Path of Exile 2 ships 407 skill gems in the cached poe2db list table, and the distribution is brutally top-heavy: 204 of them sit in level band 1, while band 14 holds just 15. If you have ever wondered why your first hour with a new character feels like an embarrassment of options and act 3 feels like a drought, that ratio is the reason.
This page maps every skill gem in the local dataset onto its band, its attribute colour and the character level at which that band becomes cuttable, so you can plan a build around what actually exists at your level rather than around a guide written for level 90.
The ten bands and what they hold
The list table records a gem level band for every skill gem. It is not the same ladder as the gemcutting tiers — the cutting table uses seven odd tiers (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13), while the gem list uses ten bands including 4, 8 and 14. Read the band as “the first gem level this skill can appear at”.
| Band | Gems in band | Character level needed to cut that gem level | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 204 | 1 | Skeletal Sniper, Lightning Arrow, Ice Nova, Spark, Rolling Slam |
| 3 | 29 | 6 | Armour Breaker, Bone Cage, Enfeeble, Essence Drain, Fangs of Frost |
| 4 | 20 | 10 | Arctic Armour, Ghost Dance, Herald of Ash, Herald of Thunder, War Banner |
| 5 | 28 | 14 | Arc, Barrage, Bonestorm, Devour, Electrocuting Arrow |
| 7 | 28 | 22 | Artillery Ballista, Bind Spectre, Detonate Dead, Earthshatter |
| 8 | 17 | 26 | Barkskin, Blasphemy, Blink, Cast on Minion Death, Combat Frenzy |
| 9 | 23 | 31 | Dark Effigy, Despair, Detonating Arrow, Forge Hammer |
| 11 | 21 | 41 | Ball Lightning, Bone Offering, Comet, Firestorm |
| 13 | 22 | 52 | Ancestral Cry, Cluster Grenade, Eye of Winter, Flameblast |
| 14 | 15 | 58 | Archmage, Berserk, Cast on Critical, Trinity, Sacrifice |
The character-level column is the real gate. A band 13 gem sits at gem level 13, which the gemcutting table ties to character level 52 — well past the point where most players have settled on a main skill. That is why “just use a late gem” advice fails in practice: you cannot cut it until act 3 at the earliest, and often not until maps.
Two bands deserve attention because they are easy to miss. Band 4 is dominated by persistent buffs, heralds and guard skills — Arctic Armour, Ghost Dance, Herald of Ash, Herald of Blood, Herald of Thunder, War Banner, Wind Dancer, Withering Presence — 20 entries of setup, not damage. Band 8 is 17 entries skewed toward trigger, meta and mobility gems: Blasphemy, Blink, Cast on Minion Death, Combat Frenzy, Barrier Invocation. Neither band gives you a new attack. Both reshape how your existing attacks behave.
Attribute colours, and the 215 that have none
Attribute is the second axis in the table, and it is the one that decides whether your gem fits a blue, green or red socket.
| Attribute | Skill gems | Support gems |
|---|---|---|
| Red (strength) | 31 | 194 |
| Green (dexterity) | 54 | 153 |
| Blue (intelligence) | 107 | 183 |
| No attribute recorded | 215 | 27 |
Read those two columns side by side and the asymmetry is obvious. Skill gems lean heavily toward having no attribute at all — 215 of 407, more than half — because weapon-family skills such as crossbow ammunition and quarterstaff strikes are bound to the weapon, not to a stat. Support gems do the opposite: 530 of 557 carry a colour, and red is the largest group at 194.
For a build planner this matters more than it looks. A dexterity character has 54 green skill gems to choose from but 153 green supports, so the support side of a green build is never short of options. A strength character has 31 red skill gems — the smallest active pool in the game — against 194 red supports, which is why strength builds tend to be defined by a handful of skills pushed hard rather than by variety.
Blue is the deep end of the active pool at 107 skill gems, and it is the only colour where the active count is anywhere near the support count.
Reading the first hour against the table
At character level 1 you can cut gem level 1, which is band 1: 204 options. That is not a choice problem, it is a filter problem — most of those 204 are weapon-family skills you cannot use without the matching weapon, and a large share are trigger or meta gems that do nothing until you have something to trigger.
The practical filter is tag, not name. Of the 407 skill gems, the tag counts are AoE 263, Attack 172, Duration 168, Buff 128, Persistent 119, Spell 110, Projectile 90, Melee 81. If you want a self-cast damage skill at level 1, you are looking for Spell or Attack plus a damage tag (Physical 78, Fire 74, Cold 70, Lightning 67, Chaos 33), and that intersection is a few dozen gems, not 204.
The quote that best captures how the band system behaves in play comes straight from the source entry for a band 1 minion gem:
“Skeletal Sniper — Activate to summon long-ranged, Reviving Skeletal Snipers that can fire a gas arrow on Command.” — poe2db.tw skill gem entry, cached in
src/data/poe2-skill-gems.json
A band 1 gem with that text is why the early bands are crowded: the game front-loads complete, playable archetypes. The later bands add amplifiers — Comet, Archmage, Trinity — rather than new skeletons.
What the bands mean for a league start
Take a band 1 damage skill and stop shopping. 204 entries, but the ones that clear the campaign are a small subset. Lightning Arrow, Ice Nova, Spark and Rolling Slam all sit in band 1 and all appear in their weapon group’s tier 1 cutting pool.
Expect the band 4 support wave around character level 10. That is when the 20 persistent buffs and heralds become available, and it is the single biggest power spike in the campaign that is not a new attack.
Treat band 13 and 14 as endgame content. Those 37 gems need character level 52 and 58 respectively. Planning a build around Archmage or Trinity is fine; expecting it to function in act 2 is not.
Count supports before you commit. With 557 supports against 407 skills, the support pool is 150 entries larger. Your build’s ceiling is usually set by which supports fit your tags, not by which skill you picked. The support gems guide breaks that pool down by level and tag.
For the mechanics of cutting an uncut gem into one of these 407 entries, the uncut gems guide covers the 20 gem levels and the eight weapon groups. The raw skill table is browsable on the skill gems database, and the level and socket ladder lives on the gem levels and uncut gems page.
If you are still inside the campaign, the beginner guide sequences these bands against the act structure, the ascendancy guide covers the level 22 and 38 trial gates that land between band 7 and band 8, and the minion build guide shows what a single-tag build looks like when you commit to the 45 Minion-tagged skill gems.