Defensive meta and 50% player base quitting
Let's talk about how annoyingly NOT fun the defensive meta is and why 50% of the total player base has quit the game already:
Let me start off by saying this: I do not consider myself to be some scrub who sucks at the game and doesn't know what he's doing. My overall KD is 4.11 and my win% is 74.24. My Orochi is rep 8 and my Warden is rep 6. These are my opinions on how to improve the game to the average player.
When the game first launched, players didn't know about the "defensive meta" and actually played the game and attacked one another. Now that players are learning the mechanics and playing in rep 10+, all I see are players that sit still and wait for parries or two players who feint each other until both are out of stamina. This isn't fun. Nobody wants to attack first in fear of getting parried > guard block > heavy attack which is incredibly punishing. This game rewards the defender far too much and ultimately rewards players for just sitting still. Hell, I've seen two last men standing and all they do is feint, guard block, and stare into each other's eyes and nobody takes damage until it's down to the final 30 seconds when they begin to get careless...
Furthermore on that note, SOME classes have advantages over others when it comes to initiating combat with amazing feint combos and unblockable first strikes. For example: A Warlord doesn't want to attack a warden because he knows he'll get parried so he feints a heavy and his opponent begins a parry, sees it's a feint, and feints his heavy. The Warlord can then just headbutt, which is an insanely fast unblockable attack, into a light. He doesn't get much damage off he drew first blood after both of them burnt threw a decent amount of stamina achieving next to nothing.
One way I feel this can be mitigated is to disallow guaranteed guard break after a parry. Instead, if you parry a light attack, you get a free heavy and if you parry a heavy attack, you get a free light attack. This is still rewarding and grants the reward based on the difficulty of the parry achieved. If you land a parry and follow it up with a guard break, the most you are guaranteed is a throw in a direction. The defender will be given an opportunity to block the incoming attack if you choose not to throw. Furthermore, giving all classes an unblockable engage option will create a far more balanced field of play. I only say this because while 2v1 and 3v1 is fairly easy to survive with revenge gear, when a player comes from behind and spams unblockables, it becomes nearly impossible. Especially if the player with revenge is a raider with high attack/revenge attack gear. One of the 2/3 players ********ing him may get the parry of but not likely before he hits at least 1 of them dealing LOADS of damage.
Reactive gameplay is only SO fun. Pro-active gameplay is by far the better option in sustaining a fun gameplay environment. If these changes aren't for you then that's okay. Maybe it'd be better if more character's had more options to engage. Initiating combat is the most difficult obstacle in higher-tier gameplay so more options to initiate combat is going to be key to making For Honor great again!
Mind you, my ideas are just that. Obviously I'm open to alternative suggestions and feel that this is an important topic that needs to be discussed because I do believe it will be the ultimate downfall of this game 
TL;DR Defensive meta is an overall boring gameplay mechanic and if you think about it, will make an e-sports scene even more boring to watch.
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