Many Ancient gems don't go well together and are terrible

[Quentcat]

Let me start by saying it's my favorite class and i love her
BUT
the gem choice kinda suck, way more than others class. let's review them
(it is not a tier list)

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Primary:
-Opal: Very good this one go with almost every build. nothing to say

-Sapphire: Do more damage and go well with stuff boosting per hit in exchange of being reliant exclusively on pet placement: good in many situation

-Garnet: nothing to say go amazingly well with luck based comp and it's good even without

-Emerald: you become entirely autonomous (like druid or wizard primary without slow). so you get ease of use and reliability without malus to move speed in exchange of less damage than saphire. really fair trade (like if you're against stuff like wolves doing back and forth) go well with the the theme of emerald being pretty much the ease of stuff gem for ancient.

-Ruby: here it start to be really bad. you exchange multiple hit (multiple hits are better in like 99% of time) in exchange of ... being entirely reliant on pet placement so like saphire but single hit (bad) and ... less damage ??? granted you get a bigger range but the difference is so small it's never worth to take. even if the range become as big as wizard special it wouldn't be worth it. it do even less damage than emerald !!! why ??? even with the (not noticeable) range increase it's less reliable than emerald

[[TLDR:]]
Here we have 3 gems that pretty much do similar things aka raising raw primary damage:
Saphire and Emerald are fair sidegrade from each others
but Ruby is Saphire but less damage (and damage oportunity from items) and harder to use than emerald ... for less damage, again.

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Secondary:

-Opal: Straight upgrade of the base ability it's always good to have those (don't be heavyblade defensive not having a gem keeping the field (for more than half a seconde))

-Saphire: not a straight upgrade because you need to spam it more but better than Opal if you get secondary based items or are more reliant to pet placement. good as well

-Ruby: your pet become more fixed in place but the reduction is amazing. it definitively have it's space if you go on a CD reset build

-Garnet: Same than primary have it's place in luck comp

-Emerald: Well you lose control of your pet i personaly don't like using it BUT the lack of GCD (and """ease of use""" not having to think about it) are very good against bosses that doesn't moves and for build asking you to spam other moves. again it's the theme of emerald of the ease of use. Let it be

[[TLDR:]]
All of them have a space. let them be

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Special: oooh here it get dicey

-Opal: You do ... less raw damage and less hit (again less damage oportunity!!!) than even the base ability in exchange of a smaller CD ... It's not even ok with items that ask you to spam your special because sapphire exist ... it's useless ???

-Saphire: if you have to spam your special it's good and combo with Emerald Secondary. slow you to a crawl so ... be carrefull

-Ruby: Maximum damage and make you stupid with some timegem items. Doesn't combo at all with garnet secondary !!!!!
(there is rarely gems combo that actively shoot you in the foot them being here is ... i understand why you want to prevent it to be stupid but is there isn't another way except making "forbidden" gems choice)
Have it's slot

-Garnet: Why ? .... just why ? this is the worst gem in the entire game it's actively worse than the base ability let's do some math shall we ?
You need to hit secondary 3 time. the smalest amount of special CD reduction secondary have are 4s
so -12s
Let's be very kind and say you specificaly have Saphire secondary (4s CD the smalest) so -12
Add the GCD (1.2*3) 3.9
So again: -12 CD reduc -16s passed
By the time you got a charge of this one you could had -28s on another special and this is taking into account you have the best gem for the job
With the base ability you would had -34s on the special ....
Even if it was only 2 use required it's still -20s with saphire secondary and -24s with normal secondary
"But it's for luck build you're suposed to use the other garnets it's the highest damage reseting special" ok let's assume you have the amazing 0s CD on your secondary: it's still -16s !!!! Emerald special CD is 16s and you bypass the GCD with it for only -9.3% less damage (without raising damage per hit then it get even lower) and isn't entirely reliant on special reset and still benefit from it. Garnet Special should 100% be changed. it's never a good idea to take it even vs base special

-Emerald: bypass GCD and don't slow your speed to a crawl, higher damage, lower CD. in exchange of losing control of the activation timing. but you can still time the secondary to be on target when it go off (or ignore the ability entirely like emerald secondary) this one is the true gem of CD reset maybe overtunned but it's hard to tell considering it's contestant is this trash

[[TLDR:]]
Opal is useless and doesn't really have a space
Ruby is fine but is it a good thing to have gems combinaison being unusable ?
Garnet: The most useless gem in the entire game in every scenario even base ability is better

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Defensive:
Nothing to say all are different and can be picked
except Emerald: Losing control of your invulnerability is a BIG DEAL especialy because Steel Yourself is a thing. it's like the only class doing this ... whyyy ???? Keep the support theme since it's the only gem doing it but give control back and increase CD if people wanna use the lower CD to spam secondary there is saphire for that.

