PoE 2 Guide: Meta Gems

A Meta Gem is a special type of Skill Gem that can have other Skill Gems socketed into it. Meta Gems mostly consist of Trigger-based abilities that reserve Spirit, such as Cast on Freeze, but can also include some manual-use abilities too.

Energy

Trigger-based Meta Gems use a mechanic called Energy as a resource counter to determine when a Spell is Triggered, or how many times it will be Triggered when it's used. Energy is gained upon meeting a specific condition set by the Meta Gem.

For example Cast on Ignite will gain and store Energy whenever you Ignite an enemy, and upon reaching maximum Energy it will automatically Trigger all socketed Spells. Maximum Energy is determined by the combined total base cast time of the Spells socketed in the Meta Gem.

Enemy Power

Enemy Power or Monster Power is a mechanic that assigns a value to a monster based on their Rarity, and their difficulty relative to other monsters. The weakest monsters may have as little as 0.5 base Power, while stronger monsters will have between 2 and 3 base Power. These Power values are then multiplied against a monster's Rarity value to determine the Power of that monster.

• Normal (White): 1
• Magic (Blue): 2
• Rare (Yellow): 5
• Unique (Named Bosses) always have 20 Power

For example, the Rare monster highlighted below may have 2 Power based on their difficulty, which is then multiplied by 5 due to being Rare. Therefore this Rare monster has 10 Power.

Triggering a Skill

The Energy counter of a Meta Gem will be reset to 0 after Triggering the socketed Spell(s). Note: you still need to pay any associated resource cost when Triggering Skills, typically Mana.

Spirit Reservation

Trigger-based Meta Gems have a Spirit reservation based on the Gem. For example, Barrier Invocation reserves 60 Spirit. These Gems are also considered to be Persistent Buffs and therefore can be supported by Persistent Buff Support Gems such as Clarity, as long as you have enough additional Spirit to reserve. Note: Support Gems with a Cost Multiplier do not increase Spirit reservation.

Tip: check out our guide on Persistent Buffs to learn about these Skills!

Meta Gems are not limited to just Trigger-based Skills. There are also Meta Gems which essentially function as customisable abilities.

For example, Ancestral Warrior Totem is a Skill that summons a Totem that will use any socketed Mace Skills.

Since Meta Gems allow Skill Gems to be placed into their sockets, any Support Gems that you socket into these Skills will naturally apply to both the Meta Gem and any Skill Gem(s) if able.

For example, if you place Persistence into an Ancestral Warrior Totem Gem that's using Earthquake, the 40% More Skill Effect Duration modifier will apply to both the duration of the summoned Totem and the duration of Earthquake's Jagged Ground.

Additionally, there are some Support Gems that can only apply to Meta Gems, such as Impetus.