I prefer attack speed, since it's guaranteed that I can attack faster, even if it's only slightly. More damage might result in less hits, but often it doesn't and really only applies to enemies with tons of HP, like bosses, or to an extent, lumbers. But that goes back to attack speed; if you can attack faster, you're doing more damage and there are a host of other benefits that go along with it.

Get yourself a swiftstrike buckler and see how that "high" speed increase feels. You might not really notice it, but when you go back to using the weapon without that shield, you should feel the lack of speed. If you don't, then just go with more damage as you will at least feel some numbers are going to be higher.

You seem too concerned about this, rather than playing whatever feels good. Don't min-max everything. Just do whatever you enjoy most. I personally like more speed and for most weapons, that's a benefit.

On the topic of UVs, players have done some tests and shown that certain UVs are linear (e.g. CTR lessens charge time by 0.25 seconds per point). Then there are others, like status resistances, where the higher you go, the more diminishing returns you get (e.g. no curse resist causes me 40 seconds of curse, but medium curse resist UV gives me only 22 seconds. You can bet that another 3 points isn't going to make that curse 0 seconds).

On a similar note, and one people rarely talk about, consider status resists or defense that does NOT match your armor. The norm tends to be e.g. someone going for vog cub coat wants a fire UV to have the most fire protection. This sounds ok, but think about the diminishing returns I mentioned above. A low UV for status resist gives the absolute most protection for that 1 point. Sure, you want to make your armor as well suited to a stratum as possible, but let's say you're going for that vog cub coat. Instead of getting a fire UV, consider a shock or freeze UV, whatever your two pieces of armor is missing. For those instances that you run into those statuses, you aren't going to take the maximum damage.

Put it this way: Add 2 points to your already good fire protection to shave off 1 second of burn? Or have 2 points of shock protection that can bring 8 seconds of shock down to a mere 5 seconds? <--- numbers may not be accurate depending on the gear you have, but you should get the point

Nah, damage bonuses vs. enemies that're resistant to your weapon... are still pretty bad. :( You'll be dealing 8 damage instead of 7. Just treat it as if the weapon didn't have a UV.

OK, a related question: How good are UVs for extra damage against things the weapon is good with? For example, something that does piercing, and has a UV against fiends? I suspect that it is a very good thing to have since you get a percentage increase on a larger base damage amount....