I would disagree with the impression your statement is giving Oposum. I am surprised how much trouble a lot of the best Native duellists have with an awlpike in the right hands. Even the so called 'best' and 'tournament winners' fall to it, shocking really. Sure we have a low skill tail that reside are pubbers on the Official Servers, but there is also a high tail in the melee community, all players who I'm sure are competent and competitive on the Native side as well.
Also regarding Groupfighting, the variety in melee is quite stunted at the moment with chambers and sweeps being so challenging to pull off, but they are possible to achieve if 'forced' to work, and I mean, if the player puts an enourmous concentration on his footwork and positioning. Particularly with sweep stabs it's really workable, but you also need the right mouse. Up till recently I was on a rather cheap but heavy wireless mouse, but the weight actually made my stabs very precise and very much put the 'sensitivity' control in my right hand. Instead of having to adjust a slider, the mouse would weigh enough to give me resistance in light movements and also to be able to move in fast jerky ways. This meant that I could have the game's sensitivity slider at a really high level without suffering the effects of uncontrollable spin, but also being able to take advantage of that spin with a more vigorous arm movement, a perfect balance of precision and speed. The result was getting 30 kills per map out of simply sweeping stabs. I'm not going to go into the detail of body positioning necessary for that, but I'm trying to allude to the fact that it is really possible to achieve old things with the new melee if you think really deeply about it. Shame that mouse died, but I have ordered a more high-end mouse to test whether I can recreate it with the customisability you get with 100£ mice.
The suggestion from Oposum that I am intrigued by is an athletics increase. Though I've always called for an increase in turning speed I've somewhat change my stance on it, mainly due to the realisation that the upstab would become overpowered once again, with players adopting horrific, unstoppable playstyles of dolphin-spam-helicopter. The motive behind it was to give a bit more agility to a player in a 1 vs many situation and to also increase damage and ease of chambering and sweeping, but perhaps an increase of athletics is a better idea? If it actually does increase overall speed slightly for all parties, along with damage, then I am all for a slight athletics increase. If it reduces pokes/stubs then I'm sure most of the community would be behind it. If said effects are true then I wouldn't want to limit that athletics increase to just bayonet wielding units, but also cavalry units and other sword-wielding units, as sword duels and cavarly fights are still an incredibly cumbersome experience. Would be good to have a stat expert comfirm what athletics specifically does.
Also I really do agree with pointblanking being a problem. However, perhaps instead of 'extra/random delay' suggestions we have a reticle that takes longer to close? I'm thinking it would initially close fast, but then get exponentially slower as it nears it's full accuracy level. This does put skill in the hands of the player more than a random delay and doesn't really touch linebattle gameplay much. I'm still pondering how to go about this, so would be good to hear more ideas regarding pointblanking prevention.
