Why melee movement skills should break mult-strike animation

TL:DNR main points:
Multi-strike is required for most melee skills.
This promotes a meta where melee skills that do not use multi-strike (cyclone) or pseudo-melee skills (reave, ground slam and lightning strike) are vastly superior, or attack speed stacking is the best way to scale damage.
Slow attack weapons and builds are under utilized, despite attempts by GGG to curtail this with the introduction of Ice Crash and soon Earthquake.
A way to help this without adding power to any existing skill supported by multi-strike is to allow movement skills such as leap slam and whirling blades to interrupt melee attack animations.


Full Post
I'm confident most, if not all people, who have played a melee character in POE have come close to dying or straight up died because they were stuck in a multi-strike animation. The majority of melee skills require multi-strike to be at all viable: it increases damage output, AoE clear, and reduces mana cost per attack. How can you not use this support with all these benefits?

However, a clear downside to multi-strike is that it locks you into your attack animation for however long it takes you to hit 3 times. This and other things have helped to contribute to the feather tickling meta. That is to say, attack speed is the best stat opposed to pure damage increases. An example of this in action is that it is worse to do 6 hits in 6 seconds that do 100 damage each and better to do12 hits in 6 seconds that do 50 damage each. Both scenarios output the same damage, but the second one is better because it has less delay between getting in range and starting your first attack, and allows you to stop attacking and re-position more easily, also if you are using any on-hit effects the second scenario is clearly superior.

Some players have chosen to avoid multi-strike altogether because of it's inherent issues. This is why cyclone is the most popular melee skill in the meta despite being what I term pseudo-melee. Other popular pseudo-melee skills involve reaves ground slam and lightning. Whereas these three can make use of multi-strike they have enough range where your character doesn't even have to be in what might traditionally be considered melee range and in my opinion are not true melee skills. Ice crash which has also seen recent popularity is another melee skill that avoids multi-strike. Meanwhile, more traditional melee skills such as infernal blow or cleave have seen less play.

A possible solution to some of the major drawbacks of multi-strike and multi-strike supported skills is to allow movement skills such as leap strike and whirling blades interrupt the multi-strike animation. This would reduce the negatives of traditional melee skills with out adding any inherent power to them, as well as rewarding player skill over latency. Let me give an example of when this would be beneficial:

You attack the vaal oversoul with a relatively slow attacking weapon. As your first attack lands you see the oversoul wind up with his slam ability. Knowing this can 1 shot a player you immediately spam your movement skill.

Scenario 1 – Movement skills DO NOT break animation: You watch your character finish the 3 attack animation. Your character begins their leap strike animation. The slam lands as you're jumping away. Depending on your latency you will either be caught in the slam and have a good chance of dying, or you make it away.

Scenario 2- Movement skills DO break animation: You see your first attack land and then as you're winding up for the second the movement skill breaks the multi-strike animation, cancels the remaining hits and the leap strike animation begins. You leap away before the vaal slam lands and regardless of latency you survive.

In scenario 1 you die to bad luck and latency, 2 factors more or less beyond your control. In scenario 2 paying attention and quick reactions determine the outcome, both factors well within a player's control.

For the reasons stated above, this is why melee movement skills should be able to break melee attack animations.