Path of Exile 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to the popular ARPG, Path of Exile. One of the vital elements players will encounter in this game is the skill gem system, which provides unique abilities and enhances gameplay strategies. Here’s a complete guide to skill gems, their mechanics, and how to obtain the Skill Gems of Path of Exile 2.

Part 1: What are Skill Gems?

Part 2: Types of Skill Gems in Path of Exile 2

Part 3: The Effectiveness of Skill Gems

Part 4: Enhance Your Path of Exile 2 Gaming Experience with LagoFast

Part 1: What are Skill Gems?

Skill gems are items that grant abilities to characters in Path of Exile. They are central to character builds and play a significant role in defining the playstyle of your character. Skill gems can be socketed into gear that has corresponding color sockets, allowing for a vast array of combinations and abilities.

Part 2: Types of Skill Gems in Path of Exile 2

In Path of Exile 2, Skill Gems are the cornerstone of your character's abilities, allowing for deep customization and strategic gameplay. The game categorizes Skill Gems into distinct types, each offering unique functions that work together to create powerful builds.

1. Active Skill Gems

• Purpose: These gems provide the core abilities that characters use in combat, such as attacks, spells, and summons.
• Key Features:
  Directly grant abilities to your character.
  Can be leveled up to increase damage, effectiveness, or utility.
  Require linking with Support Gems for enhancement.
  Examples:
• Fireball: A basic spell that hurls a fire projectile, dealing AoE fire damage.
• Cyclone: A melee attack that allows you to spin through enemies.
• Raise Zombie: Summons undead minions to fight for you.

2. Support Gems

• Purpose: Modify the behavior of Active Skill Gems, enhancing or altering their effects.
• Key Features:
  Must be linked to Active Skill Gems in a socketed item to work.
  Add properties like increased damage, faster attack speed, or additional projectiles.
• Examples:
  Increased Area of Effect: Expands the skill’s impact radius.
• Faster Casting: Reduces the casting time for linked spells.
• Multistrike: Allows melee attacks to hit multiple times in quick succession.

3. Quality Skill Gems

• Purpose: Enhance specific attributes of gems, providing percentage-based improvements.
• Key Features:
  Quality is capped at 20%, but specialized items can increase it further.
  Each gem benefits from quality differently, enhancing secondary effects.
• Examples:
• Fireball (Quality): Increases the chance to ignite enemies.
• Cyclone (Quality): Boosts attack speed or movement speed while spinning.
• Raise Zombie (Quality): Improves the life or damage of summoned zombies.

4. Uncut Skill Gems

• Purpose: Blank gems that allow players to choose specific skills to engrave later.
• Key Features:
  Provide flexibility in skill choice during progression.
  Scale with the area level where they are obtained.
• Examples: Uncut Skill Gems can be crafted into any available Active Skill Gem, depending on your build needs.

5. Buff Gems

• Purpose: Grant temporary or persistent buffs to improve character performance or support allies.
• Key Features:
  Often require mana reservation or continuous activation.
  Provide defensive, offensive, or utility benefits.
• Examples:
• Molten Shell: Boosts armor and absorbs incoming damage.
• Blood Rage: Increases attack speed and grants life leech but causes degeneration.
• Arctic Armour: Reduces physical and fire damage taken while stationary.

6. Meta Gems

• Purpose: Enable complex mechanics or conditional triggers, adding advanced functionality to your skills.
• Key Features:
  Automate skill usage or modify skills to interact in unique ways.
  Essential for optimizing builds with intricate setups.
• Examples:
• Cast When Damage Taken: Automatically triggers linked skills when you take damage.
• Spell Totem Support: Converts linked spells into deployable totems.
• Chain Support: Allows projectiles to bounce between multiple enemies.

7. Utility Skill Gems

• Purpose: Provide situational or utility-based abilities to improve gameplay efficiency.
• Key Features:
  Often used for crowd control, mobility, or survival.
  Complement other skills to fill gaps in your build.
• Examples:
• Phase Run: Grants increased movement speed and phasing, making you harder to detect.
• Decoy Totem: Draws enemy attention, acting as a tank for your character.
• Smoke Mine: Provides instant mobility and reduces enemy accuracy.

