At the root of the current combat that feels so infuriating and unresponsive is blocking. The main problem with blocking during and before the March 30th update was block feinting which left new players confused and put them off from playing. The reason block feinting was confusing was that the animation for a successful shove and an unsuccessful shove (a player dropping their block), had the same animation. This made it so players would attack after thinking their opponent was staggered only to be met with a block.

The only necessary fix for this was making the animations clear for when the player was actually staggered. This was added in the April 13th update, but the dev team went overboard. They also added that shove will now stagger during the transitions in and out of block. With weapon speeds increasing over the past two patches, blocking is becoming ineffective.

An example:

If an opponent is coming at you with a charged attack you only have one main course of action right now, jab. Now you might hit him before he hits you, in which case you stun him, but with lag (and it seems like there is also a grace period when both attacks still connect) you will both hit but with your attack doing the minimum damage and his doing the maximum, you are at a disadvantage now.

Blocking the charged attack is generally a bad decision. You want to wait till the last second but you can't wait too long or you won't be able to bring your block up in time, ending in you getting hit. If you bring your block up too early it is very easy for your opponent to cancel their attack and shove. If you bring it up far too early or attempt to block feint they will be able to shove you as you are dropping your block.

Of course there is more to combat then that like seeing your opponents play style and countering it. But block is so easily punished that it almost isn't worth using.

Over the past two updates block hasn't had any changes. Even with the other combat changes, I feel like if block was reverted to the March 30th update combat would feel incredibly cleaner and actually enjoyable. Reverting anything shouldn't be viewed as negative progress, it should be viewed as checking something off the list that didn't work.

Edit: I somehow didn't see that the top post is basically this, just ignore this post and look at that one.

Edit 2: I also missed the sticky post here.

They acknowledge a lot of problems and I think they are on top of it:

• Inconsistent timings for shove, block, attack

• No penalty for shoving against a non-blocking player

• Window in which you are vulnerable to to a shove after you've released your block is too long

• The strategy of attack vs. block vs. shove does not feel evenly balanced and sometimes results in unexpected (unfair) outcomes that favor certain tactics

• Players can cancel a charging attack into a block and then a shove to exploit a blocking player, resulting in block being ineffective against players at or above a certain skill level

• Bug: Window of vulnerability to shove after blocking does not appear to close when you launch an attack, allowing you to be staggered while attacking by a shove (need to confirm repro steps)

• Delay between pressing block button and block becoming effective is too long, contributes to blocking often not being a viable action