I did some investigation into this. Currently, the kick-slash works the same way it does in native. So if a change was made, it was either changed back to native values, or changed in native itself. With many claiming that it hasn't changed at all, I can't help but feel that I was mistaken. Although, I could have sworn the entire process "feels" different now. Prior to the recent patch, I had never seen my attack animation stopped by the kick animation.