Polearms got a lot of nerfs (or got hit hardest by them). 2 direction weapons became much less useful than before. They feel shorter with the glances. The 4 direction spears do pitiful damage with side swings, and still the stabs aren't that great. That used to be balanced with their stagger. I wanted polestagger removed, but they should at least have increase side swing damage on spears to compensate. You can increase damage on spears and increase penalty for holding a shield if its about hoplite balance. A lot of the midrange PA's are overshadowed by 2 handers now, and should get some buffs of their own imo
Anyway I felt I should put some thoughts about the "2 hand is easy mode" I see here. Easy compared to what, shielders? I'm not looking to say anything is OP here, just some things people tend to forget about 2handers. To me shielders have the best of both worlds. They have very fast attacks, omni direction block, ability to get out of clusterfucks and towards their team easier, ability to fight easier outnumbered, ability to defend adequately against ranged and they duel 2 hander/pole very well too imo.
Then most can block like a boss after you break their shield and get their speed up, so they can face hug even easier and force you to double+ block
They have awesome access to pierce/blunt and knockdown
The range is the main weakness, but even that is deceptively long, and as a polearmer I don't feel I can dictate range against a shielder. They can just block until they get close enough. This might be something I can work on as a player but often I want to fight shielders up close so they can't get away because then you get the spin/insta left swing
So I don't think its fair to point at 2 handers and say they have it easy when they have to manually block every incoming attack. Its about risk vs reward..if you have omni block and defence against ranged you should find you do less damage or have some other weakness against 2 handers. How many 2 handers do you see that just spam left/right and get kills? Theres like one guy I know who consistently does that but he's practised that style and it can be easily countered