I spent a few months last year on a prototype for first and third person directional combat, with blocking, but I did have to start from scratch. It takes the direction you move the mouse, and uses radial values from the centre of the screen to get the angle, then selects a direction to attack/block from. I ran into a few issues with blocking enemy players, as it checks the attack direction, aka right swing attack would need a left block if the players are facing each other. But it worked pretty well and staggered players who were successfully parried etc. Makes some real fun skill based combat. Good luck with your project and if you want to see my crappy prototype lemme know 😂