AeroWow

We have two meta gems to choose from as DPS Warriors:

Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (CSD)
Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (RED)

Now, obviously Critical Strike Rating is a better stat for us than Agility. Given that the stats come in the same dose with either meta, the Chaotic seems to easily beat out the Relentless, and as such, has been hailed by many as the premiere meta gem for quite while.

However, all things are not equal. The winner is decided by the meta gem requirement.

21 Crit ; Requires 2 Blue gems
21 Agi ; Requires 1 Red, 1 Yellow, 1 Blue

As the Nightmare Tear contributes more to total DPS (10 Str, 10 Agi) than its closest Blue component competitor in terms of DPS contribution (be it Puissant, Sovereign, or even Guardian’s, depending on your spec and gear), it is your default first gem to meet any meta requirement. With the CSD, you also need one more blue socket, which will be one of the aforementioned Purple gems. Now, this is important: the Nightmare Tear alone covers the entire RED meta requirement by counting as one Red, one Yellow and one Blue component, all in one fell swoop.

Since we’re assuming that you’re using one Nightmare Tear independent of meta choice, the Chaotic is now at a disadvantage, because it still has yet to cover one additional Blue component gem. To minimize this con, the additional Blue gem should almost always be able to pick up a socket bonus that would otherwise be ignored. The real comparison now looks like so:

21 Crit ; Half of a blue gem component (15 Stam), random socket bonus
21 Agi ; Half of a red gem component (10 Str/ArP/Exp)

Because you don’t need to socket another blue gem, you have an entire half a gem socket that can convert the otherwise “wasted” blue component gem into tasty Red component goodness.

There are certainly a number of situations where the CSD wins out. As the socket bonuses that reward socketing Blue increase (which will naturally occur, due to more gem slots existing in later gear – the more gem slots on an item, the greater the reward for meeting the socket bonuses, regardless of the color of the gems required), the better the CSD becomes, due to the increased reward for picking up those socket bonuses. However, the RED simply outperforms for the vast majority of gear setups.

As a final note, make sure that you always put the Nightmare Tear in a Blue socket, and choose the one that provides the best socket bonus. Only choose a Yellow socket if there are no good socket bonuses available through Blue sockets. You can use Rawr to quickly optimize your gemming, just mark the RED and the Nightmare Tear as available (green diamond).