Two things I noticed: new animation seems faster AND new animation has a diagonal angel. I believe its the new angel that makes the difference.
Diagonal hits dont take that much space to the sides - so swings dont get cought up in scenery so easy. On the other hand the swing is not so good anymore when turning into the swing, becouse reach may be the same in the extension BUT it seems narrow in the medium-part of the swing circle. So there IS a loss of reach in the medium part of swing, where only marginal damage might be dealt anyway.
I think you're dead on here. The angle change was what I was going for, but I believe the effective reach reduction is due to some odd blending that warband does between each frame. The new brf has been adjusted slightly to try and compensate for this, while also looking more realistic(more whip-like wrist movement).
I loved to do the big right to left swing spinning with it to hit enemys standing to my left side slightly in theire back. Now this is not not so easy. Maybe I just have to adept to new animation.
Because you swing your sword with your right arm, you won't ever really be able to hit people to your right as easily as you hit them to your left(you have to reach across your body on the left side, this puts the base of the weapon's "hit bar" much closer to your own character's body). I could play with the angle a bit more, lowering it a bit while the weapon is in front of you/to the side. This would probably make turning into the swing function a bit better, but it could also cause more clipping on objects to your right.
On another note, I realized that the first iteration has blending issues between the chamber and release anim, for some reason. While this isn't the only reason it looks odd, it certainly is a major contributor.
