Whirling Assault + target lock feedback + sort of melee feedback in general

Tl;dr: it sucks to use without toggleable target lock and needs proper pathing and/or PLAYER SIZE 0.

It feels pretty clear we're either avoiding a cyclone situation, but using it ever since it became available from skill gems it's obvious the current version of Whirling Assault(henceforth WA) isn't great to use.

Problems:

* Target locking locks you into spinning in place or towards the targeted mob regardless of where you aim your mouse
- This means you'll be locked into the animation until you're stunned or dodge, without having any control over where you want to move. it's possible to aim where there's no mobs, but it's not reliable.

It's okay for bossing, somewhat, but ultimately given the damage scaling of the skill it's biggest pro is having a slightly longer reach and movement that enables you to deal damage while somewhat dodging projectiles or such. But the way it's implemented doesn't allow you to reliably do that.

Solution: Either change the skill into a channeling skill or give it proper pathing so that you don't get stuck on random rocks and I think it could use PLAYER SIZE 0 to allow such pathing. Or gives us the option to disable TARGET LOCKING with PLAYER SIZE 0 like with dodging.

* The skills AOE visuals don't match the skill's actual area of effect OR tempest bell hitbox is a lot smaller than the visual indicates.
Using WA near a tempest bell is hit or miss, literally, because the visual would indicate you should be hitting it but you aren't. Seemingly you need to have about 25-50% overlap of WA to be hitting the bell.

Solution: Either scale the AOE of WA properly and/or increase tempest bell's hitbox, which btw has a problem with target locking as well, because it's a circus performance to try and hit it when you're target locked a few degrees off.

* WA rolls crit chance once for the animation, but poison chance seemingly doesn't. Acolyte of Chayula "Reality Rending" ascendancy node i'm not sure about, i'm not qualified to test.

I'm honestly not sure whether it's bad or good, but it feels weird to roll crit once for a skill that hits 5(?) times during it's full animation.

"Reality Rending" ascendaancy would probably be better if every hit had a separate roll though.

* Attack speed scaling /no movement scaling from the support that reduces movement penalty.
- WA without a proper way to scale attack speed will remain a bottom tier skill.

Solution: The skill would feel a lot better without the unmodifiable added total attack time in general, but at the time of writing this my perception of the game is polluted by seeing spell casters/ranged gameplay that seems more like PoE1 than what I assume PoE2 should be.

Enabling the use of the less movement penalty support would help with the style of attack while moving without power creep as well. It'd even feel like a proper melee skill that way honestly without target lock, freedom of movement + attacking. Something that is lacking in the mace department.

Target lock is very bad with melee skills, it should be toggleable IN GENERAL.

Whirling assault is the single worst ability I have ever interacted with. I am kinda sad, that there is actually only bell, glacial cascade, storm wave, tempest flurry and ice strike as feel good to use abilities the rest is clunky or charge spenders without any smooth charge generation in boss fight scenarios.

After playing more yesterday I came to the same conclusion. Tbf I'm doing a so far seemingly stupid idea of poison melee AoChayula with WA as my clear skill for spreading poison via killing small trash first. It's amazing when it crits and very bad when it doesn't.

WA main purpose seems to be fast combo building and bell smashing, which can be done better with other abilities. Only upside is that WA has a 360 aoe that makes the bell easier to hit compared to other skills. I wouldn't be surprised if the bell gets nerfed soon, because it singlehandedly carries the monk/quarterstaff class/weapon, whatever you build.

In addition, what's weird is that WA, while it rolls crit once, it continues to consume power charges with the 30% more crit when consuming charges support.

I know that it rolls crit once because of the quarterstaff passive that gives crits knockback. It either knocks mobs back through the full animation or it doesn't.

This makes it seem then that it's a bug that I need to report. Which way it's bugged idk.