Glacial Spike vs Ice Blast?

What's the difference between these two? First time playing a cold sorc and Catch's Blizzard Guide says to max Glacial Spike before Ice Blast or Ice Bolt.

Why is this?|||Glacial Spike has an AoE freezing effect, which makes it better for groups of enemies, such as questing, which may be why the guide suggests maxing it first. You can max Ice Blast first if you wanted, though. Ice Blast does a lot of damage and is very good at adding dps when taking down bosses.|||My personal guideline is maxing GS first if you play untwinked as it adds a lot in terms of survivability. For constant MFing with above average equipment I recommend Ice Blast as it does more dmg = bosses down early.|||glacial spike travels faster and hits multiple targets.

ice blast does a lot more damage.

its preference really as for which one to max. I generally prefer iceblast on a blizzard sorc cause if i want to hit multiples i'll just blizzard.|||yeah glacial damage is still very low compared to blizz against groups|||glacial can freeze an entire group of enemies so they don�t run out of the blizzard|||Yeah, but Blizzard does more damage against moving targets, which takes us again to the preference issue.|||glacial spike and a merc is how pure fire sorks solo baal in eight player games.|||I'd prefer Ice Blast, as glacial spike has the bad habit of having extraordinarily poor freeze time in hell due 1\3 effectivness when compared to ice blast.

Roughly over two second freeze time (that is presuming you have typical blizz sorc with maxed ice blast, glacial spike and blizz and not that much +skill items) vs roughly seven second freeze time makes curious diffrence, especially in hardcore on certain occasions. Sure it means I have to freeze them individually but I'd rather have them stay still like good dogs rather than spam constantly GS to keep them still, which sometimes defeats the purpose |||As others have said. The ice blast will give you better damage. The glacial spike is better for freezing but if you are pure cold then you'd be better off having the act 2 holy freeze merc to slow them as they walk through your blizz. For Bosses the ice blast dmg is far superior.

Thank for stat/skill reset quests.