honestly, I think that armor plate looks significantly worse. Doesn't have a solid form to it, why does it spike up on the right? why is the shape so indistinct?

The whole sprite I think suffers a lack of construction, however. Case in point, why does his sleeve have such a rubbery texture to it? what exactly is going on with his shoulder? his neck looks awfully thick for how slim the shoulders are!

Etc etc etc.

You might be best served redrawing this with construction in mind.

why doesn't the arm have an elbow when he swings? his arms come off as kinda rubbery/noodly as a result of the lack of visible structure here

Pardon my curiosity but is there more than one discord?

there's a number of 'em that the community kinda scattered into after the Biggest Dumbest Drama happened:

-the reddit pixel art discord
-pixel kabal
-pixonomicon
-pixel dailies
-the aseprite server
-pixel art historical society

some are open invite, some aren't, there's still scraper bots lurking about so I leave finding ways in to your google-fu.

one thing I'm immediately noticing is that the detail of the foreground elements (the log and the ranger) both have less detail than the background. Gives off that effect you get watching old dragonball Z episodes where you see that one rock and go "oh, that's gonna break" because it's colored and shaded different.

I'd go back over those two elements and try to bring the level of detail back in synch.

definitely one too few frames on the upswing, it makes hte movement feel a bit jilted/too sudden