Best way to distribute skills?

[jersam515]

I was wondering, in your opinion what is the best way to distribute the skill points?

[Major]

Well that depends on your class. There are a few guides on the forums that can help you out. Really it comes down to how you play, try distributing them yourself and if your not happy find a guide to direct you.

[Pharcyde]

Mage setup is perfect right now for all builds.

Every build should be running this build for level 56.

6 4 6 1
6 1 6 6
6 1 6 6

You could put more into ice, but I strongly don't recommend it. Ice doesn't really increase much at all past level 1. Nor does mana shield, mana shield should always be 1, since its greatest effects can be obtained at level 1.

[lilbyrdie]

Wouldn't having more in Ice Blast also increase the damage of the combo with fire storm? Also, from what I can see, it increases average damage by 7.5 pts per level. And since it's always used -- due to the Fire Storm combo -- that doesn't seem inconsequential to me, especially since it's area damage (e.g. 10 enemies around you, and in aggregate, that's 75 points extra per level).

Lower than the others, but the chance to freeze could possibly increase (mine's at level 4 and I see non-boss freezes fairly frequently).

Also, do weakness and nightmare really help that much? Do we even know how long the effects last? If it lasts just a few seconds, like self buffs, that would seem -- wasteful. I'd rather do an extra 7.5 damage per level from ice than strip armor for just 5 extra damage from weakness, for instance, especially since the 7.5 damage extra is permanent but the armor stripping probably times-out fairly quickly -- and is really only useful against bosses, anyway.

Along those same line, vitality seems pretty useless past level 1. All you generally get are a few hit points per level, that only last 12 seconds. This isn't H/S, either, like the party-side buff. At level 3, for me, that was an extra 16 hp ... and to even see that extra points, I had to regen or heal, so it has no real impact during a long battle. I'm not sure what the top level is, but even an extra 40 or so points is just 10% for 12 seconds, again, with the required heal/regen to reach that level. I just don't see the point of it. The party-side 2 h/s heals an extra 24 points every 12 seconds -- and for two whole minutes -- right at the first level. The only reason I could see upgrading is if that changed at a higher level.

Thus, I would think those points (5 of them) would do better on the ice side (both ice attacks).

Am I missing something?

EDIT: I just tried an experiment in FH. I got myself surround and had a continuous stream of 5-7 damage showing (on me). No amount of weakness or nightmare changed that. I tried for several minutes to see if I could detect any sort of reduction in the number of landed hits or damage done. No change at all. Something else must be going on, otherwise I'd conclude that weakness and nightmare effectively did nothing... and are even more useless than I thought.

[Echelong]

Mage setup is perfect right now for all builds.

Every build should be running this build for level 56.

6 4 6 1
6 1 6 6
6 1 6 6

You could put more into ice, but I strongly don't recommend it. Ice doesn't really increase much at all past level 1. Nor does mana shield, mana shield should always be 1, since its greatest effects can be obtained at level 1.

I have almost the same setup as you but points on ice blast is 1 and frost storm is 4 mostly because I am not pvping atm. For PVE I think frost storm is better and yes both only increase a bit.

[Arterra]

Mage setup is perfect right now for all builds.

Every build should be running this build for level 56.

6 4 6 1
6 1 6 6
6 1 6 6

You could put more into ice, but I strongly don't recommend it. Ice doesn't really increase much at all past level 1. Nor does mana shield, mana shield should always be 1, since its greatest effects can be obtained at level 1.

... I forgot new skill max was 6...

[Echelong]

... I forgot new skill max was 6...

hehe yeah I did respec putting all the skills I could to 6, I left out ice blast and 1 to frost storm and drain life to 5 I think.

[Sky../]

Blessing of vitality adds ARMOR. 40 armor at level 6 to be exact. Don't know about you, but i like my armor high.

Also, enemies have a minimum damage. FH mobs have a minimum of 5-7 thats why you don't see any effects. Even with an armor rating omof over 9000 you'd still receive 5-7 damage.