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"What is this wall of text ???"
[[The big TLDR:]]
Every slots have 1 or 2 atrocious choices (20% of the entire pool (or more)
2 (or 3 if you count emerald defense) are actively wost than the base ability even in their most optimal circonstances

The character isn't bad but dam do she have many awfull gem (and worst ones). Way more than any others (brawler ruby secondary isn't good but at least it do more damage than base ability)

[Ridesdragons]

I actually take the garnet special fairly frequently as summoner. rather, the only upgrade I'd pass garnet over for is emerald.

first off, GCD only matters for time calculations when you're GCD gated - aka, when a skill either doesn't have a cooldown, or you have more charges of the skill than you need for whatever you're calculating. the secondary has a 6 second cooldown, which means only the last GCD matters, and even then, only if the special becomes available before GCD ends. by default, if you started a fight with 2 secondaries, your defensive, and another secondary, your special still won't be off cooldown. this takes 3.6 seconds to pull off and erases 12* seconds from the 20 second cooldown, so you'll still have another 4.4 seconds before you can use your special, taking 8 seconds in total. with garnet, doing the same thing gives you a charge right off the bat, taking only the 3.6 seconds needed to do the basic rotation. and that charge does more damage. an extra 33% damage in less than half the time is nothing to scoff at.

you are correct that after the first cast it takes longer, albeit not much longer. if all abilities are on cooldown, with base skills, it would take you 12* seconds to get access to your special again by default (6 seconds from secondary, 4 seconds from defensive, 1.2 seconds from GCD, .8 seconds wait time), whereas garnet takes 13.2 (similar above, except with an extra 2 seconds from waiting for another defensive charge, and without the extra wait time at the end). the average time for both of these is somewhere below those listed numbers (since you'll never have all 3 abilities at max cd at the same time), albeit not off by much. now, I should note that 13.2 is only 10% longer than 12, yet the damage from the special is 33% higher. which means no matter what, it's still a DPS net positive over base (more specifically, a ~21% increase). and this doesn't factor in item effects, such as burn, which scale better off of larger numbers. not that ancient is great with burn, but hey.

second, as you mentioned, resetting is a thing. and the garnet special has 2 charges. this means, of course, you could pair it with garnet secondary, and if you fail the 50/50 3 times you still get a charge, but it also means that if you win the 50/50, you get a charge and then some, since it only stops counting secondary usage if you're already at max charges. but you could also be using one of the many items that grant special charges on conditions, such as the hairclips that grant charges on invulnerability (something you'll be proccing a lot unless you go ruby defensive) or debuff affliction.

finally, even if you don't use reset mechanics, it's still useful. for one thing, ancient's special is focused on where the pet is. and bosses move. sometimes your special will be available right after a boss moves away from your pet. this means you have to burn a secondary usage to move the pet into position before you can cast your special. as I mentioned above, you have 2 uses with garnet special, so that extra secondary usage is not a waste, it'll count towards your next special. avoiding CDR overkill is a quality of its own. furthermore, emerald secondary doesn't reduce special's CD anymore, it just casts automatically. but garnet special doesn't care about CDR, only casts. which means garnet is great to have if you manage to find emerald secondary before emerald special.

*EDIT: oops, my bad, for some reason I thought the default CDR from the secondary was 5 seconds, it's 4 seconds - which only helps my case here. this adds an extra 3 seconds to the initial special cast, and .8 seconds to the "max cast time" afterwards, making the garnet upgrade a significant DPS increase and a massive initial burst increase (266.67 DPS for initial rotation with garnet, 90 without)

[Quentcat]

You're right you have to remove the GCD from the maths so remove 3.6s from the maths
But with standard special it's still 10 sec being removed for each cast required (again 6s are passing and 4s are removed) i didn't include the defensive into the math because you really don't always use them to DPS but even with them it's still lower 24s of special CD
you still get the emerald back with it.

I don't like the idea of having gems just better than others for the same job and the reset spot is already taken by emerald special
If you have burn on the special: well take opal i guess or even ruby you'll do a way better job

Even if garnet special was good (not convinced at all) there is still many bad gem on this class anyway

[Ridesdragons]

I'm not sure why you're "not convinced at all". as the math points out, it's straight up a 20% DPS increase over no upgrade without anything else. which counters your statement that it's "actively worse than the base ability". factor in avoiding wasting CDR when using the secondary under 5 seconds/to reposition, and it's actually higher. in one of my runs tonight, my DPS straight-up doubled just by getting garnet special and nothing else (as in, the only change between the previous area and the next was the garnet upgrade, not that I ran no items). you may not personally prefer it over something else, but the math checks out, it actively better than base.

as for emerald being good with resets... so? how does emerald being good with resets make garnet bad with resets? if anything, I'd argue they're equal. emerald will frequently waste your specials when the boss moves out of the summon's AoE. I like taking emerald because funny hold one button peak summoner gameplay, but I'd be lying if I said switching from garnet to emerald didn't significantly drop my DPS more often than not. plus, you're not able to guarantee you get specific upgrades at any given time. even if emerald was better than garnet, it doesn't mean anything if the kind cat lady never gives it to you. having alternative options for similar playstyles is a good thing, because it means you're less likely to get build-screwed.

finally, you say there are many bad gems on this class, but you've only listed 4 - ruby primary, opal special, emerald defensive, and garnet special - which as I pointed out, isn't even a bad gem. every other gem you said had its place. 3 bad gems is not a lot of bad gems. I can certainly think of several other classes that have a greater quantity of questionable upgrades than ancient. one of them was addressed in the recent news and will be getting a facelift in the future.