I think people that state that stabs are fine are extremely deluded or simply do not play, but regardless of whether you find stabs OP or not, inner weapon balance has been greatly upset by the latest change. You know why 2h had relatively low pierce damage on stabs, the best being a measly 26 pierce? Because 2h stab was amazing and any higher stats would make the 2h stab too strong, leaving very little point in using the other directions. Now all the stabs are pretty much as good as the 2h. They last a lot longer and are a lot less prone to glancing at any part of the animation.
Just compare. The Great Sword has 26 pierce for 37 cut on swings. The best 1h stabber is the Long Espada with 29 pierce for 27 cut swings. Now this was okay before, both these weapons were definitely stab focused, but the Long Espada could have much higher relative pierce damage on its stab due to the relative difficulty of using the 1h stab. Now 1h stab is piss easy to use, which means that 29 pierce is a ridiculous amount of stab damage, which leaves very little point in ever touching the swings, or ever touching a swing focused 1h for that matter. Having 30 pierce weapons at a 100 reach and super speed, usable with a shield means something entirely different now. 35 cut compared to 30 pierce is utter bullshit when stabs are this effective.
To me it's clear that all the stabs need a reduction in how long they are active, so they don't hit at the tip of their reach aka when the weapon has stopped having momentum. Walking your stabs into people is terrible. Also when a stab gets blocked or gets a hit in it should have a longer delay before being able to do another one, mostly in the case of polearms and 1h. However, if the deluded opinion persists that stabs are fine, the entire 1h section needs a rebalance as it is completely skewed towards stabby swords now. Polearm could use a rebalance then as well, as I see little point in using anything but two-directional stab polearms.
