From what I'm reading on the taleworlds forum, it's a similar situation to OKAM, with the devs only testing internally and not getting the competitive scene involved at all. Hopefully I'm wrong, I do wonder if anyone at taleworlds even understands their own game's meta, though. Look how slow that long axe right swing is in the gif, literally looks like a WotR animation too. Is that whole gif slowed down or something?
OK, no more speculation. Putting it out of mind for yet another 6 years. Fingers crossed it's at least a good single player game.