Another repeated discussion indeed.
I don't think either (old saber blocking vs current PB zones) blocking system is truly consistent currently (I tested both a lot and they're both really only truly consistent in the same circumstances). Old system is pretty obvious but did at least feel more Star Wars-esque. Nudge helped counter the turtling that it allowed/encouraged (albeit things like the fast halfswing and getting ACM even on non-body hits helped quite a bit). Nudge doesn't work in the current system because it's just automatically bypassing the already weird defense system (and ironically, in the last patches it was a part of, the only good thing was that it didn't let you defend during it, which was a bug). PBing is more skillful/consistent for the most part but the blocking wasn't the actual skillful part of the old builds. It was all based on timing of your attacks. Without the saber blocking though, you get stuff like fidget spinner yaw spam that makes you just kind of wonder "how did we get to this point?". That then leads to having dumb stuff like neutering combo damage and ending up with another 1.4 clone which is just so much fun. Bad zones don't help either (at least everyone can see how dumb they are now with the indicators, lol).
That's the more difficult question of all here, and we definitely need to experiment more with PB mechanics. That said, as much as you despise "yawing", i've seen a fair share of EU players using it skillfully (actually intentionally aiming the saber swing to either make the swing hit faster or slower, so as to press on the attack or confuse the enemy's timing) as opposed to madly and randomly (which in turn serves little purpose because it doesn't give much of an advantage at all, apart from confusing yourself). So this is definitely a good mechanic in my book, which actually isn't tied to the current PB mechanic, because it's rather something meant to control the timing of your own swing hitting, via aiming (which is a saving grace for this melee system that is part of a freakin shooter game).
Then there's the inconsistent insta-swings off of hitting someone mid-swing (which
@Stassin says is
intentional and he wants it to stay)
I don't understand what you mean though, because that's EXACTLY how it worked in all patches from v0 to v1.3, with the exception in v0 that swings in their middle (harmful) phase would actually not "turn into instaswings", but instead they'd just completely ignore getting hit and continue uninterrupted even faster. Hence why it is indeed intentional to have that back, and why i also want to bring the "uninterrupted" part back too due to the increased feeling of freedom over your attacks that it gave in these previous patches. So yeah, as per usual it just seems like you don't remember that that was how it worked, or remember too vaguely despite constantly assuring that you understand everything perfectly, and just randomly blame me for simply bringing back a mechanic because you want it to work differently (thanks to viserys we even all got to test v1.3 too so there's actually no room to argue about this...). Well, after 2 years i'm used to it so please continue.
There's no/very little variation in timing on the styles themselves (see old Yellow's mix of swing timings as one of the best things about the older builds) and now, with the vastly misinterpreted (it was just supposed to be changed so that you didn't get stuck when hit in certain circumstances..) changes to how countering works, every style basically has the same ability to counter (except for Red in a lot of cases because it's Red) with the same timing
The only thing you're accusing here is halfswing speeds, nothing else. I agree they need to be more diverse, but this isn't the issue with homogenizing the styles, after all the current state isn't that different from older builds since with the previous halfswings pre-v1.4, all styles had faster halfswings on right-to-left directions and slower ones on left-to-right directions. It's not really a variety between styles that there was, rather just a variety of halfswing speeds depending on direction, even for a single style. And that, in turn, would be good to have again although it pairs poorly with the current PB mechanic (a slower swing is a guaranteed PB), so there's PB work to do there with this anyways.
A lot of NA players have left because of basically neutering aggression-favored playstyles (comboing does meh damage, leaves you open to counters at any point, which do as much, if not more, damage than an entire combo). This build (which is basically a modified 1.4, which shared a lot of the same characteristics) is essentially suited/designed for those who play more defensive or passive, or those who are fidget spinner halfswing spammers. It's not terribly difficult to counter that if you're experienced enough but it looks stupid and just shows the large success you can get with almost no finesse these days. Sadly, even those (mostly EU as its always favored more defensive/cautious play in general) duelists that this patch is basically suited for are realizing the above.
I mean, i see people saying that there's only one playstyle that's viable and all, but it certainly doesn't feel that way on EU duel servers. Everytime i join to play, the seasoned duelists always seem to recognize my playstyle despite me intentionally using random aliases. I don't know everyone even on the EU side, far from it, but when dueling it's pretty obvious to me that for example people like A Jew, Hessu, Rosey, SK5, Recourse, Aaron, all have quite different playstyles, yet are all still able to perform very well on levels that are about of the same order. As for "defense" being too easy, i don't think i need to answer that again, as EU duelists have more than shown that it isn't so hard to attack once you've put some basic effort into it (which you usually describe as boring...), actually it's more interesting than before where you'd just deal dmg by default when landing hits without having to worry about your footwork much. Now you HAVE to use your footwork to avoid getting PBed, you can't just randomize your swing direction and be done with it. This is definitely a good aspect that needs to be kept, it's just that the power of PB needs to be toned down (then again, even on that there is dissension in the community...).
I'll keep an eye out for the good things you bring in your build. But i can't take it seriously as a whole when i know you desperately plan to bring back things like v1.1-v1.4 type perks which are decidedly absurd (and i mean, they were my ideas at first, i've just learned from my mistakes here...), so i'll do experiments of my own too.
