That thread is very very old and thats a bug that existed a long time ago (prior 5.4 release) that has since been fixed. Similar to the bug that allowed hybrid classes to zone in in their dps spec and since spirit for dpsers is not scaled (because of hit) when they switched back to heals they'd keep a massive amount of spirit. Again all of that is been fixed a long time.
I believe you misunderstood my post, I never claimed that having more gems was not better. I merely stated that they are being given much more importance than the benefict they really bring.
Let me give you a for isntance. I just zoned my toon into a cmode, and compared 2 items right now. Item 1 has 1 socket, item 2 has 2 socket. Item 1 got a total of 588 primary stats, 742 secondary stats while item 2 has 508 primary stats and 726 secondary stats with 2 gems. You can do the math but at the end you end up with 80 primary and 12 secondary extra stats on item 1 and 1 extra gem in item 2. If you consider the traditional 80 primary and 160 secondary for gem slot that means item 2 has 142 extra secondary stats, which is not bad at all but it is definitely not a deal breaker. Thats not all, it so happens that my item with 1 gem got 60 int socket bonus while the item with 2 gem slots got 60 spirit socket bonus, so the gap narrows even further! Thats not all. Lets just ignore socket bonus for an instant. What happens if the secondary stats on the item with less sockets are more favorable than the secondary stats on the item with 2 sockets? Thats something that can only be answered on a class/spec by simulation case there is no clear cut but the simple answer is that sometimes the item with better secondaries will win flat out even with lwoer gem sockets. In top of that, the gems colors might not be favorable at all. Now I just analyzed an extreme case. In reality, this late in the tier, its not so hard to find an appropriately itemized item with favorable colored gems but thats something reserved for people that want to min/max BiS for top times and such, the regular joe is not gonna do lfr 10times or flex 10times in the search of the crit/haste 3 red sockets belt etc.
For normal cmode anything beyond 463 is about the same and any drop in difficulty you are experiencing is more likely to be due to more experience from players or superior strats.
Actually Choptimus brings another good example. Lower item level got 80 more str and 116 more secondaries while item 2 got 1 extra socket and assuming u go for the bonus 60 secondary stats.
So In theory, if you followed the socket bonus the item with the extra gem would end up having around 50extra secondary stats as a budget. Not bad but far from being a game changer. In this example both tiems have the same itemization, but thats not gonna be the case in all cases, in many cases you will have to choose considering 2nd stats value and the color of gems.