Wouldn't having more in Ice Blast also increase the damage of the combo with fire storm? Also, from what I can see, it increases average damage by 7.5 pts per level. And since it's always used -- due to the Fire Storm combo -- that doesn't seem inconsequential to me, especially since it's area damage (e.g. 10 enemies around you, and in aggregate, that's 75 points extra per level).

Lower than the others, but the chance to freeze could possibly increase (mine's at level 4 and I see non-boss freezes fairly frequently).

Also, do weakness and nightmare really help that much? Do we even know how long the effects last? If it lasts just a few seconds, like self buffs, that would seem -- wasteful. I'd rather do an extra 7.5 damage per level from ice than strip armor for just 5 extra damage from weakness, for instance, especially since the 7.5 damage extra is permanent but the armor stripping probably times-out fairly quickly -- and is really only useful against bosses, anyway.

Along those same line, vitality seems pretty useless past level 1. All you generally get are a few hit points per level, that only last 12 seconds. This isn't H/S, either, like the party-side buff. At level 3, for me, that was an extra 16 hp ... and to even see that extra points, I had to regen or heal, so it has no real impact during a long battle. I'm not sure what the top level is, but even an extra 40 or so points is just 10% for 12 seconds, again, with the required heal/regen to reach that level. I just don't see the point of it. The party-side 2 h/s heals an extra 24 points every 12 seconds -- and for two whole minutes -- right at the first level. The only reason I could see upgrading is if that changed at a higher level.

Thus, I would think those points (5 of them) would do better on the ice side (both ice attacks).

Am I missing something?

EDIT: I just tried an experiment in FH. I got myself surround and had a continuous stream of 5-7 damage showing (on me). No amount of weakness or nightmare changed that. I tried for several minutes to see if I could detect any sort of reduction in the number of landed hits or damage done. No change at all. Something else must be going on, otherwise I'd conclude that weakness and nightmare effectively did nothing... and are even more useless than I thought.

[Arterra]

Think ofthis: a higher level single attack for more damage?
Or a debuff that increases the damage of all your attacks, AND your teammates attacks?

Edit: I also use weakness for the hit debuff
On everything. Let's me survive long enough to kill the mobs before they recover.

[StompArtist]

Drain life 6 = awesome

[Hullukko]

Am I missing something?


(Talking from a pve perspective only.)
The combo damage is an additional damage from the firestorm. Increasing ice storm in that sense has no impact on the combo per se. I don't know about the freeze chance though. When the skill cap was raised with 1.7 I tried the icestrorm at 6 for a while and I couldn't hit the combo worth jack. Maybe it was me, but after I respecced it back to 1 I started landing it again. Dunno what the hell that was and haven't tried that before since I wouldn't want a higher ice storm now anyway.

BOV adds armor to self. 40 points is a alot.

weakness is crucial to lower enemy hit change and damage with large with high dmg or otherwise large mobs (e.g. some intersections in catacombs and pulled groups in stronghold) and for hard hitting bosses. it helps the entire group, not just the one casting it.

nightmare lowers enemy armor for the benefit of the entire group. nuff said.

Personally I have the exact setup mentioned here. I prefer to have the few ice related points in frost bite rather than ice storm because I already have enough aoe dmg from fire storm and lightning and frost bite contributes to the max dps against a boss better than ice strom does.But your mileage preference in this regard may vary.

[lilbyrdie]

Blessing of vitality adds ARMOR. 40 armor at level 6 to be exact. Don't know about you, but i like my armor high.

Also, enemies have a minimum damage. FH mobs have a minimum of 5-7 thats why you don't see any effects. Even with an armor rating omof over 9000 you'd still receive 5-7 damage.

