You don't need to lock on to accomplish this; you just need to face properly and locking on can help. A lot of people just use legacy camera and don't think about facing. A lot of people over the past couple of years have built an incorrect picture of how AAs work and that there are consequences for not locking on or for running through a mob to its other side, but it's really the consequence of not maintaining facing, which is not the same thing.
Auto-attacks are a cooldown like any other, they're just hidden. If you turn away while it's still on CD, you have lost nothing. If you then turn towards the target, you will auto-attack almost immediately, and the next will be according to your Delay stat and any relevant attack speed buffs unless you once again lose facing or move out of range. This is something you can test on a dummy.
I use controller and I don't lock on unless I need to move circularly or backpedal. Sure, my percentiles from Gordias aren't as impressive as I'd like, but it is what it is; I got screwed over when it was my turn for glory runs and only a few runs shown there had the benefit of a ninja/machinist. If you can tell it's "obvious" I'm losing autos from these reports, I'd be kind of surprised. I had plenty of T8 runs where (not having had Selene at the time) I could divide the time by my weapon's Delay stat and get the number of recorded auto-attacks.
We were the only team on our server to beat Manipulator Savage before 3.1. The actual time it took us to clear was not that impressive, but it does qualify us as a "serious" raid group, I'd think.
Locking on is just a technique like any other for maintaining facing. It is not the only one. So basically they went from not trying to face to using a method that enforces more facing (at certain other costs that are simply less than what they gained from locking on).
Auto-attacks may be the largest portion of damage, but they've never been a majority of it in this game, even before they got nerfed in 3.0.
It should also be noted that there are plenty of keyboard+mouse players who switch to legacy camera and end up having the same lack of facing. The problem is not inherent to the method of controls, but rather has a specific cause and specific solutions. You would have the same problem if you were on standard camera and did the inverse, turning the camera to move forward and then just leave it there using only auto-facing to land your skills; just, nobody does that, unless they're (ulp) keyboard-turners.


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