Skill Gems

Skill gems are equippable abilities. They are separate from gear, occupy automation slots, gain levels, and can carry their own affixes. A champion uses equipped skills automatically whenever their targeting and cooldown conditions are satisfied.

Active skills

The roster has 71 enabled active gems. Sixty of them form a matrix: six weapon families, five damage schools, and one single-target plus one area/clear gem in each cell. Eleven more sit outside the matrix.

Every active gem requires character level 1. Every one carries equal drop weight inside the 60% active-gem share. There is no character-level gate after acquisition.

The matrix gate

A matrix gem names one exact loadout requirement, not a tag list. The gem is inactive unless the equipped hands form that complete legal configuration.

Requirement	Class	Needs
One-handed sword	Fighter	A one-handed sword and a shield
Two-handed axe	Brute	A two-handed axe and an empty off-hand
Dagger pair	Rogue	A dagger in each hand
Bow and quiver	Ranger	A bow and a quiver
Wand and talisman	Arcanist	A wand and a talisman
Scepter	Spellblade	A scepter with a shield or a talisman

A dagger pair needs two daggers, not one dagger and an empty hand. A bow needs its quiver. A two-handed axe requirement can never be satisfied by a bow. The two shield gems need a real shield, and a talisman never counts as one.

Every matrix gem deals 100% of one damage school. There is no residual physical component to a fire, cold, lightning, or chaos matrix gem.

The eleven gems outside the matrix

• Shield gems (2): Shield Stun and Shield Charge. Both need a real shield, so the Fighter and the shield Spellblade are the only users.
• Shouts (3): Vanguard’s Cry and Ruin Cry need a melee weapon in hand, so the Fighter, Brute, Rogue, and Spellblade use them and the Ranger and Arcanist do not. Bloodwake Roar needs a two-handed axe, so only the Brute uses it.
• Auras (6): Iron Choir, Quickening Current, Prismatic Covenant, Crimson Standard, Miasma Mantle, and Hushed Dominion. Every class uses these, and one runs at a time. They are the only active gems with no weapon condition at all.

Each skill also carries tags such as attack, spell, melee, projectile, area, channel, and a damage school. Tags no longer gate a matrix gem. They still decide which affixes, supports, and Discipline effects apply.

You may own, store, trade, craft, and socket any gem with any class. An off-class gem is inactive and states the exact configuration it needs.

The Skill Gem Index lists every gem’s loadout requirement, timing, mana use, coefficient, tags, and special behavior.

Attached support gems

Every active-gem instance has four support slots. No slot is free. A new gem starts with zero unlocked slots and buys them at gem levels 1, 5, 10, and 20 for 1,000, 10,000, 75,000, and 500,000 gold, which is 586,000 gold in total. Supports modify only the active gem to which they are attached and gain their own levels while riding that gem.

Compatibility uses the active gem’s tags and its delivery shape. For example, Increased Area requires both area and hit, so it works on damaging area skills but not on an aura that happens to have the area tag. A support whose benefit needs a circle is also rejected by a shape that has no circle: a strike, a charge line, and a beam channel have no area to resize. Duplicate supports and supports from the same conflict group cannot share one active gem. Every enabled active gem keeps at least 12 compatible supports.

See Support Gems for slot costs, compatibility, leveling, and build advice. The Support Gem Index lists all 80 supports and every active skill each can modify.

Channels, shouts, and auras

Channels pay mana per tick and repeat for a fixed base duration. Their listed damage coefficient is per tick. Attack and hybrid channels scale their cadence with attack speed; spell channels scale with cast speed. A channel can end early if the champion cannot pay its next tick.

Shouts deal no hit damage. They apply a timed buff to the champion or a timed debuff to nearby enemies, then wait through a longer cooldown. Some shouts require a minimum number of nearby enemies before the AI spends them; a boss satisfies that gate alone.

Auras are persistent and open to every class. Each reserves 25% of maximum mana, occupies a skill-gem slot, and affects allies or enemies within five tiles. Auras do not hit, crit, or trigger on-hit effects.

Automation slots

A champion can equip multiple active gems. The AI evaluates the equipped skills during combat and uses available skills against valid targets. Skills do not wait for a manual key press.

Cooldown, mana cost, range, area, and targeting behavior all matter. A build with only long-cooldown skills may spend too much time making basic attacks.

Gem levels

Skill gems earn experience while used. Higher levels improve the skill’s main numbers. Equipment and affixes may also grant gem-level bonuses.

Gem level is only one axis of power. A lower-level gem with well-matched affixes can be more useful than a higher-level gem whose tags do not fit the build.

Gem affixes

Gems can roll up to two prefixes and two suffixes. Common examples include:

• increased skill or damage-school damage;
• critical chance and critical damage;
• cooldown reduction;
• increased area radius;
• extra projectiles or chains;
• ailment chance and duration;
• gem experience gain.

Signature and Mythic affixes appear only at deeper progression gates. They can change how a skill behaves, not only increase a number.

Building a useful loadout

Combine roles. A general clearing skill, a focused single-target skill, and a utility or control option give the AI better answers than several nearly identical attacks.

Every gem you can use comes from your own class matrix, the universal shouts and auras, and the shield gems when you carry a shield. Your class never changes weapon family, so your matrix never changes. Pick the damage school you can gear for, then hold one single-target gem and one area gem of that school.

A gem drop from another class’s matrix is trade material. It is never an upgrade.