Odd. So there's a magic SHIELD that provides armor. And vitality... provides armor? I see that in my stats now when I hit the buff. That seems redundant, as far as skills go, and not inline with the party buff part nor the name. Oh, just ran the buff:

At Level 1:
Health: 409-> 434, that's +25 health (from the party buff part)
Armor: 52->60, that's +8 armor (the +8 for 12 seconds in the listing)

But after 12 seconds, the health stayed at 434 and the armor reverted (of course, because the +25 health is a party buff)
After 120 seconds, the health finally reverted.

I think my confusion was that I had it at the +24 and was off-by-one on my math and not noticing the armor.

Better than I thought, but makes the mana shield seem ... weak in comparison. Not only does Blessing give hitpoints to the party and h/s, but more armor than the mana shield. And it might even do so with less mana (not sure how much it costs).

40 armor is a nice boost...

Thanks for pointing that out! That's clearly one thing I was missing.

The minimum damage is useful to note, too. It provides balance to a high armor -- you also want your dodge up (and h/s).

[lilbyrdie]

(Talking from a pve perspective only.)
The combo damage is an additional damage from the firestorm. Increasing ice storm in that sense has no impact on the combo per se. I don't know about the freeze chance though. When the skill cap was raised with 1.7 I tried the icestrorm at 6 for a while and I couldn't hit the combo worth jack. Maybe it was me, but after I respecced it back to 1 I started landing it again. Dunno what the hell that was and haven't tried that before since I wouldn't want a higher ice storm now anyway.

BOV adds armor to self. 40 points is a alot.

weakness is crucial to lower enemy hit change and damage with large with high dmg or otherwise large mobs (e.g. some intersections in catacombs and pulled groups in stronghold) and for hard hitting bosses. it helps the entire group, not just the one casting it.

nightmare lowers enemy armor for the benefit of the entire group. nuff said.

Personally I have the exact setup mentioned here. I prefer to have the few ice related points in frost bite rather than ice storm because I already have enough aoe dmg from fire storm and lightning and frost bite contributes to the max dps against a boss better than ice strom does.But your mileage preference in this regard may vary.

Good points.

Seems weakness and nightmare scale with party size much better than ice storm. When going solo, it's a toss up on vanilla mobs, but probably still better on bosses. (Though, that assumes that a mobs armor blocks all sources of damage equally, whether skill or weapon based. That seems to be the case, just like it seems to be the case that crit also affects skill damage. Pleasant, but odd.)

On the flip side, like party buffs, I assume weakness and nightmare don't stack. That means only one mage in a party needs to bother with them. And I'd hope that whoever has the highest debuff wins. Otherwise, a mage casting with only level 1 skill vs a level 6 would actually end up doing more harm than good for the party...

And as for boss vs mob group clearing, I haven't decided which is better. I tend to think if you like boss attack power, you'd play as a bird... but that decision is less clear, although deciding it does impact which skills to choose (or respec to, which I'm very grateful for).

[MITSUISUN]

I have always wondered how debuff really works in this game. For birds it’s easier, because our debuff effects has durations, such as:
Break Armor for 26pts for 10 seconds at lv6
Bliding Shot for -30% hit% for 5 seconds at lv6
etc

So we always recast as soon as it refreshes, and for boss’s sake I understand/hope it does not stack with other birds. (Or else boss will have -120% when faces with 4 birds for 5 secs LOL)

What is not clear to me is mage’s and bear’s (I am new player, haven’t really ventured into other classes as much, raising mage atm)

For mages, I do not see the debuff duration nor seen on guides/posts ( IF there’s one I apoligze, please point me to right link, so I can read at work :p )

Another idea is if boss can have the display icon like we do, so we can tell what debuff effect is happening.
For example, I usually have 4 buff icons next to my name, 2 from mage 2 from bird. If I get hit by slime fire or other mobs that debuff me, I get extra icon.

Bear’s taunt will put red ! on mobs, and redish glow effect on them. Gold Fever fevers us with colorful!!!!.

