Could someone clarify armour break and exploit weakness to me?

Primarily, armor break reads that the "fully broken armor" state lasts for 12 seconds. Is that state a static time window whether the debuff icon is there or not, or will consuming the fully broken armor statusicon with a relevant skill or exploit weakness, instantly restore their armor?

When you consume the debuff with the "exploit weakness" support gem, does the entire skill press get the damage bonus? Say for example rapid assault. Would the whole attack get the benefit, or only the first strike? What about something like flicker strike - would every single strike check and only the first strike gets the damage, or would every hit get the bonus? How about channeled abilities? Do ALL of them snapshot the damage bonus when the first hit triggers, or do you need to focus on using single strike abilities for the benefit? (I am assuming that multi-stage combo skills lose the damage after you require another press.)

Does a single strike skill that consumes fully broken armor with exploit weakness, deal the bonus damage to the target as if they had 0 armor, or does the enemy restore armor immediately? (Tying back to the original question, unless the 12 second window of broken armor is static and doesn't require the debuff icon to remain, then this becomes relevant.)

It's really hard to determine what are the best skills to use these with if I don't know, and whether I should be using the armor broken phase to do a bunch of damage upfront and only consume it at the very end of the window, or if I can safely drop the nuke damage right away, and whether the amount of hits in the skill snapshot the damage bonus or only single hit skills should be used with exploit weakness.

Here's some answers to the best of my knowledge. I used Exploit Weakness in Hammer of the Gods last league so I have some experience with it.

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...or will consuming the fully broken armor statusicon with a relevant skill or exploit weakness, instantly restore their armor?

Consuming a debuff removes it immediately. So yes, the target's armour will be restored to full when fully broken armour is consumed.

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When you consume the debuff with the "exploit weakness" support gem, does the entire skill press get the damage bonus?

No, only a single hit can benefit from the consumption effects, so if a skill hits multiple times, only the first hit benefits. So big single hits should be used.

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Does a single strike skill that consumes fully broken armor with exploit weakness, deal the bonus damage to the target as if they had 0 armor, or does the enemy restore armor immediately?

The hit that removes the debuff still benefits from it. The debuff is removed after the damage is applied.

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It's really hard to determine what are the best skills to use these with if I don't know, and whether I should be using the armor broken phase to do a bunch of damage upfront and only consume it at the very end of the window, or if I can safely drop the nuke damage right away, and whether the amount of hits in the skill snapshot the damage bonus or only single hit skills should be used with exploit weakness.

It depends on how fast you can re-apply the fully broken armour. If it's quick the you should drop the nuke asap, so you can start breaking armour again. Basically optimize the freuency at which you can use your nuke skill.

If it takes a long time to break the armour then you might want to utilize the broken armour status before consuming the effect. It also depends on how much damage your nuke does compared to your other damage skills that you would use during the 12s time period.