The new update has definitely improved the flow of combat, although the enemies' aggressiveness tends to lead to them all attacking at once forcing me to spam the Defend button, and pray one of them doesn't get me. The flow definitely got better, although I feel like the cannons could be reworked, as they rarely but still can get the best of you if you happen to get the bug where audio doesn't play for an attack.
Afterthought: One mechanic that might be nice is a framefreeze on a successful parry, since currently the enemies bunch up their attacks all after the other, so having time to recognize them attacking instead of spamming defend and praying for a success might be a helpful change
