Its goal: Make parries part of the offense gameplay loop and turn dodges into a positioning tool without even nerfing any of them.
As the player you are now able to parry everything, no exception even magical attacks. You are also able to parry whenever you want, be it in the middle of an attack or even of a previous parry, allowing you to chain parries as long as your timing is right. The parrying check does not depend on Geralt's guard animation anymore, pressing the key at the right time is all it takes.
Parrying an attack extends the duration of all CROW stamina regen buffs (you gained by attacking) by 1s but does not give any buff directly. Allowing you to gain even more stamina by countering the enemy attacks, but if you only rely on parries then you may lack the stamina regen you need for the crowd-control provided by signs.
Dodges were made faster, so fast they are now much more useful as a positioning tool and less useful as a dodging tool. Their duration being reduced halves the amount of i-frames you get from them, but you are also free to continue attacking much sooner.
The following video demonstrates how these simple changes allow you, and encourage you, to constantly go into an aggressive playstyle to fully unlock the benefits of the stamina regen buffs: youtube link