So many things I disagree with, don't even know where to begin...
First of all regarding imbue. Choosing fire over light just for the imbue is plain stupid. It is NOT that strong. Actually the difference is very little (try using lower lvl imbue book and see for yourself). Also light has parry reduce so you can hit max dmg more often, so I'd say light is even better (for ints, not for str - their dmg is lower so the difference would more noticable)
2nd - 9% buff and passive: lmao, do you really think ~18% PHYSICAL dmg increase would be better than extra 8% of MAGICAL dmg for a pure INT char? Pure bullshit...
3rd - the nukes. Yes 330% (at higher lvls) is a noticeable difference, but it's not the most important thing + light nukes are strong too
4th - lol, who was stupid enough to think that those % are cast times?
5th - parry. This stat isn't measured in thousands, don't expect the difference to be 100, 200 or 300 and parry ratio is important, you can't argue with that
6th - fire shield. Fire shield at 30lvl is enough, it's a low lvl skill, but it does its job
7th - NO GRASSWALK?! I drain half my mp pots "sliding" towards something ^^
8th - You mentioned that some light nuker did less dmg than you... How can you compare that? Yeah, that 330% fire nuke might be that strong, but you can't compare like that. What if that person had better/worse weapon? More/less int pts? Was lower/higher lvl? Etc.
9th - Upcoming caps... What the hell are you gonna do at 100lvl? 100fire100wep100ice? Or 20light80ice? Or 50/50? And it'll get worse...
THE only useful (other buffs are useful too, but not that much) thing is MAG DEF BUFF! +171 (i think) at 90lvl. Now that's worthy of having fire
Tell me if I missed anything, I love to argue ^^
1. yes sir , since u chose to look at first books u cant see big diffrence , but the diffrence increase by increasing of the level , and it become quit big at high levels , and u r immune against the reduce , and other builds with fire 30% will have light immune , even euros with cleric sub and do a holy word , he wont get em , cant depend on that .
2. why would u take a weapon mastery to start with ? it helps , ALOT , i cant say its better than 8% of fire , but it does well + the other pros of having fire .
3. the nuke multipliers are very important , and the fire nukes do as much dmg as light does when u have force piercing force does , fire range is small , so its dmg tends to be constantly high ( 25k for example ) , while lightning got high range , so its once like 21 k , the next 16 k .
4. not me .
5. wat about the fire defence against other ints ? , and the fact that lightning parry buffs gives only small amount of parry , that u an get it if u blue and fix ur set parry % , ofc with it u will have greater , but like i said again and again , lose something to get a better thing .
6. yeah , with 30 fire u would have about 80% immune , quit enough .
7. am doing pretty fine with the low level grass walk , train in eye peak , u dont have to walk much between mobs .
8. yeah , he with spear +7 and me with +5 sword =] i do have 10% magic buff and amazing fire multipliers + embue , can do more damage .
9. dunno bout coming cap , ill think later.
flame wave bomb lvl 90: 1060~1766
crane's thunderbolt lvl 90: 989~1837
am sorry , but flame wave bomb is weakest of the 3 fire nukes used by high lvled people >.> if hell fire does 23 k , it does like 15k , u cant count it ^.~ compare using hell fire or flame wave wide.