Remix: Mists of Pandaria Tinker Gem Tier List

By Anshlun Updated: 2024/06/14

Ranking MethodologyQuick StrikeSearing LightLifestormTinker Gem Tier ListTier ExplanationsS Tier

Hailstorm - Our first entry in the S tier is Hailstorm. Hailstorm is a passive gem that deals incredible amounts of damage and benefits greatly from haste.

Lightning Rod - Lightning rod does great damage and double-dips from haste, gaining more procs and ticking faster the higher haste you have. Plus, it provides large amounts of crit rating before you're able to cap it from your cloak alone.

Mark of Arrogance - While mostly a tank gem, non-tanks are able to proc this either passively from AoE damage in fights or by standing in mechanics. There are few bosses that you can't benefit from this, and it hits exceedingly hard.

Slay - Even with the nerfs received, Slay is a really strong gem, basically guaranteeing bosses die when they reach 10%. If you have tools to increase your HP, like Vampiric Blood or Rallying Cry, make sure to use them when the boss is about to reach 10% HP to proc more damage from Slay.

Wildfire - On single target, this is a great gem, dealing significant damage. This damage scales a lot as soon as you add more enemies to the fight.

Windweaver - Free haste for you and your group, movement speed, immunity to fall damage, what isn't to like about this gem? It is great both in its damage aspect and utility aspect.

Cold Front and Vindication - While not direct damage gems, these gems provide amazing group survivability. For a progression group, usually having everyone running both removes the necessity of having heals entirely or at least drop to just one heal.

A Tier

Sunstrider's Flourish - While underwhelming as you start gearing up, once you reach about 50% crit, this gem starts popping off, reaching great damage once you're able to crit cap.

Searing Light - The first gem to talk about in this tier is Searing Light. While it is part of the current meta combo when paired with Lifestorm, it isn't amazing for everyone on its own. However, it does ridiculous amounts of damage with Lifestorm, earning its spot here. Note that most passive healing abilities like Vampiric Embrace or even Vindication won't proc its effects.

Brilliance - If your spec has a valuable special resource like Runic Power or Insanity, this gem is incredible, and if possible, you'll want everyone in your party to run it. However, it doesn't benefit some specs, leading to its placement in A tier instead of S.

Enkindle - It provides a great amount of haste and great uptime, similar to Windweaver. However, with players reaching the haste cap for their class, the uses of this gem are limited to its shield and damage, both which are mediocre.

Explosive Barrage - Great damage and good proc rate. It is not the best damage gem, falling behind Hailstorm, Lightning Rod, and Mark of Arrogance, but still strong.

Quick Strike - Great damage gem, but only for specs that benefit from auto-attacks. S tier for melee, F tier for casters.

Victory Fire - Situational gem, great for whenever you're killing many enemies in a short time. It's amazing for dungeons and hyper farms, but meh for most raid encounters.

B Tier

Arcanist's Edge - Originally thought to be a strong gem, it ended up disappointing. Its biggest issue is its slow proc rate, leading to a capped damage output and no scaling potential.

Deliverance - Interesting healing gem, but with healers being phased out from many raid scenarios, it becomes a niche and rarely used gem, as even healers will often just run damaging gems.

Fervor - With players reaching higher and higher health pools, this gem gains more uses but usually falls behind other damaging gems. Tanks have a better time running this gem, but still find similar or better results from other damaging gems.

Incendiary Terror - It has interesting uses while leveling and in open-world content, but its damage is comparable at best against A-Tier gems, and it usually falls behind.

Memory of Vengeance - Great gem for tanks gearing up, but falls flat as tanks become immortal and take little to no damage.

Meteor Storm - Similar to the situation from Incendiary Terror, it does good damage, comparable to A-Tier gems. However, this gem has a lot of variance due to its low proc rate, leading it to sometimes do S-Tier damage but other times do D-Tier damage depending on procs.

