Astral Combat vs Manabolt, which is better? Options

[6thDragon]

I noticed a similar thread a while back that debated the difference between banishing and just casting a manabolt/stunbolt. I got to thinking last playing session which is better between spellcasting and Astral Combat. Learning the skill Astral Combat costs valuable buildpoints at character gen. Where you could simply choose either stunbolt or manabolt. Either would work in astral space and have very practical uses on the physical plane too. Because spellcasting is the only method of ranged combat, that by itself is main advantage of spellcasting. Not having to close the distance between yourself and your target has its advantages. Stunbolt and manabolt both have relatively low drain so that shouldn't be a large deterrence to casting spells in astral space either. The one advantage I can see of learning the astral combat skill is that astral combat is an opposed test. Meaning if you have considerably more skill in it than your opponent, you can hurt them badly. Especially if you include a foci and specialization. Then having a modest amount of astral combat just makes sense for defending yourself. Have any of you wondered how effective learning the astral combat skill is over just relying of spellcasting? Or have you have players min-max and get ride of Astral Combat in favor of relying on spellcsting? What did you come up with?