In regards to stances, I guess what I miss is how in the old way, moves and combos chained together more naturally. Nowadays holding melee repeats short moves in order, requiring button combos in order to achieve something akin to older stances.
Tfw I somehow had ancient footage laying around. (Old clip muted because desynced audio)
TLDR or something
old melee was generally more mobile, with button mashing combos being simple slashes, new melee has lots of stances that can limit your mobility with good combos requiring you to stand still.
Get rid of stationary melee combo, bring back button combinations combining standard melee, melee + block, and melee + pauses