Mechanist Mace-weaving is it Intended?

[Malus.2184]

Normally any use of another skill resest the auto attack chain, however, for Mechanist you can weave in one skill between strikes, as long as you use a mace, so their rotation looks something like this:

1

Skill

2

Skill

3

Skill or 1 CD allows it.

Without breaking or resetting the auto attack chain. 

At first I thought that this was a bug or a design flaw that allowed this to happen and the more I think about it seems intentional because without an Alac Mechanist would be auto attack only, except when Crisis Zone, Barrier Burst, and Barrier Signet was running. One has a name that indicates that it should be used in response to something big happening, hence the name "Crisis Zone." The second is a major loss of DPS, and the third locks a Utility Skill slot since Shift Signet is already mandatory since it does so much.

Crisis Zone also comes with several defensive Boons that makes little sense in the context of using it constantly. the Renegade version is calling in combat support while the Mechanist one aside from the Alacrity is defensive in nature.

Mechealer would also be strongly affected by having a normal auto attack chain since it depends on the synergy between Compounding Chemicals and Medical Dispersion Field to pump out coinstant healing since Barrier and Regen alone are too little to cut it. So the role needs to be able to spam boons on itself to heal others. And when loked at timing-wise the auto attack chain and Energizing Slam syncs up really poorly when it comes to the cast time of the former and cooldown of the latter.

Then there's the objective fact hat this is a large divertion of gameplay structure, however, there's already presedence for that in the form of the Specter and the Bladesworn.

It seems that for every argument for I can come up with one against, so what do you lot think?

Edited March 24, 2022 by Malus.2184

[Malus.2184]

Tried it out without using Crisis Zone, Barrier Burst, or Barrier Signet in my rotation, and it felt so much more intitive since I could take other traits/Skills as long as I had Mech Frame: Channeling Conduits for the Alac. I could use Crisis Zone as a reaction to bad things happening. Something that makes the functionality of all the defensive boons and condi removal so much clearer. The Alacrity is meant to keep up Alacrrity on your party as a Mecheal while you do other stuff to keep people alive.

[Nate.8146]

The engineer always had this. Perhaps other professions too, but I never bothered to test them. I often weave between primary weapon skills and kits all the time. Poison Dart Volley on pistol for example has a long drawn out animation, but you can swap to grenade kit right after the poison volley starts. This way you don't need to wait out the kit select animation delay and can start lobbing grenades. Works as well for Blowtorch, which has a slight delay in the attack.

 

I assume this is a bug because it creates an odd presentation (ex: shooting poison darts from your grenade kit), but low priority and moot to fix since they can just balance the class to compensate for it. Much like what ESO does, given that the community won't allow them to fix it at this stage in the game's life.

[Kulvar.1239]

Neither a bug, neither a class/weapon exclusive.

AA reset after a delay.

Using a fast skill let you go back to the middle of your AA.

It's even on the wiki 🙂

[The Boz.2038]

Yeah, I was a bit puzzled when people who discovered this... discovered it. 
The "weaving" isn't really new or unique. It might not be as commonly seen, but it is there. On just engi, Scrapper's AA chain allowed a fair bit of weaving, too.

[celestia.3829]

Revenant mace does the exact same thing - it feels very good to use