I thought I made my last post about the sword, but turns out they added a patch after I made that post. And turns out they really do have problems trying to implement the sword.
But lets get to my suggestion!
Some background!
I am in the opinion that the sword at Launch, before they removed the slowdown on February of 2019, was the best sword in the game. All of the mechanics had a dynamic that worked with eachother.
As soon as they removed slashing slowdown (When you were striking 1, 2 and 3 strikes you were slowed down) the sword has become very wild and button mashy and visually messy.
Lets start from the sword that we have now...
Bring back 0.5 stun
Without it, people will just run and eat, and use double guns.
I do not think need to go into more detail. I want to mention something about this regarding Insider, but im not sure Im allowed...
Bring back the slowdown, BUT...
Only for the 2nd and 3rd strike. Before february, there was actually a minor exploit where if you slash while blocking, you would ignore the slowdown for the first strike until you started your 2nd swing. This was great, but it was not a feature. This would help better if something like this was made as a feature rather than an over sight.
The slowdown was a BIG part of what made the sword combat great, mostly because it made the blocking player able to block, visually it was easy to tell who to block and where.
As soon as they removed the slowdown and allowed players to run full walk speed while swinging, they had to fix blocking multiple times...
Keep: No Sword combo on environment
Something that should have been implemented before February 2019.
Keep: Missing and hitting Environment being the same
Keep: Sword wielding time
The uh, arming time when switching to sword to prevent Stow/unstow exploit. Keep that.
Make Sword charging while blocking, and Normally, the same
To go with the theme of there being no exploits to learn, why dont we make the Block+Charge... happen regardless of holding block? Just make the fluid sword charge that lets us hop and sword dive into the water just be the same input as holding down charge attack without blocking. No need to obscure it behind blocking first.
This is where I say "Done and done" and clap my dust riddled hands with this post, but we know these changes wont happen. I have been an advocator for this for a long time now, I see that they add in an addition that should have been in for a while, but only do it too late, and with another broken mechanic.
More times than not, they have REMOVED mechanics than actually refining them.
I really want to emphasize how much the sword combat has wildly changes since they removed the slowdown for the sword. Just that ONE removal completely ruined the sword. It ruined blocking, the visual of fighting, the dynamic of 2 sword wielders. It was messy, its still messy, and mindless.
Slowdown mechanic, Stun, all forms of punishments, even if its just those 2 are there to keep players in check and learn from their mistakes. Instead, people are finding exploits that completely forego those mechanics. The sword as it currently is, is the most "Solid" in terms of being free of bugs and exploits, but the dynamic is still mindless and messy as it was since February. Literally nothing has meaningfully changed with updates to the sword since that month.