There is emotion in sweep picking,but not overusing it like Gambale.Adrian Vandenburg demonstrated how a slow sweep,can generate a lot of excitement in the solo for,"Here I go Again" on Whitesnake's Self Titled '87 release.And No ,that wasn't John Sykes,he played every other solo on that release.Stevie Ray Vaughn and David Gilmour have used sweeps very effectively,though most will contend they are more of a "Raking Technique".Still,they are arpeggios.I agree with the above on picking,between 85-89,all I did was use Alternate picking.Then I saw Kotzen,and my opinions changed.I started incorparating his legato phrasing immediately,and have been for the last 14 years.But I still use both affectively,depends on the genre your playing in and feel of the song.
String skipping I"ve used forever,but I'd like to point out,just don't use the technique to jump blindly across the fretboard so people will say"Hey,he's String Skipping",the technique works great slow,also if you add a tap along the string skips,going acrsos the fretboard in octaves,6 string,4th and 2nd and so on,covers alot of distance and is great melodically as well as becoming more familiar with different positions and starting points for the same scale in other octaves.Remember,if your only playing these various techniques at half the speed of the great ones,you are still playing better then most punk bands,lol.I'm not slammin punk or ska ,but,hopefully,you get my jist.