Apparently this happens to me all the time.
For the life of me I could not figure out how I was doing so terribly against people.. then when dueling I found out that what I see, as for block and attack direction, is not what the server, and other players, see.
As an example: I was dueling with someone with a pike, and they were preparing to hit me. I had my downblock held, and was going to attempt a counter-attack. To them, I was holding left-block, and they were able to send their pike through my downblock (on my screen) which happens to me constantly in battle for all types of blocks. In this case, no spin was involved. This will happen with swing direction as well, somebody will be downblocking and I will go in with an overhead, and at the instant of impact the weapon will simply go from a down position to having blocked my hit from the top and back to a downblock as soon as the animation ends.
Watching duels, or spectator after I've died, this problem becomes VERY apparent.
My ping is usually below 100, likely around 60 on average. Latency does seem to increase the problem.
Nobody I've asked has really been able to identify this problem, and respond with the usual "yeah, you can change your attack direction by blocking"
This is only an issue with cRPG multiplayer. Any solutions?
tl;dr: the server interprets attack and block direction differently than my client and I want to fix the problem.