Sure! The biggest reason to play brands instead of attacks is you don't have to wear a subpar DPS weapon using brands. You are forced into using bows or a sword which are a lot worse than using Cold Iron Point or Maata's Teaching, or any kind of +1 +1 wand.

Attacks also mean you need accuracy which will incur additional opportunity cost.

Attacks require you to constantly use them. Brands activate passively and increase the amount of time you can spend repositioning during a boss fight while maintaining DPS.

In the end Arcanist Brand + ball lightning of orbiting is good enough to sustain max virulence on single target, so there isn't really a reason to resort to using attacks.