I noticed this as well, and I fear it is due to an increase in athletics across the board.
This is the biggest problem, and it is the result of us playing builds that should otherwise be unattainable. This whole level 35 business is ridiculous. I understand that you and a few other players in the community went well past level 31 before the Destiny patch, but that was a big problem that I think was really poorly addressed. Instead of bringing everyone up to those levels, they should have knocked everyone down. There should have been a level cap put at 33, a level I think is worth going for to have an advantage while not being incredibly unbalanced.
Instead, we now have more points than we know what to do with. The balanced build is 21/21, which means sacrificing points for more agility keeps you well above the the average difficulty required for long weapons, and players are swinging at speeds that, at least in my personal opinion, the game engine can't even handle. There are instances where cRPG can't keep up with how fast players are moving. Have you ever had a player walk through you in the middle of a fight? He very likely just walked around you on his screen.
An easy way to beat S key heroes is just to not chase them. If they flutter around the edge of your range alternating S/W start hitting S and do the same shit they are going back and forth. Just holding W is playing into their bullshit and giving them the advantage.
Yes, I agree that's how you should deal with someone backpedaling from a fight. The problem we're talking about is a different one. What we're saying is that players have the athletics to move away from swings they would otherwise be in reach of before players had this much access to faster builds. I'm not saying people didn't agi-whore before the Destiny patch, but when they did, they significantly sacrificed their ability to do damage. Now players can do a reasonable amount of damage and move incredibly fast with weapons they shouldn't even have access to.
I would also recommend for a reduction of weapon proficiency. There were some patches by Tydeus in 2013 that played with how much weapon proficiency we get from Weapon Master that should be looked into. I really like the idea of one WPF helping another (between the three melee skills), but I don't like how the average player has something around 170 WPF.
If you want this game to play faster, maybe look at the Combat Speed that is still set to Medium. Giving players the ability to run at Mach 5 is really problematic for the actual functionality of the melee.