The math isn't quite as daunting if you assume you'll be upgrading level 5 gems; it '''''only''''' requires 19,683 level 5 gems to make one level 14 gem. Happily, Jay Wilson has said that they're open to tweaking the formulae if it's taking too long; instead of 3>1 they might turn it down to 2>1 at higher levels, as was done with higher level Runes in Diablo II. It would only require 512 L1 L5 gems to upgrade to a L14, if the requirement was 2>1 all the way up.