On a full DEX build, Red gems for shield is a no-brainer if one goes the spear+shield route. If I were to invest in lv.7 gems:
Considering both Hop and Goon have lots of true multihit skills, will Yellow Gems benefit me more in terms of total damage output per rotation?
What’s the best gem for the mainhand/1h spear?
What’s the best gem if I went and want to minmax with 2h spear?
EDIT: Short answer
Yes
yellow
still yellow
Yellow
red gems can troll you sometimes
worse of all red with no gm = trash
Especially when you are optimal crit
Red gem is better in PvP, Yellow in PvE
Can you elaborate more on why is it so?
While I wasn’t sure if Yellow is viable for PvE in my build, I was pretty confident Yellow beats Red in PVP since the crit bonus is applied after the damage reduc from enemy’s def AFAIK ie. if I have 300 crit atk bonus from equipment, even if I’m hitting the enemy for 20 damage (non crit) as long as I crit the 300 crit atk bonus still applies which makes me hit 330 (20 * 1.5 = 30 + 300 crit atk bonus) without counting the additional crit attack from STR.
You can’t crit the most of clerics (pd, inquisitor) and some mages (cryo, kinos, chronos) because they’re full con and the crit resistence is high… so yellow gem = nothing against them.
You’ll crit the archers, mages (full int/high int) and swords without con but they don’t have def anyway… so you’ll kill them with or without the yellow gem.
Sorry about my english.
No probs and thanks for the explanation. It does make sense to consider crit resistance as well.
I guess now it’s just going to be PVE vs PVP preference. I do like the idea of Dethrone randomly throwing huge numbers w/ Red Gems on since bonus crit attack will barely stretch its damage any further.
Ugggh, now I’m torn between the two again. 
i agree, red for pvp yellow for pve, i have a dragoon2 with finesta 15 and even against full dex char is rare get crit.
you notice that death thorn seems to miss a lot more of criticals? it can be coicedence but i rarely miss a crit and when it happens is with death thorn.
One thing for sure, we will all go back to green gems on r9/10
base damage yo
my hop 3 goon 2 is full dex, and my catacombs pike has 1 lvl 6 red gem and 2 lvl 6 yellow gems
imo the best 1h spear is geras, my dragoon uses geras spear+didel tower, yellow on geras red on shield
the best 2h spear is OBVIOUSLY regard horn pike, but sacmet is great too
non-practonium spear is catacombs pike its what im using, my dragoon WILL use sacmet, the damage penalty of flat 100-200 is not as bad as people make it out to be
with all these questions about hoplite i feel like there needs to be a guide for that class too - cathexis’s info is getting old 
yellow gems on my dragoon seem to be doing a great job, serpentine, dragontooth and stabbing seem to be making a significant amounts of damage and i would go full yellow on your weapon, i went 1 red for w/e reason i don’t even remember why but i seems to be working well 
soon i will upload a video of my dragoon with some of my gear and stuff just to show you
Edit: this is the video, i have about 1500 physical attack, 1200 critical attack and 590 critical rate in this video
For Geras on mobbing and considering Spear Throw will be changed to be true 3-hit if it isn’t yet (I read about that somewhere in the kTOS swordie thread), will full (lv.7) yellow gems be better?
spear throw is already true 3-hit, we are already post buff.
yellow gems ARE better on geras.
Oh, thanks for confirming. At least Geras will surely be yellow.
I have lots of combinations.
I do use Didel + Maga for M sized monsters (almost pretty much everyone is M sized), then I switch for Didel + Geras for when i’m mobbing with Spear Throw.
Maga Spear, against M sized, outclass catacombs.
Catacombs lies on a shortcut, so I can easily switch for It when Large monsters / Boss / Small are abundant.
If your crit rate is somewhat constant, go for yellow. It will help tremendously for low base atk multi hit, like Stabbing, since they are most efficient with STR builds, so adding yellow gem will pump their damage considerably.
Personally for main weapons, I’m one Green rest Yellow; (my build is HIGH dex, i have some Con and STR for block pen) green to achieve a higher critical chance.