Armor Break Consume refresh and Mercenary, also grenades

I have, from the start of building my first char in PoE2, wanted to make High velocity rounds work. Why? Because armor break always works, helps with damage before break, and compared to freeze(frag rounds consume...), is allowed to proc without diminishing returns. But, I've battled with reload speed and having one round(support gems helping of course). So HVR isn't really my main skill, I use it for bossing sometimes. I dream of day of being able to use it as my almost exclusive round of ammo. Using Gas grenade to break armor btw. Also the spread on, specifically, 2 rounds of grenades, is way too much imo vs 3 or 4 or 5 grenades.

The problem I'm having is combined with reload speed, the armor break also has a little(1second?1.5 maybe) pause after being consumed. Compared to other classes, I'm basically being asked to wait, twice(reload), within one damage attempt. It's unfortunate, because it's fun, melting with grenades is fun, consuming armor is fun, phys damage is fun, sniping is fun. It just doesn't work, and there's no reason it shouldn't.

Tldr; the refresh on armor break consume should either be non-existent(for merc or gas greande...?) or halved in time. I just don't see why I have to wait, when I built something that should in theory work so well.

Yeah, I like the High Velocity Rounds build too and I'm working to make it better.

I use two support gems to fire two double-rounds (4 rounds) in quick succession and it's pretty effective.
(Double Barrel + Scattershot)

For bosses, I usually unload Armor Piercing Rounds until Armor is broken and then switch to HVR.

So you use Gas Grenade (with Corrosion) to break armor.

But you're saying the Armor comes back too quickly? And we have to start all over with the Armor Breaking + HVR cycle again?

Edit:
I also know what you mean about reload speed.
I'm working toward the Passive Skill Tree nodes Crossbow Reload Speed to make it 70% faster (3-node cluster on Passive Skill Tree).