Lightning bolt is the strongest single target anti-boss spell a mage has.

If there's multiple mages, it's silly for them to wait and do nothing (which will likely happen if you cut LB out of available spells) instead of throwing lightning bolt to accomodate one bleed, when one lightning bolt already accounts for half the damage that the full duration of bleed would cause.

Plus, it may not take off bleed anyway, it's not 100%.

If there's just me and one archer, and I throw lightning bolt with bleed 6 seconds in, either I gained damage on whatever we're trying to kill, or we broke even. If I don't throw it at all, we also break even, so I see no harm in throwing it. Using the previous argument (although I don't really agree with it), there's also no reason why the archer can't wait for me to lightning bolt before casting bleed either.

If there's multiple archers, they can reapply it after if it gets periodically shot off anyway, since they can't stack their bleeds on top of each other.

Out of all classes mages are strong no doubt, but when it comes to chief monsters, boss targets, or anything with relatively high hp, defense and other things, mages lightning simply cant compare to the damage inflicted by archers poisions.

Archers are given I believe 3 poisions by the time they are 60. Each dealing somewhere around 40-70 damage each tick.

Although mages lightning does deal a good amount of damage, its no reason to be sacrificing teamwork a bit here. The truth of the matter is if you put a level 60 mage and level 60 archer side by side and tell them to kill the same target. The level 60 archer will be the one gaining monster aggrivation.

This is seen clearly in the Spider Assault, and Minidragon King Quests respectively, where the Grave Robbers are punching holes into archers 60% of the time, or the minidragon decides its a good idea to shoot fire at the archer and the 4-5 clerics standing beside them.

Archers poisions deal pure damage. They arent affected by physical or magic defense. The only thing archer poisions are affected by is the ability for a monster to "resist" the poision.

In which case in a chief monster situation - they have high resistance rates, its not always easy for an archer to constantly recast poision.

In summary, mages are useful for many things. Archers - on the other hand as of this moment are only good at one thing, and mages cant possibly compare. That is, dealing the most amount of damage to a single target in a given period of time. Arguably your frost and inferno work in the same manner, however they still nearly dont account for the 50% of a grave robbers life taken away from the bleeds and poisions by an archer in the KQ's.

Well, leaving mage vs archer aside, because it's not the point I'm trying to make :)

I agree that 3 DoTs are superior to lightning, but the lightning isn't competing with all of them, it's only competing with bone shot. Fury Impact and Venom Shot aren't affected by Lightning.

Lightning also has an "additional hit" which is pure damage and is only "resist"ed by elemental type monsters, the same properties as the archer DoTs.

I agree about the teamwork, (well, assuming I am not missing the point here) but I am saying that by insisting on no lightning, that is a greater sacrifice, because ultimately whatever you're trying to kill will die slower. Lightning(8) does one tick of 117 defense ignoring damage, plus whatever the normal damage would be, which is around the same damage as the total done by the 6 seconds of bleeding on a boss monster (this is at level 59, with a +0 weapon, vs minidragon, in truth I think more people will have +9 weapons nowadays so it is probably more like 8 ticks of bleed but I'll continue to use 6 seconds for this argument.)

[This is more or less a rehash of my previous post, but I get the feeling I explained myself badly, so I will try again and hope I do a better job this time :)]
If you skip out on the lightning bolt, the mages have to cast something else to fill the gap caused by its non-existance, for continual fire. Lightning Ball (which is horrible and worse than Lightning Bolt anyway), can't be used because it causes the same problem, so really all you can do then, assuming you didn't empower firebolt's or magic blast's cooldown, is nothing. Nothing is a guaranteed loss of 6 "bleed ticks". Throwing the Lightning Bolt at worst loses 5 "bleed ticks" (the bleed ticks once and then gets shot off), so it will gain damage even in the worst case scenarion. It will also do it instantly, which is more valuable than doing the same damage 12 seconds later.

In the best case scenario (hitting at the end, or having it hit at any time and not take off the bleed) it does 6 extra "bleed ticks" worth of damage, so I can't rationalize not throwing the lightning bolt, because both outcomes for throwing seem more favourable to the group for me. Having multiple mages and/or multiple archers increases the argument in favour of lightning since the lightnings don't interfere with each other, and multiple archers can reapply any bleeds that are accidentally shot off to try and keep it constantly active.

As a side note, bone shot really sucks, the Archer's own AoE disease (at lvl 75) also kills their own bone shot. (this AoE disease isn't affected by lightning though, and stacks with the normal single target disease)

I have learned to work with archers (thx to Wackyboi) and this has helped me in a KQ. When I party with an archer, I pull the mob with Lightning, then I do not recast it unless the poison wears off. In a KQ, I simply do not use it unless the boss is really close to being dead and I tend to spam the crap outta all my skills then. However, my cooldown and my strategy on how and when I throw what skill does not leave me standing there doing nothing.
I think it depends on your playing style. Like I said, Wackyboi trained me real early on not using Lightning when I am with an archer and I carry that over into my KQs.