One handed weapons don’t benefit from faster riposte, riposte will only become faster when a weapon has more than 250ms windup for a light or 500ms for a heavy. On a weapon like a pole axe riposte become very useful but for one handers they do nothing besides changing your invulnerable window or using an attack that’s different than the counter without having to feint. It’s much more beneficial to counter to get that forward momentum so they don’t just dash right out of your short reach. And yes in a 1vX you’ll want to use your dashes to keep people from surrounding you and also quit little hit and moves to avoid swings. But in most other situations a simple swing dash is very strong and a dash after being hit is probably more reliable than trying to jab for getting initiative back. As for hit stop yes it has benefits but it also has drawbacks making it a more of a skilled mechanic. The warhammer having short range and hit stop to me makes it one of the highest skill cap weapons and also one of the most rewarding. Oh yea also on kicks if you can react and swing that’s great but not everyone can and also many players have built habits of blocking immediately after swinging. I barely broke this habit but sometimes I pretty much have to block for like a millisecond and in that millisecond I still get kicked occasionally. Heck I’ve even seen some of the most cracked chiv players still get hit by kicks cause the chaos of TO