focus level 6 - seems to be better than level 7 skill-wise, and all other levels are worse replenish level 7 - 80% of the maximum of all percentage-based skills IIRC is reached at level 7, the further investments are worse. Forge level 7 - the same, and actually it's not worth putting points for mastery, you will only get 4% more. Dual mastery 7 - a must have for damage Orange mastery 7 or 9, whatever suits you more, having a free grade 3 orange and micromanage the other gems, or start with two grade 2 and have more skill points to spare. A good starting mana leech ability helps lots. Red mastery is unavailable at level 30... oh well, let's wait. Anyway it's only useful for traps, but it does some great job once you have it at level 5 for +2 targets. Note that even if a R/* gem in a trap is not displaying red component, it's still there and active. Tower builder - well, if your level has some towers in place, you might not put points in there, otherwise it's advisable to spare points for level 6. So... there are 18+21+21+21+30=111 points spent, you have 145. I'd advise maxing dual mastery first, then putting the remainder into trap specials if you want, or into tower builder and any other mastery you might need (like lime, 28% chance to extra hit is very good), level 1 actually will do.
random_player_of_ag Once you get red mastery, it's better to put R/O and R/B gems in traps rather than B/O or G/O. The gems in traps are not for doing damage, but for specials to act, and red mastery will give your gems extra targets beyond what's normally red component gives, you will have 2 targets (and display) at some 16.5 splash radius, and 3 targets for a maxed component. If a gem does not display red component while in the trap, but you have red mastery, its addition to targets is applied anyway.
davemando1: 40% extra mana from mana gems (level 7 skill) might be quite handy. The most important reason to get orange mastery are those gems you get at start if the level itself doesn't have orange gems available (like that level in question). With proper use of gem bombs (anger and transmuting gems) you can set up quite good mana farm to get tons of mana.
Once you get red mastery, it's better to put R/O and R/B gems in traps rather than B/O or G/O. The gems in traps are not for doing damage, but for specials to act,
I know thats why I wrote those combos.
Though I' having second thoughts on the G/O. That one is only good in swarm modes.
I think they are useless, to slow or stop monsters I prefer Red and blue. A good combo would be blue and cyan for defensive traps. Near the traps offensive gems.
swarms with poison - well I still go for R/O there for some big nice gems in the end however, the most score in swarm more comes from early calls, about 30%... the rest is angering, and having some 3-4 evenly spaced R/G traps realy help. Yep, pure poison is way stronger, but dual bonuses give you damage and red mastery makes you sure that the entire flow gets poisoned, not just one monster and 5 ran past your trap hiding in its shadow.
