I have recently begun using PowerSprite Animator (from the makers of the game Crawl) in order to sidestep the unnecessary complexity of Mecanim. I use Playmaker to drive all my logic and call individual animations created with PowerSprite. I'm quite excited at how easy it is.
The one hiccup is that there are no actions for it. I am currently using the CallMethod action, but it is very fragile (if I so much as change the order of the action it breaks its method and must be reset up).
I have reached out to the developers but thought I would also ask here to see if someone has possible already made some actions, or would be up for the challenge. I am an artist and would be happy to do a skill trade in return!
Thanks,
Sean