Path Of Exile Skill Gems Guide
This guide provides a comprehensive breakdown of skill gems: what they are, how they work, how to level and support them, and strategies for choosing the best ones for your build. Whether you're a new exile entering Wraeclast for the first time or a veteran looking to refine your gem management, this article covers everything you need.
What Are Skill Gems?
Skill gems are items that you can socket into your gear to gain new abilities. They come in two main types:
Active Skill Gems - These grant skills like Fireball, Cyclone, Raise Zombie, or Lightning Arrow.
Support Gems - These modify the behavior of active skill gems, such as adding more damage, changing projectiles, or linking multiple casts together.
Your build in PoE is essentially defined by which skill gem you choose as your primary ability and how you support it with other gems.
The Three Colors of Skill Gems
Skill gems are color-coded to reflect their attribute requirements:
Red (Strength): Often linked to melee attacks, defense, life, and physical damage. Examples: Heavy Strike, Molten Shell.
Green (Dexterity): Usually tied to ranged attacks, projectiles, critical strikes, and evasion. Examples: Poisonous Concoction, Tornado Shot.
Blue (Intelligence): Focused on spells, energy shield, mana, and elemental or chaos damage. Examples: Fireball, Arc, Summon Skeletons.
Hybrid gems exist too, requiring more than one attribute. For instance, Lightning Strike requires both Dexterity and Intelligence.
How to Socket and Link Gems
To use a skill gem, you must place it in a piece of gear that has a matching socket color:
A red gem requires a red socket.
A green gem requires a green socket.
A blue gem requires a blue socket.
Sockets can also be linked, allowing Support Gems to modify the Active Gems they are connected to. For example:
Socketing Fireball into a linked socket with Added Lightning Damage Support will make your Fireball deal additional lightning damage.
A six-link chest piece with a powerful active gem supported by five synergistic support gems is often the goal for endgame builds.
Leveling Skill Gems
Gems gain experience as you kill monsters while they are equipped, even if you don't actively use them. As they level up, their power increases (damage, effectiveness, minion health, etc.) but so do their attribute and mana cost requirements.
Maximum level is 20 (though this can be increased with certain items and corruption).
Leveling is automatic, but you must click to accept each upgrade when prompted.
Some builds intentionally keep certain gems at lower levels to control mana cost or avoid over-scaling requirements (for example, Cast When Damage Taken Support is often kept at level 1).
Quality on Skill Gems
Each skill gem can also have a quality value, up to 20% normally, which grants additional benefits. Quality is improved using Gemcutter's Prisms (GCPs).
For Active Gems, quality bonuses vary: more damage, more projectile speed, better area coverage, etc.
For Support Gems, quality usually boosts the effectiveness of the modification (e.g., more damage or reduced mana multipliers).
Some advanced crafting and corruption methods can push quality beyond 20%, making these gems extremely valuable.
Active Skill Gems: Categories
Active gems can be grouped into several broad categories:
Attack Skills
Use your weapon to deal damage (melee or ranged).
Examples: Cyclone, Split Arrow, Double Strike.
Spell Skills
Cast magic that deals elemental or chaos damage.
Examples: Fireball, Arc, Freezing Pulse.
Minion Skills
Summon creatures to fight for you.
Examples: Raise Zombie, Summon Raging Spirit, Animate Guardian.
Aura Skills
Provide persistent buffs to yourself and allies.
Examples: Anger, Grace, Determination.
Curse Skills
Debuff enemies to lower their defenses or damage.
Examples: Temporal Chains, Elemental Weakness.
Movement Skills
Help with mobility across the battlefield.
Examples: Dash, Leap Slam, Flame Dash.
Warcry Skills
Shout abilities that buff you or debilitate enemies.
Examples: Rallying Cry, Enduring Cry.
Support Gems: How They Work
Support gems don't work alone. They must be linked to an Active Skill Gem in order to have any effect. The support gem alters how the skill behaves:
Damage Boosts: Added Fire Damage, Increased Critical Damage, Controlled Destruction.
Utility Changes: Faster Attacks, Increased Area of Effect, Spell Echo.
Mechanics Changes: Chain (projectiles bounce to more enemies), Multistrike (melee skills repeat), Greater Multiple Projectiles (fires multiple projectiles).
The most powerful builds in PoE are often defined by which supports they use to shape a single main skill into an engine of destruction.
Skill Gems and the Passive Skill Tree
While gems define your active abilities, the passive skill tree defines how well you use them. For example:
A Fireball gem benefits greatly from passives that boost spell damage, fire damage, and cast speed.
A Tornado Shot gem scales with projectile damage, bow damage, and critical strike multipliers.
Summon Skeletons thrive when combined with minion health, minion damage, and duration nodes.
A successful build is always a synergy between the gem setup and the passive tree pathing.
Advanced Gem Interactions
At higher levels, gem setups become more complex:
Trigger Setups: Skills like Cast When Damage Taken automatically cast linked spells when you take damage.
Totems and Mines: Skills like Ballista Totem Support or High-Impact Mine Support allow your abilities to be cast by external entities.
Auras and Generosity Support: Increase the power of buffs for allies while sacrificing your own benefit.
Six-Link Endgame Builds: The most powerful characters often revolve around a single six-link setup that defines their entire playstyle. You can also buy POE orbs to get the six-link endgame builds.
Managing Your Gems
Plan Ahead: Use build guides or PoE tools to understand which gems you'll need later.
Level Extras: You can socket unused gems in your gear to level them passively and later sell or use them.
Use Vendor Recipes: Some vendor combinations can reset gem levels or exchange gems for others.
Balance Mana Costs: Support gems often increase mana multipliers; watch your resources carefully.
Choosing the Right Skill Gems
When deciding which skill gems to use, ask yourself:
Do I want to focus on melee, ranged, or spell damage?
Do I prefer summoner play, where minions do the work?
Am I aiming for fast clear speed or high single-target damage?
How much gear investment am I willing to commit?
The beauty of PoE is that no two characters are identical. Your gem choices will define your identity in the game world.
Conclusion
Skill gems are the beating heart of Path of Exile. They're not just abilities - they're the building blocks of your playstyle, defining how you approach combat, progression, and even the economy of the game. From the moment you slot your first Fireball gem to the time you craft a six-link setup in the endgame, gems are with you every step of the way.
Understanding how they work, how to support them, and how to plan around them is crucial to success in Wraeclast. Once you master the art of gem management, you'll discover why Path of Exile is praised as one of the deepest, most rewarding action RPGs ever created.