But it's a sword.

[Duelle]

their level 1 skill is a sword skill(first hit in the sword combo)...

Which is likely there because it'd make no sense to give you Jolt at lv1 if you have nothing to spend mana on once you hit 30/30 from spamming it. It's purely for making the skill spread work and nothing else.

The sword is sadly an afterthought, since the design basically forces you to spam spells from range and then run in to hit the mob 3 times and then get away again. If you use sword skills without mana (which takes a long time to build), you're going to be dealing really low damage. Hence why the potencies are so low.

It's a step above this, but not by much. And yes, that guy doesn't use his sword for anything at all.

[Shurrikhan]

It's a step above this, but not by much. And yes, that guy doesn't use his sword for anything at all.

Wand-swords, yo.

On topic:

I AA between casts. If your ping is low, there's no gap for the AA to go off between the cast and the following instant. The damage bonus is less than neglible, however; I just tend to be in AA range in preparation for Displacement. Unless there's a specific reasons not to, I use both Displacement and Corps-a-corps as on-cooldown bonus damage like Blunt Arrow and Repelling Shot; I find the paired casts to be plenty of mobility in themselves.

So far (at level 60) RDM has about the complexity you'd expect from getting a third- or halfway to level cap. The burst is crunchy, and the mild versatility comes in quite handy in 4-DPS PotD runs. I'm enjoying it more than my gutted HW mains, but that's not saying much.