Polearms can stagger people and you can win duels against worse people by just backpedalling and pressing S key. You can also stun most 1h with most 2h and polearms. The amount of hits it took me to kill a STR 2h (Hearst for example) with 8 ps and a ms knightly arming was around 7-9, it took him 2, 3 max .
My 1h gets stuck in teammates (or their shields) on the side/behind me in clusterfucks so often that sometimes i think that i'd be better off with a polearm holding overhead or a 2h thrust/overhead.
Now don't get me wrong, 1h are a really good option and they can still do great damage , especially when hits land on opponents heads.
Oh and i can kill people in duels if i pick a polearm or a 2h too, but you won't see me asking to nerf them on the forum.
Hitslashing was a trick that wasn't as easy to perform in native, it got popular in cRPG, yet i never had much problems with it (of course i got killed by it too sometimes) or never asked for a nerf. All you have to do against the "uberfastleftswingofdoom" of 1handers is to block right. It can't stun you, hitslash you,polestagger you,go around your block or crushthrough it.
I'm not a big fan of this nerfing fest lately to be honest (including the slower swing speed for 2h+poles), same for the "so now that my class is nerfed, i want others to be nerfed too" attitude. I especially don't like the tendency to slow down the speed of the battle, doesn't matter what weapon class we talk about. The only thing i didn't like in terms of balance (apart from certain weapons like the mace) was the polestagger.