I'm a newbie to the game, but from playing a few levels it seems to me that in the Soaring form, using the skill again does the Descent finisher, and the normal attack becomes Hard Hit, correct? Now, first off Hard Hit has a regen time. That's confusing since the animation is just the standard pew pew pew of the regular crossbow attack. I'm not sure if Hard Hit is being mixed in with regular attacks, it always does a Hard Hit every time, or I need to trigger it somehow, perhaps with the mysterious "CTRL+Right Click" listed in the manual as "Attack or Special Move".

I also notice that the icon only changes to Hard Hit when I have a crossbow equipped. If I switch to sword and shield the icon goes back to Descent. Is that correct? Boy does this game have a lot of undocumented mechanics!

When you enter the flight form your transformation skill obtains the new diving skill. That is all these two skills do: one to put you into flight, the other to take you out of it early for an offensive attack. Neither of these is related to Hard Hit. Holding CTRL forces your character to remain stationary. The act of using CTRL with either mouse will do one of two things, force you to attack without moving or use your skill without moving. Hard Hit is just a skill, it will be cast when you use it and at no other time. I have not used flight form much, but if the icon changes based upon what weapon you have equipped I can only assume this is an incorrect icon display. The dive skill is its own skill that is only available while flying, it has no other relationships with skills outside of flight form.