First ever topic here so if it is redundant I am sorry but searching didn't really turn up what I had in mind.

Now, what I want to get some input on is what gems should i choose for my sockets? Currently i am mostly just stacking agility, but after switching to BM I am wondering if it would be better for me to get +AP and Crit rating gems instead.

I have always thought that getting agility nets me more in total then getting pure AP gems since it gives me both AP and crit and also benefit from BoK, but after switching to BM I got to thinking that maybe agility isn't all that important and that I would gain both more crit and AP from getting specific gems for each.

Thank you in advance.

2x 8 agility gems give you 16 rap and 8.84 crit rating (16/40=0.4%crit, 0.4*22.1=8.84).
1x 16 attack power and 1x 8 crit gems give you 16 rap and 8 crit.

If your main focus is PVE, also keep in mind that agility benefits from Blessing of King.

And you won't have to resocket your agi gear if you decide to spec survival later

Its an interesting question and one of tried to figure out myself on many an occasion through excessive spreadsheeting.

Thinking from a pure 'which will give me more dps' standpoint you can work this out in 2 ways using one of the spreadsheets from the other thread(Lactose's spreadsheet has a handy section for this).

1. Unbuffed - this is your stats with no outside influence and no raidbuffing
When i plug in all values into my spreadsheet(2194RAP, 22.8% crit) I get 1 agility to be roughly equal to 1.88RAP in terms of pure dps(1 critrating = 1.61AP)

2. Raidbuffed - Now, for raidbuffing i've assumed the following:
a) Blessing of Might
b) Blessing of Kings
c) The 'new' hunters mark of 440AP
d) Elixir of Major Agility
e) 20 Agi food
For this setup i end up with 1Agi = 2.04AP(1 critrating = 1.98AP)
The main reason for this disparity is that most raidbuffs consist of pure AP boosts, which make crit and agility a lot more valuable for any given setup.

I always stack Agility gems because i equip myself for progression raids, not unbuffed content.

This is for my build (7/43/11) but will not differ overly with other specs apart from a really crit-heavy survival build

(Assuming 15% mitigation on a mob and a simple steady rotation substituting multi when off CD)

That's a bogus comparison. crit rating is by far the least effective stat (until 4000 rap?). The winners are AP and AGI, so you compare 2 AP gems to 2 AGI gems. For me, it used to be (I haven't compared lately) that w/ MM spec and blues (1800 RAP), AP was the clear winner. Kings, consumables, upgraded 2.1 epics + hunter's mark, you could make an argument for MM agi. With BM, agi looks even better, and of course surv+LR+EW it's a no-brainer.

It's also tempting to socket agi even if it's slightly worse than ap, because you have the freedom to experiment with surv spec, and perhaps there's more than enough benefit from GFTT to cover any unbuffed difference.

Well, the OP asked "if it would be better for me to get +AP and Crit rating gems instead," so I responded accordingly.

Even comparing 1 agi vs. 2 ap, 1 agi scales the best in the range where the gears (and the stats) are attainable. Ap would always be the better bet before level 70 and soon after, but agi takes over as your gear gets progressively better. Crit, however, only overtakes agi when you have insane ap and very low crit.

To throw a pebble in the gears...

Our RAP increases our pets AP.
Since he specifically mentioned BM, it should be considered.

Our pets get .44 AP from a 2AP gem, but only .22AP from an 1Agi gem.
It makes the math of which gem provides more combined DPS a bit more complex.

If I use the guidline of 1Agi and 2AP being roughly equal DPS, I'm inclined to use Agi gems until my crit% is where I want it then use AP gems in any remaining slots since AP scales a bit better to my pet.

At the risk of having too much hubris, Beast Mastery Bible addresses the crit rate vs focus regen in more depth. As Cheeky said, if you've got 2/2 BD and 2/2 GFTT, you don't need more than 20% crit to keep a ravager/cat autocasting claw/bite. You'll never get enough crit (well, probably never - maybe it's possible with survival) to keep a windserpent autocasting LB. The ceiling for ROI on crit in terms of pet scaling with GFTT is relatively low, you're better off with AP gems with respect to pets.

not mention the fact that claw/bite/LB is a very small contribution to the pets dps. imo the most efficient way to increase your pets dps as a bm is increasing his white dmg which is from AP.
i stopped going after crit in pve after the LB nerf since after all trying to increase the pool of focus for my pet for bites/claw/lb is contra productive since the skills doesnt scale anyway and his yellow dmg will eventually be such a low part of his total dmg its completely pointless to do it.

right now im switching over from my crit gear (is at around 24% crit) to aim more for pure ap and just take the crit i get naturally while going for the highest pure ap gear. blizzard had the chance to add a interesting aspect a bms dps output by having pets yellow damage actually mean something by having their natively lower white dps being offset by their higher yellow dmg. however they clearly failed when they removed the scaling (effectively) from all skills and haven't added anything to improve it. another nail in the coffin for pet normalization which effectively reduced the number of competitive end game rading pets to 3 (cat, raptor and ravager)

next patch even further reinstate it when we get cobra reflexes which improves the scaling of our pets dmg from AP even more.

as a long time BM hunter im giddy of anticipation for next patch pve wise (and crying tears of qq over the pvp part for hunters). but im sad to see how they time after time say they are aiming for more diversity among pets all the while their actions goes in the completely opposite direction by making less and less pets viable (RP values aside) and having less and less difference among the different pet classes utterly destroying any flavor and feeling of a specific type of pet.

I was all set to get uppity and dispute this, but when I check my WWS for Gruul kills (admittedly not a great fight for pets) specials make up only 20-24% of my pet's total damage (claw + bite versus white damage). It's a good point; AP scales white damage, which is an even more convincing argument for AP over AGI/CRIT than the crit/gftt issue.

The three "best" focus dumps (Gore, Claw, and Lightning Breath) either don't get any bonus from AP (either the hunter's or the pet's) or have been nerfed so badly they might as well not get any bonus from AP. Bite also doesn't get any bonus from AP.

And as far as I know, that stupid Growl bug is still around and hasn't been addressed. When I was levelling my new pet it had serious aggro issues because I am BM.