Hey me too and I agree with you, the combat is way better now.
I completely agree, right now everything in the games environment, world building, is really great, we just need this combat to be fixed. Hitboxes on small creatures and just NPC’s not getting hit when I attack them in general, NPC behavior, animation transitions. Funcom, we believe in you but this current un-patched combat is breaking this game that has so much potential to be 1000+ hour game.
The tough part of improving combat seems to be balancing the needs of pvp vs pve vs solo. The devs chose to add that flexibility into the game, but seem to be having trouble making combat compelling for all three versions - while excelling at none. The server performance issues aren’t helping with things.
I play pve, and I think combat is improved from launch, but still needs a lot of love. I could make a ton of suggestions, but they would be through a pve lens. That said, pve content is pretty easy, with high level bosses being uninteresting.