Stamina cost of zone attacks
I feel that the stamina cost of zone attacks are far too high. Using a zone normally takes a third to half of your stamina, which leaves little for other forms of offense. I think stamina cost of zone attacks should be standardised to the cost of normal heavies and lights. For example:
  • for every heavy that thrown in a zone, like normal heavies, it should cost 12 stamina.
  • for every light that is thrown in a zone, light normal lights, it should cost 6 stamina.
  • if the zone involves a bash(e.g. Gladiator), then the bash should be the cost of a standard short bash, e.g. 12-15 stamina.

These changes would make single hit and multi-hit zones fairer and allow for more offense.

Stamina cost of light attacks
The devs made the right call to try to address light spam and make the game more inclusive in the process. However, they took it too far. They didn't need to increase the stamina cost of lights to reduce light spam, they only needed to do the following:

  1. reduce the damage of light attacks along with heavies to give more time for reads
  2. reduce the hit stun of lights to allow players to dodge out of their opponent's light chains
  3. add frame disadvantage to light finishers so the defender can get the next attack first

Increasing stamina cost on lights reduced offense overall since anyone using lights had less stamina for other mixups. This was 1-2 steps backward from the progress we gained from the removed stamina penalties on blocks, parries, and misses.