Newbies guide to supporting gems

I've been noticing a lot of people asking what support works with what skill. or what support is best with whatever skill.

since this is such frequently asked question I thought i'd do a small beginner's guide on how to tell certain things.

over time i'll also add more to this guide about what each item is best situated for which skill or situation sorted by situation.

so lets get started.

1. What support works with what?

The first thing you must know about is the keywords. when you hover over a gem, you'll get it's statistics and details. under the name of the gem, you'll noticed a few words, though some may not have any at all, these are keywords. on a skill it'll describe the type of skill it is and what attributes it has. while a support gem will have the same but instead these keywords will determine what skills they will effect. if there is no keyword on that gem, then that means that gem will effect all skills.

so in order to know if a certain support gem will work with a specific skill, you must look at the support gem, and make sure that the skill that is getting supported by this gem has every single keyword in that ability.

though there are a few exception to this.
1. if the keyword is of an element(fire, cold, lightning) then this support gem will only affect the damage portion of that element. for instance, you can put chance to ignite on arc, but arc will only ignite if there is fire damage from say anger aura. or you can put this on cleave if you happen to have added fire damage on your weapon.
2. if the description of the skill refers to spell or attack, even if it is not in the keyword, it still applies as that keyword. for example, iron grip does not say attack in it's keyword, but the description says that it'll apply strength's % melee bonus damage to projectile ATTACKS, thus this support will only work on attacks.
3. even though spell totem does not have the keyword "spell" in it, the totem can only support spells.

2. Spells vs Attacks

This is a big topic that many doesnt notice. this is a keyword to show what type of damage skill each are. Spells are skills that will have their own base damage and is not influenced by the weapon's base damage. where as attack skills will have their damage based on the weapon's attack. thats basically how you tell the difference. most support gems will only affect one type of damage skill such as casting speed and attack speed. and some will affect both such as added elemental damage.

so be careful when assuming one is another, most common mistakes are Ethereal knives and power siphon.

3. Minions

Minions are a special case. even though they do not say attack on them, the minions themselves have attacks of their own. so all attack support gems will apply to all minions, same with spell support gems for specters who uses spells. support gems when used with minions will actively affect the minion's damage capabilities, but will only affect the minion and will have no effect on you at all. so if you linked a life on hit onto a zombie, that zombie will now gain life every time they hit, but you will not gain any of that effect. but if you linked them with increase rarity or quantity support gem, then that value is added to your own and thus any kills that supported minion gets, will assume it had your total rarity and quantity including the support gem.

4. Stacking
Support gems of the same name will never stack up and will only take the highest level support of that name. though multiple support gems of the same type will stack for instance Lesser multiple Projectile and Greater Multiple projectiles, even though they do the same type of job, they will stack and give you 6 additional projectiles, but at a steep cost and a very steep damage reduction. same goes for any elemental damage you plan to stack onto an ability.

also you can have multiple skills linked to multiple support gems, thus each skill all the support gems equipped. though this will limit you to how many support gems you can have supporting each skill based on the amount of links you have. for instance if you have a 6 linked chest piece, you can either have 1 skill with 5 supports, or 5 skills with 1 support, or any combination of the 2.

and thats about all you need to know about how to tell if a support gem will be linked to a skill.

reserved