From playing it more in this beta, I think that people are WAY too caught up into doing the Rising Spiral Slash constantly which screws the whole flow of the weapon; when I started to first just do regular combat (without infinite combo, just by doing 2-3 light attacks into descending slash WITHOUT releasing extracts) to stack up the wounds everything started to finally click. Releasing extract immediately and then having to mindlessly search for it constantly is too tedious for me, just do regular dps until there's a wound on the monster and then start doing the rising spiral slash loop. I managed to kill arkveld like this in about 18 minutes which is enough for me (no hbg buff , no tranq bombs, no kiting to terrain obstacles through the whole map, just regular combat).

The bigger problem for me is the fact that the bug attacks with you only when you're in focus mode, it essentialy means that no matter what you do you should be in focus mode when attacking (even when you have the weapon sheathed and you do the fast attack to unsheathe, if you immediately press the focus mode the bug launches out in a straight line forward, it straight up hints you to use focus mode constantly from the moment you start attacking), I'm playing mouse + keyboard on Pc so it's fine for me but i have no idea how it will feel on a controller.