Spin stabbing is definitely still there, it's actually more dangerous than ever when you get into close combat with a pack of enemies as Vorlen says. Before people could turn around quick enough to catch you out, now you can just run around their pack and they can't do anything about it, especially since the overhead would be a one hit tk. I also agree that the melee system feels 'clunky', i'm not sure if it's because i'm not so used to it yet, or it's just a bit dodgy, but it certainly feels odd. There's no doubt about it that the top MM players are still topping the scoreboard on NW, but i'd put this down to them just being way more experienced and knowing how to navigate the map and such to get the easy backstabs, and knowing the range of the stab.
But anyway, about the melee system. As stated earlier on I agree that the OH is a little fast, and there seems to be a slight delay if you switch your attack from downstab to an overhead, which shouldn't be there. People can still spin and catch you out in weird ways, where it looks like they didn't even hit you. Same thing goes for when you attack yourself it's like your overhead can hang in the air and kill anything for quite a long duration of time if they come into contact. The point made earlier about a skilled player shouldn't be able to kill a new player so easily is pretty ridiculous if you ask me, it's the way games should be, the guy who practices more SHOULD be able to win (Which they do in the majority of cases), Feels like they've taken a lot of the skill out of the melee system. It's true that the melee fights could drag out a bit, but that's what made it so fun, and i'm sure the amazing melee MM had was what kept so many players around for so long when waiting for the DLC.
Visually, the game looks brilliant, but in regards to how melee looks, it actually looks just as bad as what had MM had, people spinning overheads and such. So if we we're going for realism then it certainly wasn't there. On the whole, there seems to have been an increase in tactical play, which is awesome as i'd always wanted it to be in the game a bit more, so that's a major advantage. 2v1 melee situations are actually really tricky now if against 2 good guys, which it should be.
In regards to swords I agree they could use a buff now, especially since nearly every bayonet hit gives a one hit kill now. Sword shouldn't have the randomness of 1-4. I don't know how the beta went, i'm sure a lot of the guys were working on improving the game, but there still seemed to be a lot of guys messing around on commander mode (Ofc it needed tested too) and building stuff with explosive crates, but I feel a lot of stuff should have been sorted out within this system if they're experienced melee players.
If this is what the DLC was going for then fair enough, people will just have to get used to the new system. To me however, MM's glory point was the amazing melee fights you could have, NW's seems to be the shooting and mass battles, which I agree will probably bring in more players. It's a shame they didn't get combined as well as what I thought they might've been, if they did then the game would have been totally flawless for me, but i'm sure everyone worked hard to bring the game to where it was. The game has only been released after all, so i'm sure plenty will get tweaked in the future.
Just my opinion.