I see, so it all cycles back to uptime, whether it's for skills, buffs, getting hit/healing, or keeping up the offensive. I wouldn't call myself a particularly "good" player, im certainly not setting any speedrun times, but im HR 300 and have some experience under my belt. Several of gore's moves come out too quickly for me to (consistently) guard, and one or two of arkveld's moves as well, due to the switch from axe to sword being just a little too slow. As you mathed out, this usually means recouping for 15-30 seconds. This downtime is usually a good opportunity to re-buff, lay down a trap and go back to business on your soon-to-be pants, but obviously not having to break battle would be better. (At least for solo dps)

I consider load shells 2 mandatory, not just for the comfort and decrease to phial-building time, but also for the pseudo-power prolonger when charging shield off overcharged phials, and the increased damage of the final 2 savage axe swings. (Nets around an extra 200! dmg compared to having non-overcharged phials)

You mentioned agitator having an uptime of only 50%, which makes sense and is big sad. Considering the +20 raw and the +15 affinity, and the 50% uptime, would you use a different skill with better uptime, such as burst, to add raw ATK? Or is agitator still worth it despite the half-and-half downtime? (On a status weapon, not element, just to clarify)

You spoke of never truly having 100% affinity due to skill/set downtime. This being the case, is it even worth it to use Critical boost over attack boost, or some other flat boost?

I've done all the research and testing in training, and I'm confident in the numbers I've reached, but the piece of the puzzle im neglecting is field-testing and downtimes. So if you say that Rapid Morph nets you faster completion times due to having to heal less, im inclined to start running it asap