Prior to this patch, you were required to be quick on your feet if you were fighting with people who feint a lot. Quicker reaction time was much more important than timing in my opinion. Now more people and more duels (not all) consists of dancing in circles, stab, back off, stab, and back off. This is due to the slower attack rate and also the shorter distance of the bayonet, thus allowing each player to not need to block as much and attack more. Personally, I prefer the old melee because you needed to be more precise and strategic about how you fight. For me, I was a chamber-whore so I tried to mix a lot of chambers into duels along with my blocks. All of my moves were precise, an example would be me feinting an up attack into a down attack and waiting for them to up stab me so that I can chamber them. Now chambering is less effective because it is more difficult to chamber the up attack now due to the slower ready speed. Furthermore, chamber is not even rewarding, because it can still be blocked. It has happened to me several times as well as others in the game.
I think that adding more time to prepare the up attack has changed the game dynamic drastically. I am not happy about the range of the bayonet, but what I am more discontent with is the slow melee speed. I think that the game would be a little bit better if we can compromise. Let us keep the shorter range on the bayonet, but bring back the speed that it was once at. I think decreasing the range and slowing down the melee is too big of a nerf compared to the increase range of the sword as well as the cav fix.
I also think that bringing the speed back to normal will allow for people to get closer in combat like they did before. This will also allow for players to incorporate the kicking technique (one I use a lot myself) and make dueling more sophisticated and surprising.
I don't think we will be returning back to the old patch because too many people favor the new one, but I think we can please veterans if we compromise.
