What skills are best to get and to what level? I find myself saving skill points until I need something because I'm not sure what to "buy."

Id item hardly seems worth it. The items aways need more skill than I have.

I've never been able to open a lock with lockpick, even when I had poured 5 points into the skill. I restored after that.

Anyone have a good distribution for my mage and DK? I had put a lot of DK into one handed melee slashing. I'm not sure he's using it. I had my mage loaded up with too many skills, so I took ID away from her and gave it to DK. But I still don't know what distribution is good.

I guess I have two questions. What skills should I develop for each. Then how many points relatively. Should I try to keep things like repair and ID equal in ability?

I'm in act 2. When will my mage be able to get fireball? Right now I have her with 2 points of Meteor. It doesn't always knock out a group, but sometimes hits more than one. Is it better to meteor (level 2) than to use a beefed up individual fire skill (level 6)? Meteor uses a lot of mana. I have a lot, but two of those will drain my mage.