Out of all of the categories of mods out there for Oblivion, combat is my second most indecisive one next to the obvious overhauls. I just can't seem to choose one and stick with it. The first and probably my most used combat overhaul is Deadly Reflex 6. I've used that mod since my second Oblivion playthrough up until my previous playthrough. Despite my familiarity with the mod, I cant' deny its faults. Granted, it's an outdated mod that was abandoned at its beta stage. Some of this mod's faults include:

• Buggy-ness, which in my case often leads to CTDs (ex. when I throw my weapon).
• The tweaked camera. It's nauseating in itself and goes against what it's intended to do (be realistic).
• Requiring a lot of prequisite mods first. This is not a big deal for other people, I assume, but it is kind of a pet peeve of mine.

Some people recommend using Deadly Reflex 5 instead. It's supposedly more stable. However, I grew fond of the new features in v6 of the mod. I probably won't use v5 due to the lack of those features. Plus, what's the point if UVIII is out?

My current playthrough is using UVIII. To be honest, this is probably my favorite combat mod right now. However, I still can't stand some of the features in this mod (although if anybody knows a fix for it, I'll be good); things such as:

• The way this mod handles criticals. It's horrendous if set as default. Even if you're fighting an NPC with 80% health, a critical will ensue so long as you keep attacking. This poses three problems: 1) Tough and easy NPCs alike die way too quickly, making most - if not all - NPC fights completely trivial. 2) Oblivion XP users, like myself, don't get the XP for the kill. 3) The most annoying critical by far is getting your weapon impaled into an NPC/creature. It might look gruesome and somewhat cool, but your weapon becomes irretrievable, at least as far as I'm concerned. Looting their corpse won't let you retrieve your precious sword.
• As a follow up to the above point, I am forced to turn off ALL critical hits, which is sad because that's one of my favorite features from Deadly Reflex.
• As a follow up to the above point, trying to turn off all critical hits is confusing and cryptic. Even after turning off every critical possible in the ini, the game still does it. After days of searching for an answer and messing around with the ini, I finally found a (probably unintended) solution. I turned off momentum. That was the only solution I found. Even then, magic criticals still happen (roasting enemies alive, freezing enemies, etc. Cool stuff but still auto-kills everybody), and at this point, I gave up trying to fix it.
• I don't know if it's this mod or not, but this bug only occurs during my current playthrough. Whenever I fight people in straight up melee combat, my character sometimes gets stuck. I can't hit, block, or even move. The only temporary fix is pressing the UV Attack Key. This occurs enough times to be annoying.

I've heard about Duke Patrick's Combat Mod. In all honesty, I never paid attention to this mod, so I have no idea what the features are. I'm going to need a lot of information in order to commit to this mod.

Then there's the vanilla combat system, which is generally okay for an Elder Scrolls game. Nothing special though. I don't think I'll stick with vanilla anytime soon.

So, to get to the point, what's the "best" (I use this term loosely) combat mod out there in both features and stability?

You missed kobal's mods. I will write an extensive reply later.