If boss can have that too, that would be cool. But with all 3 classes that can do debuff/effect on boss, perhaps that will be a bit too much :p

Since we are always going to spam skills and boss do die fairly easy, perhaps at this point of game it’s a moot point.

But when new content / harder boss comes along, this should be important.

Maybe that’s why there’s going to be a global cool down happening.

The devs are looking out for mob/boss and raising the challenge heh.

[lilbyrdie]

Maybe that’s why there’s going to be a global cool down happening.


Interesting. Sounds like the skills for birds basically show more details, which is useful. I wonder why those details are missing from the others? On purpose or just a bug/oversight?

I wonder if two different armor debuffs even stack? (e.g. from mage and bird)

[MITSUISUN]

Interesting. Sounds like the skills for birds basically show more details, which is useful. I wonder why those details are missing from the others? On purpose or just a bug/oversight?

I wonder if two different armor debuffs even stack? (e.g. from mage and bird)

Actually, it's because of Phy's bird bible - http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?16244-Comprehensive-Archer-Skills-and-Equipment-Guide
that I got to know/understand how to play bird heh

Birds dont have full description in our skills page either, but because of extensive work Phy has put in, we got to understand the matrix. I dont think it's bug/oversight, it's just how the game is made for us to figure out.

I am sure the debuff stack discussion is somewhere on the forums, I just need to look it up =)

Debuff is extremely important if/when GDC happens, game will require more skills/strategy, which I personally like.

[WhoIsThis]

@Mitsuisun

The debuff is when you see purple going under the mage. Affected targets glow purple too. You probably don't notice it when playing with me, but I cast both fast as they recharge. I can show you in game if you'd like. Annoyingly, weakness and nightmare are both purple. Kind of like how the animations for avian and shattering scream are alike. They also do a bit of damage to the affected targets.

@lilbyrdie

It is fire blast, not ice storm that should be maxed on every mage for the maximum hot flash damage output.

[MITSUISUN]

@Mitsuisun

The debuff is when you see purple going under the mage. Affected targets glow purple too. You probably don't notice it when playing with me, but I cast both fast as they recharge. I can show you in game if you'd like. Annoyingly, weakness and nightmare are both purple. Kind of like how the animations for avian and shattering scream are alike. They also do a bit of damage to the affected targets.


Elf, of course I notice/know, that's why I don't group with just any mage and follow them around lol. Soon I am going to complete bird and focus raising mage to 56.

In the preparation of GCD, I been testing nightmare and weakness on my mage as well, skill order when facing different situations etc, that’s why I like to learn more about the duration/stack/recast and seek actual mage’s opinion.

Very soon I will start bugging you about this and that on mage stuff heh.

[Yvonnel]

I'm going to have to try that skill build Pharcyde. I'm happy with mine but always looking for something better.

[Pharcyde]

To clear the confusion on some spells, I'll explain what each one does and why I chose my build.

6 4 6 1
6 1 6 6
6 1 6 6

Healing - 6: needed at 6 for both PvP and PvE. Not even gonna debate this one, because any pure int mage knows how crucial it is to their survival.

Frost Bite - 4: Basically leftover scrap points from maxing all other skills. Frost bite is the 2nd most important damage spell in PvP when it comes to range and kiting. As for PvE, I still recommend 4. Ice storm just increases way too little, and usually ice storm doesn't get many kills, regardless of an extra +10 damage from each level.

Lightning - 6: Armor debuff, crucial for PvE and PvP. Mage-Bird combo assist that inflicts MASSIVE damage.

Rev - 1: Only -5 mana cost per level. lvl 55 mages regenerate mana faster then they can even cast with all their spells combined. Wasted skill points beyond 1.

Fire Storm - 6: Part of Mage combo, hits about 1/3 to 2/3 extra damage in a third re-roll. I believe that the combo damage can also be critical'd. 6 for both PvE and PvP.

