gear > items > spec > skill
I don't consider myself a skilled player, and my reinc doesn't have any superior gear. But only having items+spec (and a FOTM class) let me outdps ppl with much better gear (both in astral and skirms). So I wouldn't put spec that low in the chart. And, obviously, "items" is a great field for speculations: for some reason ppl overestimate runes and underestimate other cool things.
sure, if someone has a really bad spec because he lacks the knowledge on what is important for the desired result this can lead to uncharming results - cant disagree here
however spec was more meant like
"will i take the survival rubies 9% more health or the 9% more dps rubies, will i prolong my cc 2 seconds or better get that mobility"
- i think most (veteran) players will have relatively similar builds for similar purposes in general (exceptions always exist) and even more, due to the aspect-limitations, for those with a lot of rubies there are literally no differences in builds possible at all anyway; since its like you have 60 rubies, there are 60 rubies available for that aspect... and 55 of them useful... guess which i will take...

(i will say it here again because i did not say it for quite some time now, aspects killed a lot of possible interesting builds!

)
and yes, runes are totally overestimated by so many players, this cant be said often enough - thats one of the reasons why i simply wrote "items" which includes runes that way
the only thing that matters is rotation. you can be a 165k engineer and outdps a 186k scout if his rotation is shit and yours isn't
skill only matters for adaptability and survival, neither of which matter to anyone in pve except for the tank and healer
yes, for pure dps means, the only "skill" required is pressing the buttons in the right oder - even a keyboard macro can do this in a satisfying way
my post was more directed towards PVP content - where as you precisely wrote - adaptability and survival play a bigger role than in PVE (e.g. determining whether its better to keep fighting or retreat, determine an order to kill your enemies and reacting to enemy focus)
but thats not really hard to learn and requires no great gamingskill, after some time its done "automactically" and thus i set "skill" as the least important part - no to forget making errors in these decisions does not really matter anyway if you are vastly superior regarding gear and items
every veteran knows this i guess, you can beat a weaker player with just using the mouse while eating and watching tv while an equal or stronger enemy requires some concentration and its a lot easier when you use the keyboard too -- and the weaker player then thinks the reason you won the battle is simply because of your runes
for all rookies who read here and now ask "so what is the reason?": its mainly the stats which come from the gear and their distribution along with several items which boost numbers even further - in allods multiplication plays a huge role
so even if the player would have lets say just level 4 runes, - as i tested many times - he would still win flawlessly due to the sum of advantages he accumulated overall
its not 1 item or 1 multiplicator, its the summary of all which grants the char its power - if you leave 1 factor away it has little impact)
also see this thread:
https://allods.my.com/forum/index.php?pa…&threadID=15068
and for a more detailed summary of factors:
https://allods.my.com/forum/index.php?pa…ad&postID=81034