There's certainly been a noticeable change. I'm not sure if stunlocking is impossible or just harder now, but certainly a lot more people are getting out of it with a quick roll then before. However, I've also noticed that I sometimes accidentally roll after doing a shockwave, perhaps I'm not being careful enough, it's certainly possible to avoid, but it seems to happen, you know, somewhat easily. And it's quite annoying. It feels like this might be caused by the queueing?

First off, I have no idea what you mean about the yellow potion not being useful because the attack duration is longer then how long the pot lasts. The attack duration of the roll is irrelevant (in fact, the fact that it's long is a bad thing for the roll), and so is the duration of the potion. Those things don't really have anything to do with how the potion helps you get away from a roll? It give you the speed to hit or kick or run away from them once they roll, the roll is after all, quite awful if it's not hitting you precisely at the moment when you're standing up, and the yellow potion gets you past that moment.

Secondly, the tension IS only available if there's a way to die in the fight! The tension in the fight is caused by the fact you could die at any time, not just, welp, you're not winning so time to run away!

As for should one knockdown equal death? We'll just have to disagree, I think I've explained why I think it should equal death. It's okay you feel otherwise, sure. But there's a big difference between an unblockable spam move and saying "okay, if you manage to knock them down in a good position with okay timing, you win the fight." After all, the roll doesn't do jack shit on it's own, you still need to land a kick or a shockwave first. But, of course, it shouldn't be an insta-kill because that would seriously change the dynamic of fights larger then a 1v1.

So, this might not be the most popular mode of thought, but I actually sorta like the stun lock. Even though it's frustrating of course, it adds a lot of tension in a 1v1 between two skilled people. There's a few important things here that make it so I think it's good. The first and most importantly for why I think it's actually good to the game is that it adds to the conclusiveness of a fight. As is, when running away the person running is at an advantage over the person who's chasing, they can use the shockwave and the roll, however the person chasing can't use these (the shockwave is much harder to hit for obvious reasons, and although a lot of people don't seem to realize it, rolling towards someone makes you super vulnerable, so if you roll when chasing the other person can simply turn and kick/axe you.) Without the stunlock there's not really a good way to conclusively end a one v one between people who know what they are doing (short of a knife sometimes) since unless they are outnumbered by a lot it's normally quite easy for whomever is at a disadvantage to simply run away. With the stun lock every hit, every block, every shockwave, and every kick, might be your last in the duel. Which really ups the tension and importance of these fights. As for some other thoughts on stunlocking: It is almost always possible to get out of being stunlocked via the use of a yellow potion, and this sorta resource conversation and knowing when to use it is another important thing most people seem to be missing and that I think adds to the game. It's a very slow way to kill someone, and although the timing is easy it is quite exact and leaves the person doing the rolling vulnerable, which means it's not viable to do if you're fighting more then one person. And, lastly, it makes positioning somewhat important and relevant, since if you're fighting with your back to a rock, often you can survive getting knocked down if they can't line up the roll in time. Not always, but it's another thing to think about in these close fights, which I think is cool.

Some more info on this, turns out the whole leaderboard is fucked for me, I think it's the leaderboard of the old server. In addition as I kill people, I go up in points, but my size doesn't increase.