Gem Socketing 101

[Maoileoin]

I finally got my first toon to 70 the other day, a warlock, and am working on my gear to start raiding Kara and progressing towards the higher raids. I've kinda got a feel for what I need to put in my gem sockets, but I want to make sure I am on the right track. Right now, the only piece I have worth putting blue gems in is my FSW shoulders. The socket bonus is +3 spell hit. From what I gather +spell hit is the first thing I should focus on to get hit capped at 202 (lower for affliction... 76?). No problem with the yellow socket, I threw in a +8 spell hit yellow gem. Now the blue socket, I can't seem to find anything that would make up the +8 spell hit with the +3 spell hit socket bonus, i.e. +5 spell hit or +6 spell hit in a blue, green, or purple gem. So i threw in another +8 spell hit yellow gem and ignored the socket bonus. In fact, I couldn't really find anything in those gems other than maybe +12 stamina that would warrant putting anything else in it.

So I guess my question is, did I do the correct thing or should I have put something else in it? It killed me to give up the socket bonus to +spell hit, but I couldn't justify putting something else.

What order do I focus on improving my stats... hit, spell damage, crit, stamina, intellect?

[Beruen]

Depending on the socket bonus, I tend to use Glowing Nightseye in blue sockets. STA isn't bad since you'll probably lifetap in Kara, and there are a few fights there where the whole raid is taking damage, but not enough so to make going with a pure STA gem worth it. There isn't a STA/Spell Hit gem that I know of, so I wind up going with spell damage there. Personally, in this case, I'd go for the socket bonus if you're affliction and can reach the hit cap with Suppression. EDIT: or if you're not affliction and can reach the hit cap without Suppresion, though that usually isn't the case when you're just starting Kara.

As for affliction and spell hit, affliction can mitigate 10% of spell resist chance with talents, but only for affliction spells. Your shadowbolt and, more importantly, your soul shatter are unaffected. So, get what spell hit you can without sacrificing too much of everything else, and pick up the rest of your spell hit through the talents. You need 16% to be hit capped on raid bosses. So if you have less than 8% hit from hit rating, max out Suppression. If you've got at least 8%, but not quite 10%, then you'll want 4 points there. And so on, up till you actually have 16% hit from hit rating.

Also note that since there's such a drastic difference between the spell hit needed for a lvl 72 trash mob and a lvl 73 instance boss (lvl 72 only requires 5% to be hit capped), a lot of players will have a few items that they swap out on bosses, so they have more spell damage on trash, and more spell hit on the bosses.

[draaco]

Do you have any suggestions for class based gem lists or priorities? It's somewhat obvious I need +heal on my Resto Shaman, but I just feel like I normal flounder in the AH rather than having an idea of what I should be after. For example I just got Earthsoul leggings in kara (yeah yeah leather, but I only had DPS legs before, so this is a big upgrade). I feel like my shaman really needs help in the HP department (6479 unbuffed) but it seems a waste to use +stam gems. Maybe this is best in the shaman forum - but to some extent I'm just curious on gem priorities when you know certain stats are lacking.