Awakened Gems Had More Than Just Higher Stats
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Now that we can see all of the new Exceptional support gems that replaced Awakened ones, I can't help but feel that we have lost more than gained.
In the livestream, the devs dismissed the loss of the Awakened gems like they had slightly higher stats and that was it. And the new Exceptional gems would give us more than that. No, not really. We didn't get more. We simply lost what we had. For example, my build used 3 Awakened gems: 1. Awakened Cold Penetration. It wasn't just a slightly higher resist penetration. At lv 5 that gem gave you Exposure on hit. And now it's gone. There is no Exceptional gem that does the same. 2. Awakened Cast While Channelling. It wasn't just channelling a little faster. At lv 5 it granted stun immunity while channelling. That was a very useful added effect. And now it's gone without replacement. 3. Awakened Hextouch. It allowed you to apply hexes to hexproof enemies. Now there is an exceptional Hexpass support that does it and also makes them unable to crit. So this added effect got a replacement. But it requires an extra gem slot and costs 50% more mana. So it's not a straight upgrade either. And the same is the case with a whole lot of Awakened support gems. They didn't just have slightly higher stats (and by the way, we didn't get any compensation for the loss of those extra stats). They all had extra effects at max level which are now simply gone. The devs talked about it like it was nothing special. But it was! I don't understand why the Awakened gems were removed. Why not just add the new Exceptional gems and keep the Awakened ones too? Why did we have to lose something so valuable? Bring the Awakened gems back! Last edited by Kelvynn#6607 on Mar 10, 2026, 11:34:52 AM Last bumped on Mar 11, 2026, 12:36:09 AM
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This is pretty much the same thing that happened many leagues ago when the player base lost all of their alternate quality gems (which numbered in the hundreds) and were replaced with the worse Transfigured gems (which is only a small fraction of the amount of alt quality gems we had in the past). The only difference here is our Awakened gems weren't outright deleted or 'converted to normal gems'.
Still, this change (amongst many others this time around) feel awful as hell for some players. GGG will always take away far more than what they actually give back, unfortunately. Pointless to give triple-A game companies any sort of constructive criticism without getting put on probation (or banned). GGG's downfall is drawing near.
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" man i miss those gems, so many cool interactions. as a chronic heister, when they were gone heist felt so empty. now i get to farm simplex amulets for... weeks. |
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I mean.....isn't that basically the point though?
It's a method of blanket-nerfing the game. It's happened before and it'll happen again. Exceptional gems are not meant to copy and word-for-word replace awakened gems: it is a complete CHANGE to the gem system. Sometimes that means more power, sometimes that means less. And you can bet that more exceptional gems will be coming in future patches. Starting anew....with PoE 2
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New exceptional gems would have been great in addition to awakened gems but not as a replacement for.
Best that I can describe the new gems is niche and quirky. Not all, of course, but replaced practical, functional, and easier to understand gem which is not great. From the intents, it looks like this system was designed to limit builds to one or two exceptional gems at most. I don't think that's a great model for end game progression. Mitigating as many map mods and monster modifiers as possible is already cringe enough. Numerical nerfs are as to be expected but removing options without providing new, alternative sources back feels bad. QoL removed: reflect immunity stun immunity while channeling hexproof More than I'm likely not aware of... We were sold a vision of new wonders but just got more maps to toss in the bin. |
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Personally I don't have much of a horse in this race yet, because I've been having so much fun with Battlesector lately that I've not gotten much past the mid 60s and/or end of campaign...but I can definitely see the grievance about the various build-enabling utility functions on a lot of the woke gems.
Woke elemental with attacks in particular is going to be a nuisance and a half to gear out for replacing. |
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Chaos/Poisons/DoTs lost alot of awakened gems, but GGG devs missed the point why those had so many awakened gems in the first place.
GGG didn't ever want to directly substantially buff Chaos/Poisons/DoTs, because those can be used as secondary source of damage. Instead they added all the awakened gems to shoehorn Chaos/Poisons/DoTs and limit them spilling outside. Awakened gems were a bandaid for Chaos/Poisons/DoTs that GGG refused to adress. I wouldn't be surprised if gems received yet another overhaul in next few years. |
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" right...except nothing on that list is QoL. It's power. You are muddling the two together. QoL are generally things that save you time or clicks, and NOT passive points or gearing mods or support skill usage. GGG has always wanted support gems to be less about just straight power, and more about mechanical differences and creativity. As most of you have already stated and spelled out: Awakened gems gave basically pure power. They didn't create new mechanics, they almost did the opposite: removed mechanics. New gems offer power befitting their rarity AND new mechanics, but with an eye towards not invalidating the need to gear and path appropriately. It's also not a surprise that they chose to release this new system alongside the ability to corrupt skill gems with an additional support, so that now every skill can (and should) be a 7L *Bear in mind that awakened gems were only introduced in 3.9 (2019). This is only about half of the life of the game. And many of those special level 5 stats and buffs came MUCH later. They have not been around a heck of a long time, and were due for an overhaul. Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Mar 10, 2026, 8:19:30 PM
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I think a lot of this will be covered by them dumping (hopefully) dozens of new gems per league.
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" Well that's assuming those players are still around and playing by the time GGG gets around to releasing new versions of THEIR preferred gems/playstyles. Pointless to give triple-A game companies any sort of constructive criticism without getting put on probation (or banned). GGG's downfall is drawing near.
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