I have tested both ranged and melee Primal Strike on cooldown.
Here’s what I think.
The ranged version is too spammy in between Savagery and PrimalStrike, hence why I think people will stay with the spammable Primal Strike.
As for the melee version, a bit less spammable on coodown but it’s lacking AOE. The ranged version pierce ennemies but the melee does not and using the skill on CD feels bad. I would significantly make the Primal Strike on Cooldown much bigger and then adjust Thunderous Strike.
As for the damage for both version is hard to tell, I guess we would have to fix the feel first by changing how spammy it is on CD, especially as the ranged version. I’d say more or less 2.5 sec CD would be fine with a geared character to separate the Cooldown and the 100% CDR versions for both melee and ranged. That way we would have distinc feels of builds. And then add significantly more AOE to the the Cooldown version, especially since Savagery is not the focus of the builds.
As a side note for the ranged version being too “spammy” in between Savagery and Primal strike,I dunno why but Shadow Strike on CD feels better to me :
I have a piercing version as an Infiltrator with the Unseen set, i guess it feels better because the damage is well distributed on every attacks and Shadow Strike is more mobile so naturally I would apply Word of and shadow strike to another ennemy a bit further.
I have a Acid/poison version as a dervish with the Deathguard set, it feels great because the AOE is great from the procs, I also don’t have to really use an auto-Attack on that version
the reason it might be/feel “spammy” is usually that’s what people want/have requested over the years; to lower CD skill as much as allowed for the dps increase.
Rationale as i’ve gathered is not even solely about dps (could in theory just get nuclear dmg at higher cd), but about skill point investment and fight frequency. Getting a maxed CD skill requires using additional skill to use inbetween and that can then get expensive quick. But also having a skill with the same potential dps isn’t attractive if you have to wait for it, not being able to use it on the next pack/enemy as quickly (SR/Crucible “speed”)
So here you have CD PS feeling “spammy” to you, because you’re trying to use a regular DAR/spam attack inbetween, instead of additional cooldown attacks like it might be on other builds*. More similar to ex ABB dervish than a Grenado/Canister sorc or Shadow Strike infil
I can’t say what’s the right way to resolve this/if it should even be resolved, i kinda like both things existing, spammy CDs and more cooldowned CDs
aoe compensation for melee is probably fine, if it’s egregious with passthrough could just be modified separately on guns and TS’muter
*that’s not me implying you’re building “wrong”, but that it’s the “intent” for one version, and to feel less spammy would then mean using ex Rakajax instead of Sparkthrower