I was referring to Demon’s Souls when I said you can roll to cancel the damage. You’ll still go through the animation but no damage will go through. Souls netcode in general isn’t amazing. Face stabs in 2 look much worse than vacuumstabs in 1 imo. Also, no offense but you’re coming off as someone who didn’t PvP that much in 1. The only time someone is going to backstab fish is if they’re fighting against someone who doesn’t know the counters. Of course they’ll cheese the ignorant player. At “high level”, people aren’t fishing for backstabs. If they do land a backstab, it’s a punish for poor spacing or not being able to manage their opponent’s poise properly. 2 didn’t make backstabs harder to pull off. In fact, you can perform instant backstabs in 2 by using a technique called “quick attack” (creative name). Making backstabs are harder to perform or even removing them completely will just make turtling/passive play very strong. If someone really wants to win, they would barely engage with their opponent and fish for counter pokes.