Is that staff's opinion on spell mastery the same as the rest...that it's "not that important"?

My opinion is that you're exaggerating the effect. I'll go into what I referred to in the above as "overly reductionist", then.

Yes, you can propose situations where a missed spell costs you a fight. Obviously, landing spells consistently is better than not landing them in an absolute sense. My RL job requires fairly advanced math. I can handle that. However, if you compare that to things like choosing your fights, surprising your foe, gearing intelligently, making correct decisions, doing something they can't or didn't counter, having competent backup, the luck of the dice, etc., it's too minor of an edge when you account for its cost (time invested, risk of being ambushed during that time). In a relative sense, it's a boring way to gain a miniscule advantage. (This is the sole reason I pushed for and developed the Affinity concept. I get bored easily.)

Put another way, if I told you that if you spent 30 extra hours practicing, it would boost your PK percentage on that one character by 2%, would you do it? Why or why not?

My experience with mortal Valguarnera was:
- Master didn't have a leader for a long-ass time, and I spent a lot of time sitting at 20 (the highest level they'd induct). I solo-ranked a big chunk of that because it was the first time I'd ever played a mage character, and I wanted to get a feel for how everything worked. ("Huh. Sleep sure lands a lot more if...") Any skill/spell I had at 20 was probably pretty high.
- After I got inducted, I was thoroughly bored of practicing spells. I worked my way to 47, and didn't perfect anything except Word of Recall. mostly because it cost 5 mana at the time, and I had a 23 INT plus Tome. I think that took 20 minutes. I know I hit Spectre with a mid-90's Parry, 80-ish Teleport and Crimson Scourge, 71% Power Word Kill, etc.
- I logged every time I died. I realized as a heroimm that zero of those losses were from failed spells or skills. I could have had 150% Parry and it wouldn't have mattered. They were due to getting outnumbered, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, making bad or risky choices, etc.
- I smiled because I realized I didn't spend a zillion hours staring blankly at a computer screen mashing the same command over and over. I dare claim I had fun my way.

As an immortal, I'd add:
- I like the idea of having a game where people go out and play, instead of trying to maintain erections via a steady flow of improvement messages. It's a lot more fun to interact, observe, reward, etc...... when the players are actually doing something.

I'd believe the whole "I'm nothing without my 100%s!" argument if I didn't constantly see the following:
- Skilled players with horrible %'s mowing down their range.
- "Skilled" players with 100% everything getting killed because they made bad decisions (*).
- Logs where the peanut gallery screams "your skills are awesome/crap and that's why you won/lost", and I check, and the guy's skills are crap/awesome, causing me to chuckle. Nepenthe invented that art, and damn if it doesn't keep delivering the laughs.

A long time ago I wrote an overly long post (like this one) called 'The Practicing Trap'. My oft-misquoted main thesis was:

- 100% skills go away when you type 'delete'. Fun memories, player skill, good stories, area knowledge, and all that other good stuff don't. As a new player, it's more important and more fun to work on those things anyway. Practicing skills is a waste of your time. If you want to be anal-retentive and micro-manage your skill set in a dark corner, go ahead. I'll be over there, having fun. And please don't complain later that the game is too grueling or that it feels like work or that no imms wanted to interact with you because you never do anything.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

(*): Example from yesterday: If you're an arial dagger spec, for gods sakes read the Dodge helpfile and stop carrying five tons of gear. You found some spare hours to spam up Dodge, but couldn't find 5 minutes to go through your pack and figure out that maybe you don't need 100+ pounds of freakin' steaks and two backup canoes? This is related to the "You don't get to claim dual axes (**) is the end-all-be-all tactic at the same time you complain that you're not parrying enough because your skill is only 90%." rule.

(**): All apologies to the Cült of Äxë. Keep on preachin' the good word, guys. It's like Duvall in The Apostle out there. Amen.