretty much the entire map.

Same with purple, green are kinda obsolete endgame with how effective yellow is.

[LotusBlade]

Greatness of gems depends mostly on your own preferences. If you are just playing game normally without extreme, then you don't need to care about gem choises at all. Monsters in journey have little to no armor, so you don't need to rend it.

...

For some endurance 43254325342523 exp farming there is pretty much only one choice for dmg — yellow.

If you manage to get 50% red and 50% blue, they will boost your yellow by x2,25 times.

As for poison, since we are using many traits to increase ammount, hp and speed of monsters, gem becomes useless.

[Gem of Temporarity]

Originally posted by LotusBlade:

As for poison, since we are using many traits to increase ammount, hp and speed of monsters, gem becomes useless.

Thick air and insulation encourage poison... and ice shards.

[sresk]

Originally posted by Gem of Temporarity:

Originally posted by LotusBlade:

As for poison, since we are using many traits to increase ammount, hp and speed of monsters, gem becomes useless.

Thick air and insulation encourage poison... and ice shards.

I'm only wl 500 so maybe someone higher level than me can correct me if im wrong but I just did a run and at wave 150 a level 20 poison gem in a trap was applying 10mil of poison damage to targets that had 10 billion health or more. Where as a level 20 yellow gem in a trap was one shotting them. Poison is really stong pre wl 100 but is easily the worst gem after that.

[Azzy]

Originally posted by sresk:

Originally posted by Gem of Temporarity:

Thick air and insulation encourage poison... and ice shards.

I'm only wl 500 so maybe someone higher level than me can correct me if im wrong but I just did a run and at wave 150 a level 20 poison gem in a trap was applying 10mil of poison damage to targets that had 10 billion health or more. Where as a level 20 yellow gem in a trap was one shotting them. Poison is really stong pre wl 100 but is easily the worst gem after that.

Thick air at max restricts incoming damage to 1/24 of a monsters max hp, so no matter how high your yellow gem, it can only do 1/24th. If a mob has 24hp, you do 1 damage. A poison gem however will apply the poison and it'll work as normal.

...still not enough to kill a mob with 4.2e16 hp though lol...

[Warmonger]

Well, yellow damage scales exponentially, and it's the only way to keep up with exponential monster health.

Poison is still very useful early on - I can kill 80% of enraged monsters with a single poison trap and focus on building mana farm rather than huge and expensive kill gem.

[Marosh]

"Late game" player here, Purpel is aweful, blue rocks.

Blue: Put it before your mana farm. Put a blue before a red and your killsetup. win. 70%-80% slowed down is huge. No Skillpoints needed because it only increases the duration. You get enough duration from the trap skill.

Purpel: Nice, I can shredd 1million armor. To bad, that the swarmling has 1e13 armor. No skillpoints

Early game it's the other way around. Purpel is your way to go and first choice for mixing a dual. Ignore blue.

Green: Nice for early swarmling parasite runs, later useless. Yes, Thick Air is a thing. You don't do this trait for exp. But I can see it work for A1 fragment farming at really high WL. No skillpoints or maybe if it works with A1 farming

Orange: Early a little meh. Nice in a dual gem, if there is no crit. Manafarm early: Don't. It takes way to much time until the manatrap gets it cost back. Later: Must have. Skillpoints well spent even early.

Red: Nice early and huge late game. 50% dmg early is nice. 2000% late is really nice. Still no skillpoints, because it only increases duration.

Yellow: Nice early and your main killgem later. Mix it early with armor. Later you let it pure. Unfortunately you unlock it really late. But if you have it: Skillpoints well spend. About half of the points you have spend on orange.

The scale? What's the point? Of course they have different growth. Imaging blue has the same growth as green. Mobs slowed down for 1000% after level 6? Maxed out at lvl3? Or green has the same growth as blue. Poison dmg 70 after lvl 5? Blue has a cap, green doesn't. Blue must have a slower growth.
Red is open end, but it's a raw multiplier. Here again, of course it can't be as good as green. Dmg multiplier of 1e10 at lvl 20?
Same for yellow. The dmg is insane after a while compared to green, because it's a multiplier.
Of course purpel and green have the highest grow. They need it to make them somehow useful.
Imo, the growth from purpel and green isn't even enough. Bumb the growth up a notch and they are still useless later

And early game? You don't care about growth. You only get specific gems for your journey. You use purpel not because it's growth, you use it because you need to remove the armor. You use red and yellow because you need the dmg multi and so on.

[Nimris]

Originally posted by blauer153:

Red: Nice early and huge late game. 50% dmg early is nice. 2000% late is really nice. Still no skillpoints, because it only increases duration.

skill related to red gem is disappointing
i really hope they change it, even if red gem dmg multiplier get 1/10th of special bonus ( so +50% instead of +500% in trap ) it would still be awesome and make Bleeding skill worth points. but for now i can only keep dreaming :(

[Soatok]

Originally posted by Nimris:

Originally posted by blauer153:

Red: Nice early and huge late game. 50% dmg early is nice. 2000% late is really nice. Still no skillpoints, because it only increases duration.

skill related to red gem is disappointing
i really hope they change it, even if red gem dmg multiplier get 1/10th of special bonus ( so +50% instead of +500% in trap ) it would still be awesome and make Bleeding skill worth points. but for now i can only keep dreaming :(

Yeah red is kinda pointless :(

[ruphus]

When the word is component power I expect something like crit, increase in both power and probably duration. Too bad it's only the latter.

[Azzy]

Red is amazing...I'm getting up to 40 times the damage now from red debuff. Sure it'd be nice for red skill points to affect more than duration, but there's 3 options:

Have progression so low that there's no point to putting anything less than 100 levels in it.
Or, have decent progression and high level players will be laughing all over reds amplifying damage a million %.
Or, have a skill point cap on it. Which would single it out amongst all the other gem skills, and end up as a "Max it just because" skill (I have the destruction skill at 50 *before* talisman bonuses because, well, I can. Maxing another 50 cap skill wouldn't even make a dent in my skill points).

So, it'd either be far too weak, far too strong, or capped. There's no way to make it balanced non-capped. Hence, it affects duration.

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Azzy:

Red is amazing...

Red gem is, but Nimris was speaking specifically of the red skill, which is... lackluster, let's say

As you explain, there's a clear reason "why" it sucks, but... that doesn't make it suck any less

Might as well remove it and put Masonry back in (hint, hint)

[majamulli]

Originally posted by piccolo255:

Originally posted by Azzy:

Red is amazing...

Red gem is, but Nimris was speaking specifically of the red skill, which is... lackluster, let's say :lunar2020ratinablanket:

As you explain, there's a clear reason "why" it sucks, but... that doesn't make it suck any less :winter2019saddog:

Might as well remove it and put Masonry back in (hint, hint) :lunar2019grinningpig:

I'd rather have the blue gem skill removed then. That's even worse.