The Gem Disparity

[Zeus]

Hello STG & Community,

As I think many of the AL population already knows, the gem disparity in AL is becoming quite a problematic issue.


Here are the current gems that we have:
- Fire/Glacial/Blood
- Tarlok Wind/Wisdom/Rage
- Enchanted Eyes*
- Elondrian Life Shards
- Cursed Necropolis Skull
- Paracelsus*
- Reinforced Fire/Glacial/Blood**

Now, as you can see, there is actually quite a wide variety of gems available to the general population. However, what has happened is that there are three rarity of gems: epic, legendary, mythic. While these may seem like plain old rarities, the gems itself have overlapping purposes.

Let us take a look at enchanted eye gems. These gems are quite powerful, giving us a balanced amount of stats from each type of stat as well as a nice amount of critical. Fair enough, seems like a nice compromise when comparing to primary gems, Tarlok gems, etc.

However, if a player stacks enough of these, then that player no longer has any need for gems like elondrian life shards or cursed necropolis skull. Fine, that's bearable.

Now, take a look at Paracelsus gems. These gems offer a lot of damage but do not offer anything else. Naturally, stacking all of these into gear seems like a bad idea. The stat loss would be huge! However, when enchanted eye gems were brought into existence, this problem no longer existed. Everything that the Paracelsus gem lacks, enchanted eye gems make up for. This leads to crazy ratios of 3 para gems: 1 enchanted eye. Overall, this will give a player much higher damage than relying on the gems commonly found while also providing similar HP and critical percent.

Does anyone see the issue? Aside from reinforced blood gems for tanks, there is no real use for other gems with the current paracelsus & enchanted eye gem set up.

So, what does this lead to? Very OP players like myself with damage, critical, and HP that nobody else can hope to achieve.

The way Paracelsus gems are designed, only those with a stockpile of them can benefit. The same thing goes for enchanted eye gems. This current model is very detrimental towards attracting any new players and retaining player base of anyone other than the top 1% of players. After all, a player can max his/her toon but still be required to spend an additional 20-40M on gems to get the ideal set up. How is this fair to anyone, really?

So, does anyone have any suggestions to fix the current impasse? This is a serious issue that will only prove to be more serious as time goes on. On top of all the other disparities that already exist, gems should not be yet another one.


Thoughts, suggestions? Please comment!

* = discontinued and very powerful.
** = obtainable, but of very small quantity.