Ice Storm - 1: Basically, you get the full ability of the ice storm at level 1. It only increases about 10 damage extra per level. 1 point because it still is a really big boost of damage at lvl 1 and assists fire storm in the combo.

Drain Life - 6: Need maxed for both PvE and PvP. For PvP, biggest damage dealer and if used right, can heal you completely after a PvP battle. For PvE, drain life has long range, so you can drag a single enemy, like the bandit king. Then it also heals much more then your health potions, so you can use that when you find yourself in a situation where mobs are damaging you faster then you can heal. (Sometimes I will be potion spamming, with one finger, drain life with another, and healing with another just to survive a situation).

Nightmare - 6: Crucial for PvE and PvP. (Original post earlier) someone mentioned that a boss can be debuffed by all three classes. Thats the point. The devs made it so that bosses are incredibly strong, so that they will be really strong after debuffs as well. The devs pretty much made this in hopes to spark tactical party setups involving all classes. (No classes in hibernation). Then for PvP, this spell pretty much makes the opponents defense go away almost 100% for a short period of time. Without using this spell, you will hit a lot of dodges on birds and a lot of misses on bears.

Weakness - 6: Like I said above with bosses. Then same exact thing with PvP, just think about it with damage. When this spell is casted, its like it turns a birds powerful bow or a bears sharp sword into a floppy piece of wood and a dull butter knife for a small period of time.

Blessings of Vitality - 6: I can't think of a single reason not to max this spell. When its casted, its virtually like adding an extra member to the party. Then mages CANNOT survive PvP without this spell.

Blessings of Might - 6: Same exact reason as Blessing of Vitality.

Mana Shield - 1: Ahh... Mana Shield.... Only leave it at 1, because like ice storm, its biggest benefits are already gained at level 1. Each point extra is only increasing your armor +2. Thats just like having two vanity helms on, thats not gonna do a darn thing in helping your survivability.

[lilbyrdie]

Thanks for the extra rundown, Pharcyde. I'd (personally) still probably stick with Ice and Frost either reversed or (as I have it now) balanced. I haven't even tried PvP yet, so any advantages there don't really matter to me. Frost, to me, is more useful against mob groups. Currently, in various AO areas, I run into the middle, frost them, then run away and pick them off one at a time, starting with the ones that didn't freeze. It's surprisingly useful if done right. And I think it may become more useful when GCD shows up. (Freeze, run, buff, return to nuke. If only bosses could be frozen. ;) )

I understand the rest much better now.

My L41 build looks like this:

6 2 6 1
6 4 6 1
1 0 1 6

The next 5 levels are all going into vitality, though I might speed that up a little with a respec and pull some frost away early. Right now, it's pretty much just the skill set I ended up with by just playing and reading the screens rather than the forums.

The big things to cause a shift:

1. damage affects skills and weapons (I assumed just weapons) (this also makes Might pretty amazing)
2. hit, crit, and dodge affect skills and weapons (again, I assumed just weapons) (again with Might being amazing -- 60 crit for 20 seconds is effectively a 60% increase in damage for 20 seconds -- all damage -- including the extra 30, which makes it effectively +48 to weapons and skills...)
3. Same things as above, but in reverse for nightmare and weakness.

My skills that hit 6, in order: Fire, Lightning, Drain, Might, Heal (fire because the "push back" helps to break an attack lock) (Heal was last because potions are basically free and are fast, but it's been far more important for group healing since late 30s.)


As for other changes with GCD: unless they increase the length of time buffs and debuffs last for, their effective benefits will be lowered somewhat in the first 5-10 seconds (before regular skill timeout takes over as the limiting factor rather than GCD). Basically, less help in clearing power but shouldn't materially impact long boss fights.

[lilbyrdie]

Ok, a question for this thread:

If you had a weapon that gave the same proc as a skill, would that change your distribution any, assuming either you'll always use that weapon, or pay the 2 plat to respec when you replace it (that is, skills aren't a permanent choice and can be changed for relatively little real-world cost).

