Meta Gem Activation Trick – Sneaky Jewelcrafting In Wow
Posted on January 11th, 2010 by Lawbringer under Auction House, Efficiency Tips, Exploits, General Tips, Instances, Jewelcrafting, PVE, PVP, Tips, Trade Skills, Tricks, World of Warcraft, WotLKHow To Meet All Your Meta Gem Requirements With One Stone
For the min/max guy this is going to just make you mad so you can go read something else. But if you’re a normal person and sometimes wonder exactly what gem to put in every single slot you have you may just appreciate this tip. It’s a neat trick because it’s a pretty cheap way of getting your meta gem activated without having to put something goofy in a yellow socket just because you need something yellow.
For almost every class, you are going to end up with a piece of gear with a strange socket color. And that means you have to start doing all the math over again or maybe you’ve just given up (like Fury warriors and some Shaman healers) and just chosen the best gem and it goes in every single slot no matter what – socket bonuses be danged. Or maybe you just go cross-eyed wondering where in the heck you’re going to get a blue gem to activate your Meta gem in your helm when you’ve got zero blue sockets in sight. (don’t forget about Eternal Belt Buckles by the way).
Only problem with saying bye-bye to your socket bonuses is that you probably don’t have all of the right color gems in place to activate your meta gem. We’re not going to go into picking meta gems for class and spec, that’s an argument waiting to happen (and it can happen somewhere else).
But there is one little gem that should be easy to get your hands on no matter what server you’re on that will activate any meta gem no matter what the requirements are with a single socket. That gem is the Nightmare Tear.
Not terribly long ago this was a JC only gem, but patch 3.2 made it available to everyone as a unique equipped item. That means you can only use one of them, but at least you don’t have to be a Jewelcrafter any more. The price on some servers may be a little higher than you would like, since making one requires a Dragon’s eye, but you should be able to peg the price for getting this cut from the price of Dragon’s eyes on your AH (if there are any). The only other mats required are 5 infinite dust, and there is probably more of that on most servers now than there is real dust in your house.
The cool thing about the nightmare tear is that since it will fit any socket color it also acts for some odd reason as every socket color once you put it in. So for frustrating Meta gems like the Relentless Earthseige Diamond which requires three different gem colors to activate, you can throw a Nightmare Tear in your helm with this and get on with your day.
Granted, for some classes, like mages, this isn’t the greatest choice. And for the mage there are plenty of good gem choices that make the use of the Nightmare Tear to activate a Meta completely unnecessary. But even for Mages if you just want to throw a meta in a level 219 hood or something while you are gearing up and don’t feel like spending another few hundred gold activating it, a single nightmare tear isn’t a bad idea.
It’s a hassle free way to get around not having to use a Yellow gem if you really don’t want to waste another socket on a Yellow gem when there aren’t any decent yellow gems for your class or spec; or any other color for that matter. It’s a pretty easy way to activate any meta gem no matter what the requirements might be. It’s not even lazy, but it is easy – and Dominating.
Awesome tip. thanks guys!
Even for the min/max this is by far the best (and essentially only) way to min/max when it comes to metas. At least for melee classes. The choices for blue gems for melee do not help dps at all whatsoever. Thus getting +10 stats (and potentially sticking it in that one blue slot that will give you +6/8 STR or something of the sort) is the only way to min/max when it comes to gems.
For caster dps, we all benefit somehow from spirit so generally we can afford to put to SP/Spi gems in blue slots. And for healers, depending on the class you can either +10 or go for a Spi or mp5 green/purple.
Surely it won’t activate something that needs two blue gems, such as Invigorating Earthsiege Diamond?
it does not act as two of the same color gem. using Chaotic Skyflare requires 2 of these gems.
1) The gems are unique.
2) All you have to do to get the Chaotic Skyflare to activate is to put this gem into a BLUE socket.
good raiders have known this for a while, thanks for stating the obvious
That’s what DYS is all about, stating the “obvious” for good raiders, which is generally not so commonly known for the casual player. So quit being such a hater.
lol Moon – you don’t read that well do you? Try the first sentence on for size – I mean the very first sentence. I know you just like the whole forum flame troll thing, but seriously, I even gave you a disclaimer this time
I’m curious as to why you said the min/maxers would be mad about this article? The only logical reason I can come up with that it would be a “wasted” article to them.
no no, i read fine. I read that sentence and it still doesn’t make me want to change what i posted. This is really the most obvious thing in the game, if you really couldn’t realize this by now and your raiding then you should probably look at what type of raider you are.
besides i only troll you’re idiotic posts, which are less frequent then your twink-slamming days
no no, i read fine. I read that sentence and it still doesn’t make me want to change what i posted. This is really the most obvious thing in the game, if you really couldn’t realize this by now and your raiding then you should probably look at what type of raider you are.
besides i only troll your idiotic posts, which are less frequent then your twink-slamming days
I tell you Law, some people. Sheesh. READ THE DISCLAIMER. DYS posters smart and thorough folks. Keep up the articles so I can keep dominating. Moon, go troll somewhere else fella.
very good info …ty …keep up the good work
Another option while gearing up is to use the cheaper pearls to activate a meta, if nightmare tears are too expensive on your server (my warlock spent some time with a +4 stats pearl in green pants to activate the meta in his blue helm).
I actually find blue slots harder to fill than yellow – hit, haste, and crit are all good for various dps/healing classes, and defense for tanks. Nightmare tears usually go in a blue slot for dps and red for tank (my healers love spirit, so purified dreadstones are the way to go for them).
well Moon, not everyone is uber uber leet like you, and not everyone raids, and not everyone knows everything – like you. So, what you think is idiotic might very well be quite useful to others who don’t know as much as you do.
thats an interesting workaroud, but realistically all but maybe 1 in 100 socket bonuses are pure crap in comparison to stat weights. generally you can get more gain from socketing off color single stat gems. unless of course you want to sacrifice say 11sp to get that 5 spirit bonus.
Actually I think blizzard nerfed it. I put one in a blue socket and my meta is still not active.