Four stages of Attack

Hello!
I'm working on animations, player feedback and clarity for my game Parry-Strike.

One piece of feedback that I was getting consistently from my playtests was that it was unclear when attack starts, when it hits, and I myself felt confused about what was going on during hit.
So instantly - in a game about hitting each other it's a very bad sign. I had to improve the attack animation and answer the question "how can I make it more clear?"
First of all, I would really love to reccomend you this video if you're interested, it provides a lot of insight into attack animation.

What was wrong?

I realized my animation lacked clarity in two critical points: attack itself and the follow-through (return to idle).
So I divided attack into four stages. As I call them, they are Charge, Swing, Strike, and Return.

Charge is a short time while the player is still in place, and it serves the purpose to indicate the intention of attack. Also, the attack can be canceled in this stage to try to bait the opponent.

Then, swing indicates the start of attack, it's paired with movement forward and aims to convey danger to the other player.

Strike is supposed to be fast, and clearly indicate range and timing of the hit. One major mistake I made in this stage before was canceling the attack animation midway after hit, not allowing it to fully play and show what happened.

And return is just the time it takes for the player to go back to the normal state when he can dom something else. However, it plays an important role in giving the other player a window of opportunity to counterattack. Before, I didn't have this stage at all.

As a result of my changes, I achieved a much clearer attack animation, which is crucial in the fighting genre.

Still, I would say I need to add even more feedback. For example, I want to push the opponent away after successful hit, and in the future add more VFX to indicate important stages of the attack animation even clearer.