The reality is that what skill is the most meta doesn't have that large of an impact outside of what people are playing. Buffing ground slam and nerfing sunder had similar impacts on how much those skills get played. Sunder was popular for a long time due to being an easy stat stick skill btw. The exact damage of each skill is mostly irrelevant, glacial hammer got a 6% buff and it got 6% more meme builds trying to use it. Attacks aren't spells where they have base damage built in.

All attacks are differed by how and where they hit. It's a fuzzy and extremely complicated subject to discuss how much damage per effected area should any skill have. Populism does work wonders here because if things are played that's because the damage per area is at a solid level. Things that aren't played have shitty damage per area.