Static Charge - Decent gem for specs with a lot of mobility, but requiring movement to deal the same damage is just a bad comparison. Usually, it is better to just run another gem for the same damage without the movement requirement.

Storm Overload - Deals great damage when you use the major cooldown for your class. However, it has a lot of variance between classes, with some able to proc it every minute and others only proccing it every 3m.

C Tier

Bloodthirsty Coral - Decent gem for tanks that want to help with raid healing. Usually, this job is done better by Cold Front and Vindication.

Brittle - While good on paper, since its nerfs, only damage you do to a mob counts for this stacking damage. Most cases you'd think of using this gem are better covered by Victory Fire as it doesn't have any requirement and just deals flat damage per enemy killed.

Frost Armor - Good gem if you find yourself dying, but, in general, those cases are rare. If you're considering using this gem, consider first running Cold Front or Vindication or both.

Grounding - It would be a great gem for progressing if taking magic damage didn't deactivate its effect. You can argue for having a tank run this in a fight with a big magic damage single target hit, but that's about it. Very niche gem at best, terrible usually.

Righteous Frenzy - It is a good gem for early progression through raids, but as players have more and more haste, its positive sides decrease substantially, with the drawbacks of dealing flat % damage to the group outgrowing its benefits.

Warmth - It is okay for tanks in early progression but limited to that. Another use would be to increase the damage done by Searing Light and Lifestorm combo, but that's about it.

D Tier

Ankh of Reincarnation - Find yourself dying often? Want to cheese a soak mechanic like Static Shock? This is the gem for that.

Holy Martyr - A tank version of Vindication that falls flat with tanks becoming immortal and taking no damage due to increased Versatility.

Opportunist - Bosses are generally immune to stun, as are most adds, so this gem has limited-at-best use in raids.

Savior - Very very niche gem that has little use in raids. It provides extra healing when people are about to die.

Tinkmaster's Shield - A worse version of other shielding gems.

Vampiric Aura - Interesting gem, getting more leech and sharing this leech with your group. One use case would be for a healer looking to make a "buff your group" set of gems. Overall, you'll have better results just running Vindication combined with damaging gems.

F Tier

Freedom - While the gem looks interesting, it doesn't work with most situations you'd think it would, like Visions of Demise from Grand Empress Shek'zeer or Huddle in Terror from Sha of Fear.

Class Guides

Comments

Comment by Flowerhorn

Fervor should 100% be lower tier, on ptr it was strong since it did 2% hp per hit, but on live it got changed to scale with gear ilvl.
Fervor is doing the same damage it did when I was at 5million hp as it is now that I am over 30million hp, and for a gem that does damage based off of using my hp, my melees do more over all.

It also only hits 1 target per proc.
Sunstrider has a 1 second CD, but when that CD is up, anything that hits at the same time (an aoe move or dots ticking at the same time) all targets get hit.
Fervor hits once per proc, even if I swipe a group (I would be fine with it taking hp for each instance of damage in that proc, too)

Arcanists Edge also has the same problem as Fervor, both really suck and need to be placed in lower tiers. Arcanists should go down maybe just one tier, as specs that can get a shield going on pull, it works out great, but the 10 second CD is atrocious. Fervor should be D tier.

Comment by PziCrow

Since Quick Strike has a 10 sec cooldown and only adds more autoattacks, it is pretty damn useless. No matter how good I am with autoattacks and melee in general, this falls flat on it's face and belongs in D or even F tier.
If it enhanced the autoattacks in some way and there were a max of 1 sec cooldown, yea, it would be better, but it doesn't, so it sucks big time.
Incendiary Terror should be in A tier instead of Quick Strikes.

Comment by Kondin

Arcanist's Edge is getting some hate it really doesn't deserve. Its proc deals far more damage than the proc of Hailstorm, and until your haste is considerably high, Hailstorm's "cooldown" will be longer than the cooldown of Arcanist's Edge.

Remix: Mists of Pandaria Tinker Gem Tier List

Contribute