until you get used to it
then I loved it! was warlock before, and before I got the hang of harbinger, I was doing less than half the damage and was very disappointed (in myself), now, I've come in line for the most part and having fun as a battle mage; more so than I have with any melee before; never like melee in MMOs for whatever reason (besides dabbles in feral from time to time, and a bit of warrior in Tera at launch).
I'm glad they decided to experiment with it; gives me encouragement to test out more melee specs in the other classes