For instance, several weapons can do weakness and nightmare (http://j.mp/ikaeBK).

An important question for consideration: Do the weapon procs stack with the same skill as the user of the weapon? This is similar to an as-yet unanswered question of whether or not the same debuff from two casters will stack -- we can see that the party buff skills don't. So, it might be reasonable to assume that the debuffs don't stack. And, following that line ... neither would the debuffs from the weapons. So, have a weapon perform weakness would negate any need for it as a skill (assuming it triggers at every 30 seconds or faster -- or whatever the cool down is for weakness).

Just curious as to thoughts on this...

[Pharcyde]

No, I would not recommend it. The procs are weak, and stack onto your spells. So you can have both a weakness proc and debuff on a enemy at the same time.

Then a enemy may only have 1 weakness proc, 1 nightmare proc, 1 weakness debuff and 1 nightmare debuff on at a time. So it only has a max of one per, then anyone else who casts it will just refresh the duration, not actually add on.

[WhoIsThis]

I recommend that you follow Pharcyde's level 56 configuration. I use the same configuration on my mage, as does Royce.

Mage debuffs are not like break armor, which I believe stacks as multiple birds use it.

[lilbyrdie]

No, I would not recommend it. The procs are weak, and stack onto your spells. So you can have both a weakness proc and debuff on a enemy at the same time.

Then a enemy may only have 1 weakness proc, 1 nightmare proc, 1 weakness debuff and 1 nightmare debuff on at a time. So it only has a max of one per, then anyone else who casts it will just refresh the duration, not actually add on.

Ok, since they stack with the spells, that makes sense.

What I'd still like to know is if the latest one to cast it (or trigger the proc) does more than just refresh the duration -- if it also changes the effectiveness if the level of the skill (or proc) isn't the same. e.g. if I go in an blast out nightmare and weakness at Level 1, but the mobs had Level 6 debuff on, does the party lose the effects of 25 pts of each debuff? Or is the system smart enough to ignore the effects of a weaker debuff (while also not refreshing the duration)?

The reason I ask is because it means there's something to be gained by a little mage discussion up front to see who should be debuffing... even at L56, we can't assume everyone has both of these at level 6. And it's certainly unlikely at lower levels.

[WhoIsThis]

The reason I ask is because it means there's something to be gained by a little mage discussion up front to see who should be debuffing... even at L56, we can't assume everyone has both of these at level 6. And it's certainly unlikely at lower levels.

At lower levels, I can see your point, but at 56, all mages should have both debuffs maxed out.

[Pharcyde]

What I'd still like to know is if the latest one to cast it (or trigger the proc) does more than just refresh the duration -- if it also changes the effectiveness if the level of the skill (or proc) isn't the same. e.g. if I go in an blast out nightmare and weakness at Level 1, but the mobs had Level 6 debuff on, does the party lose the effects of 25 pts of each debuff? Or is the system smart enough to ignore the effects of a weaker debuff (while also not refreshing the duration)?

The highest level buff or proc takes effect and cancels the other one out. So if someone with level 1 weakness casts it on a boss, then someone with level 6 weakness casts it on the same boss, the boss now is debuffed by a level 6 spell, and not a level 1 spell. Basically, if theres two mages in a party, one does and one does not have debuffs maxed, then the who does not have them buffed basically is casting useless spells.

I can't think of any way to test it, but low level debuffs might actually be counter productive. When they cast and refresh the time, they might also cancel out the level 6 debuff and replace it with the level 1 debuff.

So either two things happen, the level 1 effects are completely ignored, or completely replace the level 6 debuff.

[WhoIsThis]

The highest level buff or proc takes effect and cancels the other one out. So if someone with level 1 weakness casts it on a boss, then someone with level 6 weakness casts it on the same boss, the boss now is debuffed by a level 6 spell, and not a level 1 spell. Basically, if theres two mages in a party, one does and one does not have debuffs maxed, then the who does not have them buffed basically is casting useless spells.

