Maybe its just me not getting it, but combat in general feels fairly unintuitive, with a lot of stances or attacks / spells sort of just being there whilst not being used all that often, or even in some cases not really making a difference at all (such as Defensive options). 

Whilst new content is appreciated and not something I'm ever gonna turn down, I do feel like combat should definitely get looked at as well, maybe taking off some of the bloat or simplifying some things here and there to make it feel a little better.

It's definitely not you - right now with combat it's unclear what's happening and the player isn't weaned into it - we are going to do another pass at combat soon, and introduce some more in-game help and tutorials.  A lot of the techniques currently are just proof of concept for some game mechanic or other - none of them are really final.