Manual weapon rotation is no longer a thing. This was a difficult change to make, not technically, but because it alters a large paradigm of the game.

The original idea of controlling the blade angle was ultimately scrapped because the controls were too conflicting with camera movement. It was very unintuitive to look right while wanting to pan the weapon left, as both were controlled by the same look vector.

Instead, combat revolves around 3 primary mechanics: parry, beat, and low guard. These new changes (in my opinion) have made combat smoother, removed the need of target lock, and bring the pacing closer to realistic melee combat (unlike those Unreal Engine active ragdoll sword fighting games).

Combat

Parry & Beat

Parries and beats both serves as a way to protect yourself, but in different ways. A parry is to deflect swing attacks, and a beat is to deflect thrust attacks. When met with a swing, you would hold down the right mouse button and this will bring your sword to a parry position perpendicular to the attacker's, and any swing attacks would be intercepted while in this state. When met with a thrust, you do not do anything, and your blade will automatically "beat" (it looks like a whipping motion) the thrust out of the way as it approaches (The attached video goes into detail).

The key to fighting effectively is to recognize when a swing or a thrust will happen and prepare accordingly. But attacks won't always come at chest level, and this is a system that uses real object collisions, meaning attack location matters, so what happens when you are struck below the hips?

Low Guard

The low guard is a mechanic that works in conjunction with parries and beats, triggered by holding down the back button on your mouse and pitches your weapon downward so that it protects the lower body. The degree to which it pitches down is also dependent on your view pitch; while looking straight forward the low guard angles the blade at a horizontal position, protecting against hip area attacks, and looking further down from there will angle the blade lower to protect lower extremities like your thigh and shin.

The same deflection logic applies, but for lower body protection. I myself am a visual learner so watching the attached video will explain it better than I can through a half baked post.

Items

Shields

Shields have been entirely removed from the game and will not be implemented in future releases for a variety of reasons. This is in part thanks to the implementation of low guards, which allows full body protection, but mainly because shields are an offhand weapon, and to build a combat system with mainhand and offhand is too complicated and prone to bugs. They're also boring and takes no skill to use.