Being a Warband beta player and a player of MM, I feel that the new up stab is completely fine. It gives me more of a challenge than the slow useless up attack that once was. Most people who complain cannot handle the big jump from up swings to up stabs. I personally know people who were good in melee before the DLC, and they are not as good as they were before. They cannot block these attacks as easily as an under stab or over head swing. Many MM players ( = many NW players) are not used to the kind of melee that requires you to have fast reaction times and blocking ability. Some of you may think I am elitist for saying that since I am a Warband player, that I am better at blocking etc. Many people who play MM/DLC have never put as much time into Native as me, and have not gained the fast reaction blocking etc. MM players may find this offending, but I can say that I am a terrible shot. There are people who can make these shots that I, even though I know they arn't in the game, are hacks. They have put more time into shooting than I have, and I have put more time into melee than them.
Point is, most not all, people who ask for removal/nerfing etc of the up stab cannot handle it. IMHO the up stab brings a new challenge to the game testing my ability when I fight an equally skilled player. I see no OPness in this. I only see the need to train your blocking skill.
I end my case with this as my opinion. Being a long time native player I can see how you might think I am biased, but again this is only my sincere opinion.
Well so far the most vocal people in this thread and generally around the forum have been the 'top' melee players; tournament winners and generally long-time, prolific melee players, many of whom are doing extremely well in the DLC (see disclaimer). I think a lot of it is driven by the desire to keep the game's melee as skill-based as possible, and also to maintain a high skill-ceiling by diversifying the options within the limited melee mechanics.
MM melee wasn't perfect, but the great thing about it was that within the limited frame of 2 attack directions there was still so many different ways to approach the fight. In the DLC the skill-ceiling has been lowered by limiting the options within the existing limited setting. It's taken some skill out of the play by slowing the turning mechanic and more importantly implementing the deceptive and imbalanced Overhead Stab.
I can assure you that at the top level fast blocking reactions are crucial and very much in practice in the NW community, and seeing as a majority of the debate is generated from the top-bracket of players I don't think your reasoning about blocking inadequacy stands (for the masses yes, but I don't really see them complaining about this as much as we are). It's rather that the Overhead Stab is simply too demanding to counter
compared with other options, as I pointed out in the analysis.
The crux of the problem is that you now have 2 stab options that are quite similar in nature, except that 1 is much better at doing the job than the other. In MM the Overhead and Underarm were different in nature and served distinctly different functions, one was a stab another was a crush that aimed to stun. In NW it was to be one of these ways in order to be well balanced:
1. Either the Overhead and Undearm are near identical in usefullness, in order to keep in consistency with their similar nature.
or
2. The Overhead and Underarm have to have vastly different roles and thus to be specialised, where perhaps one is a different form of attack (like in MM) or has some significant difference such as a very different speed of attack, or very different damage level.
I think number 1 is more achieveable and the more desireable one, seeing as the NW Overhead concept is actually much more realistic than the MM Overhead's smashing nature.
