Just as the title says, since that really dumb change to light weapon speed a couple patches ago that was never fully fixed.
Not sure what I'm talking about? Well if you are an NA player, or someone who regularly has ~130 ping or more, fight a skilled EU player who is wielding a flakestone 2h sword. You will take small amounts of damage until you die. Why? Because the attack hits much faster than the animation shows.
If you have say 115 ping and 130 FPS, you should be able to parry any attack in this game in theory, right? As long as you can see the animation, it shouldn't be an issue. However, that is not the case. I will have my parry up in plenty of time on my screen and eat the damage. Someone screwed up with the changes, the animation is slower than the actual attack. This isn't "my" experience, this is an issue that players everywhere are seeing. Even EU players are complaining about it.
This balance change was never needed in the first place. One more irritating mistake. Fix it, StarVault. Make it right.
The game is weird in general. In my vid where I was speccing pole swords and some dude in steel came out on me, I hit him at the end and it even made a 'got hit' noise, but then it registered a ting noise and gave him the parry. I don't understand what the 'ultimate governor' of what happens is, if it's really not what happens on either of our screens but just something that gets run thru and normalized then the result occurs.
Faster combat seems to highlight a lot of the problems, but I feel like it makes more sense to, if the combat is slowed, to change it a bit mechanically. AGAIN: 0 damage parry in slow combat is crazy! I know people, and I am sure there are plenty more, who quit the game just on that. There are no windows or openings, either that proceed an action. The combat just got raw slowed and parry window got increased + 'normalization,' which doesn't seem as wonky when the combat is slower. Kind of shows that IT AIN'T DOING ITS JOB. It's probably not doing its job at a slower speed, either, but since it's slower, it doesn't matter as much (theory.)
Like I said they can make an actiony, slower combat that plays realistically and does not favor any ping, has counter play with parry as well as dodges (and windows for getting a return hit after someone misses you, cuz imo, dodge should be rewarded just as much as a parry,) but they'd really have to look inward and fix a lot of things. People aren't gonna 'get worse,' but there has to be a way to make it so you don't have the majority of the fight spent parrying for 0 dmg. Cuz you guys can call me a shit tier all you want, but I don't think very many people find that engaging or exciting. The only time it's really cool is when you have one person fighting a whole bunch of bad players, and that's a cool situation to watch, but people always talk about 'what you shouldn't balance a game off off' and IMO that's one of them. Let the good player separate them a little or something, there has to be another way, that doesn't make the other areas of combat (duel, finishing people off in a team fight as a single, etc) so trash.
Kills should be happening faster. I don't mind the swing speed increase even tho it's probably harming me a lot more because at least when I see people fighting, they are parrying less. TO ME it would be better to see a balanced parry and let people parry to their heart's content. Just make it not the end-all. I said I wasn't up all night thinking about my in game beefs, but I AM up at night thinking about how to make MO combat better because... even tho some people have mastered it and want to believe other people only complain because they haven't, it's really imbalanced and, beyond that, not even exciting w/ normal swing speed (swing buff makes it more exciting, but yea it does wonk out the gam.)
Edit: I mean, consider mob attacks to understand the baseline 'lag' of MO.
Also consider this counterintuitive take: the game could be made SLOWER while being made more precise: individual actions could have more effect while more closely resembling what was being seen on the screen, AND tuned to the point where a good player could kill a bad player FASTER. - shrug - I feel there is, naturally, a big fear of overhaul given previous balance changes, but being stuck in this wishy-washy state of rubber banding changes is worse IMO. Game ain't goin nowhere (prol stable pop of about 1000-1500 no matter what.) Might as well accept it's gonna be pretty laggy, too. Best to plan for the long term and hope to make the game GOOD and bring in new players.