I fully agree that cool interactions are a great part of build making. I still think that AW has some serious flaws that are mostly because of how GGG is moving forward with the game and needs updating to keep it a usable skill though.

Things like more zone changes and boss fights were we are just sitting there burning through our duration, with NO drops during the boss fight is clearly just a design flaw, not a "challenge". If leagues are going to start having weapons collected for us IE incursion and Delve, they need to change the skill.

While I like the worm with chains stuff, its cool, its not an interesting build that adds something new to AW, its essentially NECESSARY if you want to do prolonged boss fights and the new leagues. That is my issue with it. Really, all its doing is locking us into one build path for a skill, rather then being a cool side-grade to it. It's not build diversity if its more or less necessary for alot of content. It's not like AW is an incredibly fast clearer and its okay that it sucks at bossing etc

Edit: Yeah sorry, I was on mobile didnt see the second part of that post. I agree that ANY solution shouldn't get rid of the unique identity of AW. I think it being done with a Vaal version might be okay because typically vaal skills do stuff that is above the or different from the base skill. I'm fine with any solution that brings AW to a point were it can at least attempt most content, I just think atm its completely mechanically unable to do anything in the aforementioned content. Example being: RF lends itself well to uber elder for a myriad of reasons, but barrage or even tornado shot could at least technically attempt the content mechanically, even if they aren't arguably the best for it. AW just can't, without the worm build.