A Tier List of Sneaker Gem Sockets
I don't think anyone has put together a list like this so I thought I'd take a stab at it. This is just one guy's opinion in a sea of not-great and outdated Stepn strategy guides so consider it a rough guide if you have no clue if your shoe is 'good'. To be clear though, for any shoe to be good it needs high base stats in the attributes of the gem slots it has. A random rare CCLL with bad C and L stats is not great. Feel free to argue in the comments why I'm wrong. Again I don't think I've even seen a starting point for a list like this.
To explain my personal methodology a bit
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I think overspecialized shoes having 3+ gems of the same slot is often a weakness, sometimes overvalued, but not necessary bad. In most cases it makes sense to just get higher level gems rather than more slots for lower level gems.
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A comfort slot on a GST shoe isn't really necessary. Many people level comfort up to 50, since comfort has diminishing returns for HP. For this reason, GST shoes without a C slot I consider better optimized.
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Multiple R slots on anything is also generally not ideal. R gems are cheap and don't make a huge earnings impact.
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This list takes into account utility in the game, not price. If you mint a LLLL shoe you can sell it for bank for some reason, even though I don't personally consider it particularly good.
| Shoe | Tier | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| CCLL | S | One of the best GMT/MB earners. Low restore costs due to high comfort. Great on its own. Ridiculous paired with something like CCCC, CCCR, CCRR for days you don't need a MB. |
| CCCL | S | Same as above. This is 'overspecialized' but such a killer combo it doesn't really matter. |
| EELR | A | Well rounded GST/MB earner |
| ELLR | A | Well rounded GST/MB earner |
| CCCC | A | Swag AF, but also overpriced. Unless you're dropping max level gems in this, another shoe with fewer C slots can be as good by using better gems. Still great paired with a luck shoe. |
| CCCR | A | Popular overspecialized GMT shoe. Needs to be paired with a separate luck shoe. |
| CCLR | A | Rounded, cheap to maintain solo GMT/MB shoe. The maintenance savings from an R slot won't make up for the earnings of C or L though. Still great, and could become a killer true all-in-one including marathon mode depending on the rules. I would stick a pin in this to become maybe become the best all around shoe in the game one day. |
| CCRR | A | I generally wouldn't want 2 R slots on any shoe, but this isn't overspecialized, so I can't really argue with it. Good as part of a strategy with a separate luck shoe. I think people were speculating on these a while ago for marathon mode since they might become the best marathon shoes. |
| ELCR | B | With high stats ELCR can do anything no matter how the game changes. Most ELCRs have a mishmash of stats and are mediocre though. |
| EEER | B | Overspecialized, still pretty good for GST. |
| EEEL | B | Overspecialized, still pretty good for GST. |
| EELC | B | Rounded GST/MB earner. |
| EECR | B | Low maintenance pure GST earner. Great paired with a luck shoe for MB days. |
| ELLC | B | Rounded GST/MB earner. |
| EELL | B | Focused GST/MB earner. Maybe A-tier with the right stats, I'm not sure on the math really. |
| LLLC | B | Overspecialized, but a secondary shoe to hit high level MBs. It would be better the less you have to run with only one C slot, so I'd probably only use something like this to hit MB10s. |
| LLCR | B | Good secondary MB shoe, or maybe an okay primary. I'd prefer 2 Cs on a primary GMT shoe though. |
| EEEE | C | Overspecialized, probably overpriced. You're better off with fewer better gems than more worse gems. No matter what your strategy, 4 E is too many E. |
| EERR | C | Meh GST shoe. Two Rs is not ideal. |
| ELRR | C | Meh GST shoe. Two Rs is not ideal. |
| ECCL | C | Meh GST shoe. Two Cs is not ideal. |
| LLLE | C | Overspecialized and basically worse than LLLC even if you wanted 3 Ls. |
| EEEC | D | Overspecialized, and you don't need C for a GST shoe. |
| ECCR | D | Not enough E/L slots for a GST shoe. |
| ECRR | D | Not enough E/L slots for a GST shoe. |
| EECC | D | Very awkward combination. 2 Cs is not ideal for a GST earner. 2 Es is useless for GMT. |
| ECCC | D | Very awkward combination. This is basically a GMT shoe with one of the slots completely wasted. |
| LCRR | D | Kind of the worst all-in-one GMT shoe but not completely useless I guess. If you're buying good enough gems to run for GMT, just get a better shoe. This might become good when marathon mode comes up depending on what the rules are. |
| LLLR | D | I can't think of a reason someone would use this over LLLC or LLLE and I already think having 3 L slots is too many. |
| LLLL | D | You can hit MB10s on a rare with 2-3 Ls, so unless higher MBs come into the game, this is beyond overkill. You're just giving up slots that could be earning currency on your MB runs. |
| ERRR | F | Bad |
| LLRR | F | Bad. By my own standards this isn’t overspecialized, but I don’t like pure Luck shoes to begin with, let alone one with only 2 Ls and no currency slots. |
| LRRR | F | Useless |
| CRRR | F | Useless |
| RRRR | F | Basically the worst shoe in the game, congrats |
Posted Feb 3, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC · edited
Hey! Thanks a lot for all the work you put into this.
Personally though I think LLLL is the best for 125% mystery box walks. To get LVL 10 MB pretty consistently you need like 25 energy and 5000 Luck and to get 5000 Luck even with 4 Luck slots you need to put a LVL 6 Luck Gem in each slot which is expensive. They're like 3000 GMT each so I think 4 Luck slots is necessary for top end MB and then I would put all point into efficiency so that you can max out or close to max our your 300 GST Cap within the 25 energy.
Then for days when your MB slots are full you have one shoe EEEE so you can max out your 300 GST daily cap in as little energy as possible and then with the rest of your 20 energy you use a CCCC or CCCR for GMT earnings. That way you are maxing out your 300 GST cap every day which you need for MB opening and repair and gem upgrades ect. And then you are also earning GMT every day except for days when you're doing a 125% walk for MB
That's my strategy.