This is the sort of comparison you have to do when comparing sets. Weapon damage is such a small percent of total damage of a mage that it's very important to carefully consider the effect of the sets on total skill damage.
You can use a calculated DPS to help, by adding up all the DPS of all the skills and the weapon, but doing so at several estimated mob armor levels. The higher the mob armor, the more obvious the effect of a low base damage on a fast weapon becomes -- not to mention the massive loss in damage from skills. Then, once you have all of that in place, add in the differences due to hit% (if under 85%) and crit% -- both of which also apply to attack skills. For instance 10% more hit and 5% more crit translates to about 15% more overall damage.
For a nuke mage, you want the maximum combination of all of that. dodge, armor, regen, and all the rest are gravy -- as others have said, a max damage nuke mage is going to be more fragile because of the typical item trade-offs.
Another minor point: although a 50-150 and a 95-105 damage item at the same speed should add the same base damage to skills and, statistically, do the same damage to mobs, the 95-105 is a "safer" bet. You can't _just_ look at the averages...
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