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Or gear is just as important, so you use less gems on spells and forge just as much gear just at a higher price.

I don't think this really makes sense. It's not like you need a fixed amount of gear, and then you have enough and spend whatever you have left on spells. Either gear is cheap enough to be better value than anything else, in which case you should make as much as you can (close to the actual situation when hammers are in the game), or not. I would argue that without hammers, the cost/reward ratio of gear is brought closer to that of typical spells and summons, so that basically you have more valid choices.

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Edit: Or, to clarify (and make it more obvious that I'm mostly agreeing with you):

What it really does is raise the cost of gear relative to other uses of gems: battlefield spells, globals, summons. If that makes more interesting stuff useful, it was a good change.

I agree.

If it just means you have to invest even more gems in forging then it wasn't.

I just don't see why this should be the case (the amount of gear you need is not fixed).