This is almost the only source of strategy/intelligence/"displaying mastery of the game" (to use one of Blizzard's terms) involved in gems/sockets. The only other time a DPS caster, for example, doesn't cram 19 spellpower in every single slot is when they need a little hit. The same mostly applies to melee except with hit and expertise being considerations.

Gemming is already pretty boring as it is, and taking out meta requirements would just make it even more uninteresting by removing even more decision making from the process.

The two main ways of making people interested in other gems would be either making socket bonuses better or making people care more about different stats. Removing meta requirements would be a step backwards, not forwards.

Best purple gem for a Marks hunter! (I'm pretty sure, I don't play my hunter too often any more)

Blizzard was just hedging their bets by making as many different stat combinations as they could, since they probably don't want a situation where EJ theorycrafts a fantastic hybrid gem that doesn't exist.

It just so happens that in the process of min/maxing you get to see a lot of stuff sacrificed on the altar of "Less than Optimal".

The assumption that only JC would be upgraded in a tiered fashion seems out of pattern. Blizzard can a introduce dungeon or faction reputation to facilitate the changes necessary for a wholesale upgrade to equalize the profession buffs.

I wonder whether they will go with 20 statpoints for epic gems or 24. 20 seems to be their original idea (cardinal rubies) though 24 points would allow them to balance the profession much more smoothly. For example using 24 points juwelcrafting would give exactly the same benefit as other professions (48 statpoints / 3 = 16) so epic gems would be 24 and dragon's eyes would be 40. When Blizzard only upgrades to 20 points epic gems, a dragon's eye will either be too weak (33 points) or too strong (34 points).

Anyway, Blizzard really has put some thought into those perk upgrades and we will also see if Blizzard considers the tailoring cloak enchants balanced or not.

Making epic gems give 24 points would obsolete the Storm Jewels. Given that Storm Jewels are "unique equipped" it would make sense if they are superior to regular epic gems.

On the other hand, giving Runed Scarlet Rubies (for example) 20, 21 or 22 spellpower would be a very marginal upgradeover the current +19. If epic gems are to be +24 spellpower, I hope they'll also upgrade Storm Jewels accordingly (+27?).

I'd say it is most likely that storm jewels have the same stat points as the new epic gem cuts, as [Eye of the Sea] and the PvP gems also had the same amount of stats as the MH/BT cuts in TBC.

Giving the new gems more stats than a stormjewel would indeed make no sense, however marginal upgrades have never been an issue for raiders (think about what MH/BT gems cost initially compared to blue gems, and yes they sure got sold).

Which proves my point about marginal upgrades not being a problem even more

But anyway, it is unsure at this moment how they are going to implement this. For example, in BC the epic gems from honor were only a few limited cuts and unique(1) for each of them. Now I'm not saying they're going to do this again, but just giving them away for 10k honor like current gems is unlikely. If a gem costs 70k honor, you bet it's going to cost you a lot on AH. As for badges, they might implement them costing like 50-75 badges, (or valor/conq badges) which would cause supply to dry up fairly quick after launch. Transmutation will probably mean an "Icy Prism" for alchemy, with a day or 2 cooldown and will likely be given a proper gem cost.

The only remaining "problem" then is prospecting which is unfortunately in near infinite supply. However, bringing the droprate of the epic gems down sufficiently will limit supply here (or at least drive costs up to come in line with other methods of acquiring these gems).

You're probably right Ingmar, as the Stormjewel stats do in fact match the datamined epic gems:

[Runed Stormjewel] = [Runed Cardinal Ruby]
[Brilliant Stormjewel] = [Brilliant King's Amber]
[Solid Majestic Zircon] = [Solid Stormjewel]

*Standard "not-yet-implemented, subject-to-change" disclaimer applies

Considering the purchasability with Emblems of Heroism--which everyone has about a billion of at this point if they want--I don't think these are going to be, nor intended to be, rare and valuable. I feel this is somewhat supported with where the cuts come from, that is "Tokens", not "world drops".

Using Valor emblems fails to solve the "problem" of getting people to run 5-mans with alts. And believe me, it's a problem. By making super trivial 5 mans a source of gems (super trivial for tier 8 geared raiders), you have spots opened up for newly 80 alts to get gear and badges from heroics and help accelerate them up to endgame. It's a win.