
The sockets are a way of customizing your gear, putting the bonuses of your choice. In Diablo II, the maximum number of sockets depends on the level of the monster that dropped the item: most of the time, up to 3 sockets at Normal, up to 5 at Nightmare and up to 6 at Hell items can never have more sockets than the number of tiles they occupy in the Inventory (that is, 1x2 and 1x3 smaller weapons are limited to 2 and 3 sockets, whereas 2x3 and 2x4 weapons can have up to 6). The number of sockets per item type is limited (up to 6 in Diablo II and up to 3 in Diablo III). Names of socketable items are displayed in gray, and some Magic and Rare Items may have sockets as affixes. Each socket may only hold one socketable item.

The number of grey circles on the item corresponds with the number of sockets it has. In the User Interface you will see grey circles. These 3 kind of items won't have effects unless you place them into a Socket in the item. Socketing (or to socket) refers to the process of performing the named action.Ī socketable item means both an item that has sockets and an item that can be inserted into a socket.Ī socket is a placeholder for Gems, Runes and Jewels. Generally, sockets refer to 'holes' in items that can be used to insert other special items in those, thereby adding their properties to the properties of the item that holds the sockets. I would honestly prefer if Bliz added some more unique weapon legendary gems, but whatever.Socket can have two meanings. So yes - it helps - at the sacrifice of bonus damage.

Not including of course if you have a maxed red gem at 4.1% exp bonus and then I’m unsure if the multiple kill bonus exp is calculated too, such as, if you reach diabolical and get 4x if this becomes 48,000,000 bonus exp and then multiplied again by 4.1% and then even multiplied further by 5% if you have the Cain set. Let’s say for the sake of math you’ve leveled it up to 10,000 exp per kill.Īnd lets say you average 100 kills every 5 minutes (some higher on big kill bonuses some lower on downtime). Level 60-70 takes a bit longer but usually no more than 30-60 minutes. With a high level gem of ease you can melt any enemies on low torment levels for new characters and get to level 60 in literally like 5-10 minutes. The gem, as others have mentioned, is to rapidly level up new characters, as evident from its level 25 bonus of making any weapon its in to a level 1 char.
