Seems like it slows down high level play and does little to nothing for lower rated play. I think this is similar to what Paradox is saying, but imo area reclaim solves a problem that doesn't necessarily exist. What I mean by that is no low rated player is losing games because they didn't click enough rocks. There are a million other mistakes they're making that are far more important than clicking rocks. The difference between attack move and manually clicking rocks is meaningless until maybe 1600+ and that's being very generous, realistically it's a higher rating than that.
Even watching the replay was kind of sad, felt so much slower than normal ditch progress which sucks because that's fun to both watch and play.
Yes, it makes it less volatile early game and makes losing engineers less punishing, but I feel that that's the only real benefit and even then it's only a benefit at high level play.