Is Gemling just a better Invoker?

If so, what are the differences?

Invoker has a lot of power frontloaded: automatically solved reservations because you have more spirit than you have gem slots to use it, you solve resistances by scaling crit (which you would be doing anyways since crit is broken mechanically), and you can trivially setup herald chaining just by crossing a damage threshold due to damage as extra nodes.

Gemling in comparison has more HP (in the sense of total hit pool) and has more attack speed on equal stats (and technically has slightly more stats because of ascendancy small passives), but requires solving resistances, herald chaining and spirit requirements with gear. Which can get very expensive.

Stat stacking step 1: Get Astramentis 🙄

Pillar of the caged god + HOWA just provide so much raw damage and attack speed that attribute stacking outclasses every other archetype by a considerable margin. Gemling is an attribute stacking ascendency

Stat stacking is just currenlty completly overtuned and gemling was made for stat stacking.

From my own experience, gemling statstacker only seems worth it if you already had a lot of currency to invest.

I started it with just a few divs and survivability is hard to solve without giving up all the other things that make the build good/fast.

Invoker seems a lot better with low budget.

Gemling isn't "better" so to say its just stat stacking is in a really powerful place right now and gemling is both the best ascendancy for it due to the ascendancy passives but also its place on the tree . If HOWA wasn't so busted or if we actually had some good alternatives to scale then I would imagine you would see far less gemling .

Mana/int stacking spark and tri-attribute quarterstaff skill builds are overtuned, specifically in how they scale offense and defense in parallel. Gemling doubles down on this.

That said, invoker has some cool stuff. Evasion/es -> spirit offers a lot of versatility to help with mobility, clear, boss dps, or defense. I can’t fit any auras besides archmage on my spark gemling, and won’t be able to unless I give up a ton of offense (mana, proj levels, proj speed) or survivability (mana) from body armor, amulet, or widowhail/quiver setup. At a high enough budget you can have it all on either class, but that’s not applicable to most players. My invoker just made it into mid-tier maps and is mostly still using leveling gear, but my take on invoker is that you can diversify your auras much earlier than gemling. 

Gemling is just a late endgame ascendancy. Probably by design. It does not come with any power upfront, but makes everything else just scale higher. In that sense, with enough investment, gemling is just better everything.

Often builds are good at different points in the league/different economic situations.

At this point in the league there are tons and tons and tons of items available and they are largely devalued - this means that any character reliant on "pretty" good gear is eating very well.

Meanwhile, characters that get a lot of power from "early game" passive effects that don't scale as well fall off when scaling is easy to buy.

Basically, Gemling might be "better than Invoker" in most situations given the current economy, but on hour 7 of a new league when the first breach ring hasn't even dropped yet, let alone been rolled to have tri stats and attribute qualitied to 50%, the playing field would look different.

Yea you are purely thinking of stat stacking quarter staff play.

I’m a gemling running a hybrid lightning / grenade build and have beat all end game bosses.

Gemling I think it one of the best and most fun acendescies cause of being able to use multiple of the same support gems. Allows for amazing creative builds. I want to try a gemling caster next league

Gemling has a higher "cap" in the 0.11 version of the game and can squeeze more out of 200div builds

That doesn't mean the Invoker is useless. Stay in your lane

it's, but ascendancy doesn't provide enough power in early and early-mid game and overall most of the ascendancy nodes are useful. Also it doesn't have unique build.

If Invoker ascendancy nodes aren't used as build enabler, Gemling will be better at the same builds with high-end gears.

Gemling CAN be a better invoker but the investments and RNG required is kinda rough. Imo one thing no one has touched on here is the lack of defensive layers. Yes a gemling CAN have a crazy life pool but to achieve that it will take a good investment of gear. Invoker being a monk and having better pathing in the tree has so much more in defensive qualities just built in. I've played both and my gemling flies through maps, crushes bosses and is a lot of fun. That being said it's not uncommon to get one tapped a full health by certain mechanics. Invoker on the other hand is a little slower on mob clearing, also crushes bosses but also lives through all kinds of stuff that the gemling likely would've been nuked by.

At high budget, yes. But at low budget Invoker is better. Even mid budget Invoker is still probably better. But after level 90 and with good gear, Gemling is a lot stronger

It's similar to the difference between Trickster vs Occultist Hexblast builds, for example.

Occultist has a good amount of front-loaded power but little survivability to make up for it, whereas Trickster is more well-rounded.

Then there was the Inquisitor Energy Blade option which has a higher ceiling but is way more expensive an option than either of the previous ones as it's reliant on a lot of specific uniques and attribute stacking.

It's easy to just pick the one with the most damage or the most survivability and call it a day but the fact that you have those two options is the point.

In the case of Gemling vs Invoker, while Gemling might be theoretically better, it requires a lot more investment to reach that, and even then as someone who went Gemling I'd argue Invoker is probably tankier overall because of the focus on ES/EV compared to Gemling's just flat HP, which is a terrible way to stack eHP by comparison.

Gemling is also in a situation where it's Ascendancies are actually kind of boring and mid for like most of what a Tri-Stacker is even doing. I actually think Gemling has some of the most boring ascendancy nodes in the game right now, regardless of their overall power.

Like the +3 skill gems is actually good when you finally get the max res one but on it's own it's so fucking mid. The stat requirement one is also nice while leveling but made mostly redundant at endgame either because the builds that actually want to use gems of all 3 stats are probably stacking the shit out of attributes anyway.

I’ve leveled both to 85 and IMO I enjoy invoker much more. Crits ignoring resistance and free spirit make gearing easier. Quick access to movement/skill speed nodes make mapping feel smoother as well. Going CI is an easy decision, so I’m not worried about gemling health scaling. The str->energy shield timeless gem also makes it irrelevant.

What gemling does have is versatility, the ability to play any class. That makes it cool and I think a good pick for league starts when the meta is unknown.

Short version: Gemling has higher damage ceiling, Invoker's much easier to build for and slightly tankier.

Gemling main advantage:

Higher damage potential (kills pinnacles in 2 seconds vs Invoker's 2.5 seconds).

Invoker main advantage:

Super stacked ascendancy tree. A lot of stuff that Gemlings need to specifically gear or build for, Invoker gets for free and then some from its ascendancy tree. Need spirit? Invoker has a node for that. Need more cold damage to trigger HoI? There's a node for that. Enemy resistances? There's a node for that. Overcapping ES WITHOUT Grim Feast? There's a node for that.

The other minor difference is Gemlings make better use of Atziri's Disdain and MoM, while Invokers make better use of evasion+ES+CI.

In the end the 2 classes are close enough that it's entirely personal preference. If you want to be an evasion class with fat shields, go Invoker. If you want higher damage ceiling at the cost of having less defensive layers, go Gemling.

Gemling stat stacking its a very expensive endgame build. Invokers take much less currency to get going and is still very strong. In a league start for example i would go with invoker then rerolling a gemling when i have more currency.

I have an Invoker and a Gemling and the Gemling definitely does more damage on a lower budget… but I find the ascendancy as a whole incredibly boring lol. Half the points feel dead (3 extra skill slots, attribute requirements satisfied by highest attribute… when I have like 600-800 of all 3 lol…)

Just feels uninteresting IMO. Even using two copies of support gems is dull to me. But the ascendancy is busted and does so much damage lol

It's a more expensive invoker

Sounds like you've got a pretty narrow view of both these ascendancies through meta builds. No, gemling is not strictly better than invoker. Not even for stat stackers at all budgets.