Will you just stop already? Use one of these slower weapons in a duel against a very skilled player. One of two things will happen, you'll get rolled because you're bad at blocking/play too aggressively or, you'll bore each other and anyone else watching to death. The increased speed wasn't just to speed up combat though, it was also done so as to not slow down thrusts(and partially swings) too much. If you make it so that you can only deal damage later in an animation(what our sweetspot change did, mostly to thrusts, but also horizontals as well), then you have literally just slowed the game down. You have reduced everyone's effective speed.
Both speed and damage are appropriate for making melee more deadly. In fact, they're the only things you should even consider changing (even soak/reduce changes should be off the table, as they affect ranged as well).
Well, I see your point but it doesn't really make mine less true. And yes I don't like using those slower weapons personally because I'm not into this early hitting business all that much, unless it's for trolling. Those that do, however, don't really care about speed rating. In a sense this change is good because it made some of the "slow" weapons a little bit easier to use for newer players and not affect the veterans all that much. However, at first glance some of the choices are questionable: straight up buffing the LWA even though it was already fast as hell, I don't see the point.
My point is that there is a very easy way to make the game faster, and you are choosing the complicated and risky method. It will make attacks faster, but will it keep the depth of combat intact ? Fighting a few specific players is already a spamming contest to some degree, and the problem when spam becomes that good, as the reaction window for blocking becomes shorter, is that the correct response is removing all depth from one's fighting style, and you get a blockfest.
You can adjust the balance a little bit better with those speed buffs (because yes, the longsword/HBS/BS are the best duelling 2h, and the big ass greatswords are kind of bad for most players), but
you can't compress the time it takes to land a bazillion hits on someone to make things die by just changing speed ratings. Unless you also make melee weapons just more powerful. Of course, it should be done in a way that doesn't allow completely bypassing the sweetspots due to increased damage.
