[Baalz]

Not to be argumentative, but what do you use any gems for outside of combat, summoning, and forging? Assuming I've got national air mages to use them air gems are often one of my most strategic gems.

Cloud trapeze - this spell at A2 is generally much more accessable than an S3 for teleport, which means you can move a lot more of your mages provided you've got the gems. Coincidentally, a lot of the national A2+ mages make good solo thugs - Vanheim/Helhiem, Eriu, Lanka, Formoria, etc. If not thuggin', then dropping in to lay down wind guide/arrow fend or more optimistically mass flight/fog warriors/wrathful skies. Or:

Thunderstrike. A2 mages are drastically more common than A3 ones. One owl quill = 5 thunderstrikes = a tremendous amount of damage out of research mages. Or better yet, storm + storm power...

Seeking arrow = pure awesome if you've got mages to spam it and A gems to dump in large numbers.

I've got lots more "good" uses for air gems, but those three are my "great" ones that I tend to jealously hoard my air gems over.