is it always better to push attack than to just push?

[will i am]

if you push you might as well attack with it right? maybe?

[Rollout]

that deppend on the sitiuation and weapon you use.

in a large horde you might have to use multiple normal pushes to clear way for an example to ress a teammate in the middle of it.
while the counter push might be better suited for fighting a berserker, rothelm, stormvermin or just a small numbers of enemies infront of you that you need to clear.

then again most of it comes down to which weapon you use at that specific moment.

[Ardariel]

totally about weapon you use. Pushattack replaces attack in attack chain, so you may up end in disadvatage. Puhattack do only one push in same time. You also have different enemies against you, yadda-yadda.

So no, this is core gamplay we talk about here and most of game is about exactly this decision moment-to-moment. If you try to make "scheme" to play through an dse repeatable patterns for all situations - just use dual weapons and forget about everything. They are weak, but they dont bother with such stuff. So you just spam same stuff over and over.

[A5G_Reaper]

Some weapon left a much larger opening in their push attacks than others, so you gotta judge it by the situations.

[Lucien Lachance]

On top of what everyone has already said certain move techs require push attack, so in that instance yes. Also push attack can lead to different combos in many weapons, some more useful than others. Sword and dagger for example you can more quickly get to c2 by push attacking.

[VernonKun]

While pushing you are blocking but when you are doing push attack you are not, so in case you expect something doesn't get staggered from the push you might get hit when push attacking (which might or might not interrupt it).

Also there are multiple options:
1) push only
2) push -> block
3) push -> push attack
4) push -> light attack
5) push -> heavy attack

It all depends on the weapon and the situation. E.g. if the push attack doesn't do good armor damage and I want that armored elite dead, I would push to stagger nearby trash units and go for the heavy attack.

[Mysterious Sir Knight]

Pushes don't quit blocking during them, Push Attacks leave you open for a moment. So no, its not always worth Push Attacking.

[Ittrix]

Depends on what the push attack does. If you're fighting a horde and the push attack leads straight into a single target combo- no, you should probably not push attack after every push.

If it's against an elite or something and it leads to single target, go for it. Same for horde on horde or armored on armored or whatever situation on whatever situation. As others have pointed out it's not like you've got riposte, but it's not really any less safe than pushing and then attacking if you aren't paying attention.