What I'm looking for is the largest possible amount of damage from skills, like hot-flash, drain health, cruel blast, sms and stomp.

my question is this: which of these go more towards getting those nice big numbers - stat boosted skills? or a slow weapon with high damage?

for example, take an archer. My archer is currently pure dex, and the increase in cruel blast damage with the skill-driven stats is certainly noticeable. However, I am wondering which could do more burst damage with blast shot, a dex archer with a high dps bow/xbow, or a str bird with a lower dps but much higher damage weapon?

or another example is int-hybrids. Staffs, while slower, will usually have higher damage than bows, would that mean that an int-bird would do more damage with skills than a dex-bird? or comparable? or does the stat-driven skill boosts completely overshadow this effect?