8. Aura Gems

• Purpose: Provide continuous buffs to you and nearby allies in exchange for reserved mana.
• Key Features:
  Essential for group play or boosting personal performance.
  Often synergize with specific builds, enhancing elemental or physical damage.
• Examples:
• Hatred: Adds bonus cold damage to attacks.
• Wrath: Increases lightning damage for spells and attacks.
• Discipline: Grants a flat boost to your energy shield.

9. Curse Skill Gems

• Purpose: Apply debuffs to enemies, reducing their defenses or impairing their abilities.
• Key Features:
  Can be cast manually or applied automatically with support gems or other mechanics.
  Vital for maximizing damage output or controlling difficult enemies.
• Examples:
  Enfeeble: Reduces enemy damage and accuracy.
• Temporal Chains: Slows enemy actions and reduces skill cooldown recovery.
• Elemental Weakness: Lowers enemy resistance to elemental damage.

Mechanics of Skill Gems in PoE 2

• Leveling Up Gems: Each skill gem can be leveled up by gaining experience during gameplay, increasing their effectiveness. At level 20, most skill gems reveal their full potential.
• Quality: Players can assign quality to skill gems through specific actions, which enhances their performance. Increased quality can dramatically alter skill effectiveness, leading to higher DPS or more potent abilities.
• Gems and Attributes: Each skill gem has its own attribute requirements. Players need to ensure that their characters possess the necessary stats (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence) to utilize specific skill gems, making character builds versatile yet strategic.

Changes from PoE 1

PoE 2 brings several crucial adjustments to how gems function:

1. A marked increase in effectiveness for many melee skill gems, which now receive sizable multipliers compared to previous iterations (e.g., Pestilent Strike's effectiveness bumps from 160% to 472%).
2. A focus on synergy between skill gems, allowing players to mix and match abilities for creative combat options.
3. New gems like "Concoction" enable players to manage multiple abilities and effects layered on top of one another in a single build.

Notable Skill Gem Examples in PoE 2

1. Pestilent Strike: A melee skill gem that received a significant boost in damage effectiveness, making it a strong choice for players focusing on bleed skills.
2. Concoction: This new utility skills gem interacts with flasks to provide unique buffs, fundamentally changing how players approach survivability and offensive capabilities in battles.
3. New Elemental Monk Skills: Certain gems focus on elemental damage, enhancing character builds that rely on aggressive offensive play styles and stunning techniques to control encounters.

Part 3: The Effectiveness of Skill Gems

Recent Changes and Metrics

In recent discussions, particularly from the Path of Exile community on Reddit, players have noted significant changes to the effectiveness of melee skill gems in the patch version 3.24. According to a report, most melee skills received a twofold increase in their damage effectiveness.

• Pestilent Strike: Witnessed a staggering 2.95 times effectiveness increase.
• Double Strike of Impaling: Saw a 2.92 multiplier.
• Lacerate: Increased to 2.88.

Rage Vortex, however, only saw a mere 1.12 multiplier which has made it less favorable compared to others.

This indicates a clear trend of buffs favoring melee skills, especially bleed-related skills, enhancing their usability in various builds. Players are encouraged to utilize newer gems or adapt their builds in light of these updates.

Part 4: Enhance Your Path of Exile 2 Gaming Experience with LagoFast

Once you are familiar with Skill Gems, you can start to apply them to your gaming experience. This will help you get more kills, more experience points and improve your gaming experience in PoE 2. In addition to upgrading in-game equipment, the out-of-game experience is also important, so I recommend LagoFast to you, which can minimize your game delay and FPS and bring you a brand new experience.

Here's how to Use LagoFast to Get a Better Gaming in PoE 2:

Step 1: Download and install LagoFast, sign in

Free Trial

Step 2: Search “Path of Exile 2” and click the result.

Step 3: Choose the server and node you like

Step 4: The boosted page will display your packet loss rate, network status, and ping rate. Just start the Path of Exile 2!

Conclusion

Skill gems in PoE 2 reimagine the approach to character customization and gameplay depth. The new and returning mechanics, coupled with a focus on synergy and balance, enable players to explore a vast range of builds and strategies right from launch. Players are encouraged to creatively use these gems to develop characters tailored to their playstyle while making the most of the unique attributes and bonuses provided by varied gems.