Shock Pulse with Piercing Orb fires at what appears to be a very low speed compared to Electrocute with Lightning Blast. Shock Pulse runed is listed to have 105%wd piercing, and Electrocute has 80%wd piercing.
Does the attack speed (animation?) matter for these two spells? It seems to me that for every Shock Pulse I cast, I'll cast at least 2.X Electrocutes in the same amount of time.
To clarify a little (I'm asking about overall effective DPS on a single target that isn't moving), does every single bolt from Electrocute do 80% of weapon damage (I assume that each Shock Pulse orb does 105%), and if it does, would Electrocute be better since you cast more in the same amount of time (so you would have 160%+)?
Best Answer
While skills refer to percentages of weapon DPS, they each have internal attack and pulse rates that are not mentioned in the tooltips. Generally, they refer to the overall damage you'll see per second, and the damage values you'll see per individual hit will reflect that. If you're using passives like Prodigy or effects such as gaining Arcane Power on crits, you might find more use out of faster attacks like Electrocute despite their lower damage in general.
While not being a specific answer to the question, this post on wizard weapon selection and attack speeds may offer additional insight into why things work this way.
(Note that while the first link refers to DoTs and channeled skills, it appears to be generally applicable to all skills in the game, and my personal testing seems to reinforce that point. If anyone has non-anecdotal evidence to oppose that, please share!)