I don’t get being intentionally obtuse on the buff length or how the keystone works. The keystone is easy to use, I ran chainsword and columnus, and when closing distance I’d use ranged to kill at least one mob to activate 10s of 15% attack speed & 10% dodge distance/speed. You then melee away as normal, accumulating a stack per melee kill up to 10 (just swapping every 5s nets you nothing, you need to kill in both modes). IF something like a special or elite happens to rear its head at range, you swap back for a solid +33-330% crit chance for 5s to range (and if traited, your weapon ALWAYS HAS AMMO in the clip even if you just emptied it) to deal with said special. Or just swap to range and pick off a nearby trash mob to refresh your 10s melee buff. Rinse, repeat. It’s not a difficult playstyle to decipher. It may NOT be the playstyle for you, and that’s fine, but calling it niche is absurd. It’s pretty straightforwardly a melee style complimented by swapping to range occasionally for power bursts.
Dude has a point. I get that you want ‘always on’ buffs instead of the keystones. A thing is, I’d say there’s certainly room to argue on all the keystones - but first you need to accept that they are, in fact, pretty darn solid as many people are saying. I’d be the first to say the vet tree still needs work (4-5 more points to get/fill out keystones hurts flexibility) and maybe if they do you can find your passive buffs and ignore these keystones, but they’re objectively pretty darn strong and people that are actually trying them instead of complaining about them agree.