I can't think of any way to test it, but low level debuffs might actually be counter productive. When they cast and refresh the time, they might also cancel out the level 6 debuff and replace it with the level 1 debuff.

So either two things happen, the level 1 effects are completely ignored, or completely replace the level 6 debuff.

In other words, debuffs should not be synchronized together or one is wasting their mana. On the other hand, debuffing does a bit of modest damage, so perhaps it may be worth considering casting it. Even synchronized, I still think the low level one should cast (assuming that they even realize that the higher level player has a higher level debuff) due to the damage. I don't think that the low level one replaces it.

[Pharcyde]

In my opinion, it's all or nothing. The modest damage can become pretty good damage in other damage-based skills.

[lilbyrdie]

In other words, debuffs should not be synchronized together or one is wasting their mana. On the other hand, debuffing does a bit of modest damage, so perhaps it may be worth considering casting it. Even synchronized, I still think the low level one should cast (assuming that they even realize that the higher level player has a higher level debuff) due to the damage. I don't think that the low level one replaces it.

Debuffs do damage? That's news to me...

What's modest? And does it show as damage above the mob? (I'd check, but I'm trying to focus on work... hah!)


In my opinion, it's all or nothing. The modest damage can become pretty good damage in other damage-based skills.

One aspect here will be the global cool down. Adding debuffs to the mix of attack spells will slow the major damage spells down. And if it ends up making the debuff worse, the damage will last a while.

Seems like the consensus is that if your party is having a hard time taking out a boss, you might have a chat and find out who has the best debuffs and tell them to be the only ones to cast them. It may not make any difference, but it shouldn't hurt anything if that means the lower level mages can hit faster with more damaging spells (or hit the heals faster). And if the party isn't having trouble, it's a moot point.

[lilbyrdie]

After looking at some more math, I've found Nightmare to definitely be more worthwhile. Each level increases each of your own hits by 5 damage (since we know armor is linear). It also increases your overall chances of hitting by 2% because of the dodge reduction.

Not even looking at the 2% overall increase (because that depends on your exact damage), just the effect of the armor decrease effectively increases a mage's overall DPS by 9 when going after a single target and by 23 when hitting the maximum number of targets (5, according to another thread).

But how does this compare to Frostbite? That's easy.. Frostbite only hits every 4 seconds and only one mob, so each of it's levels only adds 3 DPS (overall).

What about Ice Storm, which can hit multiple targets? Turns out, it's too slow to matter. It only increases DPS by 1.2 against one target and 6.2 against all 5, per level.

When I look at the 2% additional hits on my dude, I can see that overall, I'd see another 6 DPS against one target and 18 against the maximum (assuming, of course, the AOE hit that same 5 the debuffs hit).

This calculation caused me to respec to:

6 1 6 1
6 1 6 1
1 0 6 6

I'm now going to lean towards Nightmare and, secondarily, Weakness. (Damage before defense.) It's clear that Nightmare, even when solo, has a greater impact on damage delivered than Frostbite or Icestorm. That might even hold true with some of the other attack skills, but I'm not sure.

The other conclusion I came to was that I now know that weapon damage impacts all skills. I can get more increase in damage by spending a bit of gold than a couple of skill points in frost or ice storm... In fact, with my D'jinn Wand, my Rank 1 frosts do more damage than before, when they were Rank 2 and 4.... and that's not even counting the extra impact from Nightmare... For instance, with Bony Fire Pin, Ice did 72-146 at Rank 4. Now, at Rank 1, it does 97-128 -- 19 DPS vs 18 and 3 skill points for other stuff.

(* Note: The DPS in this case are calculated and, due to the very nature of the change being to mob armor, obviously take armor into account. If we assume the effect lasts as long as the 8 second cool down, all offensive spells can benefit from it and it can be continuous if you splat out the skills fast enough.)