I think enough time has passed since the big weapon and general combat overhauls that everyone can provide some useful feedback on where they are seeing room for improvement again, so I figured I'd start a thread for it. I'll go over a few from my perspective as it pertains to 2-Handed Axes and some general combat items.

@Two-Handed Axes Specific

• Backhand Strike - With the changes to the some of the moves, this particular move feels like it was forgotten. I use it in my rotation even though it's very much not an optimal choice, and many of the high-ranked 2HA users haven't bothered training it because it's so subpar. I believe that either changing the move's difficulty to average or giving it the to-hit/defense bypass bonus that Upwards Slash received in the last round of changes would make it immediately viable, even if it's still ultimately a less-good hip slash with a higher SP cost (if it isn't reduced to average difficulty).
• Sap - This is one I went into length about in the original rounds of changes and still feel the same way about it. It's already pretty hard to land this move, you'd be crazy to include it in your rotations and bother training it very high (I am crazy). It's primary function to make up for that should be its reliability as a way to stun your opponent, but it still suffers from the same drawback as all the legacy saps: it's not reliable for that. It can't be used to stun non-humanoid targets like newer stun skills can, and it's very random on when it actual will stun; further, head-aimed blunt damage critical hits weirdly rarely stun. I actually find my normal chop attacks with a retalq pick to be a more reliable source of stun. Please update this and other legacy weapons' sap moves to either be average difficulty so they're at least easier to land to use for damage, or can contend with modern stunning moves to be more reliable for the stun utility.
• Arm Hook - This move is still utterly useless and I can't justify its existence in its current state. As I went over in a lengthy write-up about it in the past, there's just no practical reason to ever use it over ankle hook. The last round of combat changes at least removed the ankle hook rank requirement to learn arm hook, but it still just doesn't make sense to ever train it. A brief summary of the old write-up on why: it's a difficult move that targets easy dodges with no discernable to-hit/defense bypass bonus while ankle hook at least targets an average dodge, and successfully hooking the arm and using swinging disarm makes the target kneel rather than prone which is not as optimal as going prone. Literally the only niche scenario where one could argue using arm hook is if you're fighting a brawler with the wrestler trait that is trying to punch you while laying down, that's basically it. My suggestion? Either make arm hook an average move (it'd still be bad but at least not as bad) or rework the skill entirely to be an arm slash that works similar to wrist slash for CKF.
• Swinging Disarm - All entangles/swinging disarms just do not hold up in PvE anymore. I'd love to see swinging disarm and similar skills for other weapons updated to have a toggle-able option to instead be a chance to automatically do the action when performing a hook move, like some of the new Kelestian weapons do; even if that comes with the caveat of not being the case in PvP.

  General Items:

• Falcata Block-Triggered Disarms - These appear to be tuned WAY too high. Using a 2-handed axe, I very rarely manage to pull off the disarm on block, but falcata seems to pull it off pretty much 100% of the time they get blocked with certain moves. Seems a bit overtuned.
• Defenses - In the same vein as above, can we please see if we can get the Defenses command to work? As an example, 2HA had Crossing Block reduced to easy difficulty from average in the last combat pass, which is an awesome and welcome change. The problem here is that it now defends against a lot of attacks that are covered by average difficulty dodges, and it's hard to overcome those basics RB bonuses to easier moves, and as a result, I find myself getting disarmed in fights against falcata all the time because of it. If the Defenses command were fixed so that I could prioritize dodges over blocks, issue solved.
• Staying alive while looting with 2H weapons - This is a really big annoyance of having 2H weapons with no 1-handed blocks; 2HA is one such weapon, compared to something like Falx that can use blocks 1-handed. You lose a huge portion of your defenses while looting, and with so many modern hunting grounds having constant spawn-on-top-of-you mechanics, there's no safe way to go about it. This is something that needs some time and creative thinking to address.
• Hroth token training costs - The formula for the amount of tokens Hroth requires for training rank 300-500 with the recent update to the max rank he can train to is kind of absurd. Based on the Wiki's training cost calculator, you're looking at over 21K tokens per move from rank 300-500. Setting aside the sheer amount of time and effort it would take to amass that amount of tokens, visually it's just kind of insane; is he building an amber token ball pit across the entire valley? I don't think the problem is turn-in rates for tokens, everything else in Stromheim feels very well balanced for that, the training costs specifically are the problem. Since Clobris only teaches to rank 300, we HAVE to use Hroth as an ipso facto trainer for rank 300-500 if we compare it to all the other weapons that have coin-based trainers to 500 now. I think halving that cost would still be on the high end, but would put it in more approachable numbers. Or maybe a more creative approach would be to introduce a new rep system utilizing the new Aziri caves where we can turn stuff in to Hroth as rep credits that discount his costs significantly without impacting the prices elsewhere in Stromheim.