crabby14IN 1.8 the combat has been vastly changes and i think this is good, but weapons are now too powerful, i was playing online, and 2 hits of a stone sword can kill, whats the point of that?

Critical hits do alot more damage, and if a player is "falling", every hit is a critical hit.
So, jump and swing while falling from the jump and you will win in a pvp battle.
I won in a 1v1 with fists when the other guy got about 3 hits in before i even started with this technique.

It might have just been that the server was on hard, so weapons hit more, or that the player was already hurt and it took less hits to kill him.