Sage, I dismiss the +10% damage all and +5% crit rate gem because, by tier 5 rings, I can almost always do better. Let's really break that down. For most characters (that I play, at least), damage comes in 1-3 elements. Often physical if it's a physical class, but even casters that aren't alchemists or archmages have limited selection. What that means is that +10% damage all really translates into +10% damage light and darkness (anorthil), or physical and temporal (PM), or mind (solipsist), or whatever. Likewise for the +5% crit rate. Unless you're a melee-mage, you probably only benefit from one of the three crit chances. By tier 5, I almost always have a ring or amulet that grants me more than +10% damage in my primary damage type, and it's not uncommon for me to see more than 5% crit rate, AND stack that with stat boosts, HP, or any of the other bonuses you can get from jewelry egos (and I like Mastery, I find it useful quite often). Remember, by the time you've got tier 5 gems and a tier 5 white ring or amulet, you've probably taken on Vor Armory already.
That's a really well thought out argument.
The problem is, it's not actually so.
As mentioned, there's one very rare ring(Mountain) that boosts physical resistance. It turns out it's the only ring that boosts physical
damage as well; Very few other ring types will actually amount to anything similar in physical damage, and they tend to be the very top artifact physical rings(Glory of the Pride, Ring of the War Master) and I object strongly to gem rings having to compete with that. The only other physical options raise raw physical power(pathetic), physical penetration(actually good, but only very late, and only shows up very late, and cannot linearly be compared to +damage%), and Strength(much worse impact).
So that cuts out physical classes and, in passing, Paradox Mage since they use physical damage(And Doomed, and Mindslayer, both of which use it more.). We'll also toss out all the classes with more than four elements-in your favor, that is, assuming that everyone buffs only one element(not necessarily optimal, probably outright damaging with some classes like Wyrmic) for those.
What does that leave, when you ditch physical damage and ignore fighter/mages and mind/physical combos-which, as you noted, benefit from the spread crits% more than usual? Let's say Alchemist here, Archmage, Necromancer(Darkness mono mostly, though technically they run three elements and I believe their summons get boosts to Fire/Physical), Anorithil(Light/Dark), Corruptor(Blight, mostly), Reaver(Blight, almost entirely), Solipsist, if I squint(I like Distortion, but people run them entirely without it.), and Oozemancer(Nature/Acid).
Eight classes. About a third of the classes in the game. So yeah, it's partially what you're running, based on your examples.
(Here's an added bonus for you; "of the mind"(mind boost), "of time"(temporal boost) and "of blight"(blight boost) are the only rings that boost those elements and have the same rarity as "of the mountain". Ditto the arcane boost ring, but A: There's an artifact ring that specifically boosts that, and B: Only some small subset Archmage builds really focus Arcane.)
+5 Mag, +5 Wil, +5% spell crit chance, and +10 mental save would be very nice for most casters, even at tier 5. +10 armor, +10 defense, +5% resist all, and +5% physical damage would be good for most any meleer.
Why is your mage example so much worse than your physical one? I genuinely would not take that over the current alldamage gem(whereas, the physical one is clearly a linear and drastic boost to the current resist gems.).
Are you actually under the mistaken impression that +5 Magic does more for your offense than +10% alldamage would(Or that +5 Magic much of anything notable to support spells/sustains?)? That would explain a lot about this conversation, I think, considering how highly you seem to value raw stat bonuses. Regardless, that's not true outside of the very, very earlygame(where Magic is 1-to-1 one point of magic, one point of converted spellpower.).
Also, I'm kinda saddened that I made a suggestion for the improvement of gem rings and you ignored it.
