Great news for everyone!
An improved combat system would certainly be a wonderful addition. Considering that a certain duration of after-animation/animation recover is necessary for smooth and natural movements, while typical fighting games require shorter after-animations to return to the original stance to prevent enemies from easily exploiting weaknesses, to reconcile these two aspects,
I personally suggest refering to the stance system from Absolver. In simple terms, it uses four different stances to connect each action. This way, each action only needs to return to one of these stances to start the next action(which begins with the same one), effectively reducing the time to connect actions and greatly expanding the depth of combat system.
Of course, I am just a player offering a possibility for reference, and I apologize for haven't taken into account the different game design concepts and playstyles.
Thank you all again for making such a beautiful game!