I made a petition to bring back alternative attacks with a mouse input that I think feels very natural for it. You can upvote my idea on DaD's website

Most weapons received a cool counterattack, but some armaments feel a bit different to play now. The main one that comes to mind is the Halberd, which used to have a sweeping attack that could confuse people trying to block it, or catch some Rogues who wanted to dodge normal attacks by moving sideways. Alternating between these different kinds of moves just felt pretty engaging.

My idea is to make these alternative moves usable by holding the Right Mouse Button (RMB) and then pressing Left-Click. Ofc you could perform this very quickly by clicking the buttons almost at the same time, so you wouldn't need to stay in the parry stance for long.

I think it would feel very instinctive to use, and some games already have special moves with this input. Right now, when you hold the right button and press the left button, you just perform a normal attack, so it could be swapped with the alternative one.

This is the link to my post on Ironmacce's website:

https://darkanddarker.featureupvote.com/suggestions/718386/add-back-alternative-attacks-for-weapons-by-holding-rmouse-button-and-then-click

Btw., I see some of these old special attacks are used for Ripostes now, so Ironmace could introduce new ones with unique animation to make up for it, as I don't think we should have the same attacks for both Riposte and these potential Special Attacks - if it was the case, Riposte would feel less cool to trigger (if you could just use the same move in a normal way).
In conclusion, a patch where every weapon get this remade alternative attack to have more moves and play around people trying to block it, could make melee fight more engaging.

I also think Riposte should do more damage, because it's harder to use and should be more rewarding if you trigger it, so I'd set the damage of these reintroduced special attacks somewhere between the damage of normal ones and Ripostes.