Mega Mage vs. Shadow - Worth It? Advice?

[noneo]

Mega mage adds more skill damage of course - so the base skill damage is higher. When MM crits, it hits even harder than full shadow critical hits, although shadow will crit more often.

Edit: The truth is for mage - skill damage matters more than DPS. For bird, that's different. If such a Mega Mage set existed, I'd willingly trade zero DPS for very high skill damage. Why? Because most damage from int mages comes from your spells.

This actually makes a lot of sense (I think it is what Royce was trying to say as well). I understand that the higher base damage is an integral part of hitting higher with skills.

Can anyone explain to me the exact correlation between base damage and skill damage? That would be greatly appreciated.