I agree with you. And thank you for this posting, trying to cool down the kinda heated discussion a bit.
I also do like the concept of the new set. In the discussion in the other thread Pe3eWe3e wrote, that you could play UE-HA, if you like the playstyle. I tried yesterday. Yes, UE-HA is stronger (for now), and it is similar to play. But the difference between Vault and the “Momentum-buffed” Strafe is huge, imho. Compared to GoD, the transition between attacking with HA and Vault feels rather clunky. Alternating every few seconds between Strafe and Primary attacks feels much smoother, imho.
There are also several postings claiming that the current implementation of “Momentum” doesn’t make sense - it should be the other way round (= Strafe builds up Momentum, standing still firing Primaries consumes it). I think, this wouldn’t make sense - the current way just fits better into the overall fantasy of the set, which is obviously kinda Steampunk inspired. Well - not powered by actual steam, but more by something lika a spiral spring, which you wind up by casting primary attacks.
If you want a silly analogy: Think of toys like wind up cars. A little darker: Think of all the automatas in “Syberia” (a rather old point&click adventure game).
I think the current set mechanics do make sense. It needs a little bit (or a lot of) more damge, and it could be a fine new set.
I would like to see some bugfixes (HA not piercing and not proccing AD is one of the most important ones, imho), so that the damage during strafing is not lower than in the “wind up” phase. After that, damage during strafe could be actually higher, as you can strafe right through a large group of monster, dealing a huge amount of damage caused by a lot of consecutive pierces.
I do like the set because it is not “one button spin to win”, and it also does not require high frequenzy stutter-step (like the old Natalya).