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I had a gut feeling for a year now that AoC wasn't going to nail the combat
PherPhur
Member
So many ideas of this game are so great, this game is so promising, but one thing we never heard much about was the combat. I had a gut feeling they wouldn't be able to pull off anything spectacular.
It's an MMORPG with heavy pvp elements, so many things in the game will be tied to the pvp, the combat is at least half the game, if not more. Dungeons, seiges, professions to make things regarding combat, world bosses, you name it.
That being said I seen the cleansing wave on the cleric the other day "removes the most recent negative effect that target received" and knew immediately that yes, the combat is going to be really lacking.
That right there was the entire spectrum of dispelling done in 1 skill. Here's my guess, every class will use mana, every class will have a general somewhat simple Vanilla esque rotation(except possibly more dull), and most character building will be done with very shallow augmentations, skill trees/talent trees and maybe a bit of other mechanics that change surface level rpg stats like crit chance, hit chance, ect.
Regardless, none of it means much if there isn't a breadth of skills to play with. Vanilla combat was decent but most of the WoW community will agree that retail combat, apart from the class homogenization, is leagues and bounds better.
And that's not to say that this should be exactly like WoW, but I think for this game it's important that the combat have some depth to it, cause right now it's looking like AoC is going to be really shallow.
It's not easy, thinking about skills that tie into resources, that tie into items, that tie into professions, maybe not completely but i guess what i'm trying to say is you know when people play this game, it's not gonna be that fun if there isn't any "oh check this out, if i do this then that then this, it does that"
That's ABSOLUTELY the majority reason why WoW not only got so big but stayed so big for so long, if you really pay attention the thought they put into even the first 2 expansions and Vanilla combat is unfucking believable, people are still figuring out interesting combinations of things 15 years later. It's fun to play with it and it holds lots of secrets and a lot of those secrets were really thought out.
What AoC is reminding me of right now is a developer who thought "gotta have CC, and dispelling and debuffs and all these aspects of an mmo rpg", but doesn't get it, theyre trying to copy something that's already been done and just doing it worse, and honestly I don't think it can be done much better than retail WoW does it apart from removing the homogenization and adding more hybridable talent trees. That isn't to say they need to have all the same classes, and skills, and talents and... you get it, they just need to understand the way it works.
Well there's more they can improve on, but they gotta start with what already works, and works well. AoC seems like it's trying to re-invent the wheel with mmorpg combat and it's not gonna happen. The action combat is a + definitely so they got that going for them, they got unique skills which is awesome, but the fundamentals... I just got this feeling theyre gonna fall flat on their face and it's such a shame. They're either trying too hard to be unique, they don't really understand what makes combat fun in MMO rpgs, or they think it can just be this simple and still be fun.
And sure, it will be, for a little while, but not for long, and not THAT fun. And this game has so much potential for so much replayability. I can see people playing this game in 20 years, lots of people, if they do the combat right and deliver on everything else they've talked about so far.
It's an MMORPG with heavy pvp elements, so many things in the game will be tied to the pvp, the combat is at least half the game, if not more. Dungeons, seiges, professions to make things regarding combat, world bosses, you name it.
That being said I seen the cleansing wave on the cleric the other day "removes the most recent negative effect that target received" and knew immediately that yes, the combat is going to be really lacking.
That right there was the entire spectrum of dispelling done in 1 skill. Here's my guess, every class will use mana, every class will have a general somewhat simple Vanilla esque rotation(except possibly more dull), and most character building will be done with very shallow augmentations, skill trees/talent trees and maybe a bit of other mechanics that change surface level rpg stats like crit chance, hit chance, ect.
Regardless, none of it means much if there isn't a breadth of skills to play with. Vanilla combat was decent but most of the WoW community will agree that retail combat, apart from the class homogenization, is leagues and bounds better.
And that's not to say that this should be exactly like WoW, but I think for this game it's important that the combat have some depth to it, cause right now it's looking like AoC is going to be really shallow.
It's not easy, thinking about skills that tie into resources, that tie into items, that tie into professions, maybe not completely but i guess what i'm trying to say is you know when people play this game, it's not gonna be that fun if there isn't any "oh check this out, if i do this then that then this, it does that"
That's ABSOLUTELY the majority reason why WoW not only got so big but stayed so big for so long, if you really pay attention the thought they put into even the first 2 expansions and Vanilla combat is unfucking believable, people are still figuring out interesting combinations of things 15 years later. It's fun to play with it and it holds lots of secrets and a lot of those secrets were really thought out.
What AoC is reminding me of right now is a developer who thought "gotta have CC, and dispelling and debuffs and all these aspects of an mmo rpg", but doesn't get it, theyre trying to copy something that's already been done and just doing it worse, and honestly I don't think it can be done much better than retail WoW does it apart from removing the homogenization and adding more hybridable talent trees. That isn't to say they need to have all the same classes, and skills, and talents and... you get it, they just need to understand the way it works.
Well there's more they can improve on, but they gotta start with what already works, and works well. AoC seems like it's trying to re-invent the wheel with mmorpg combat and it's not gonna happen. The action combat is a + definitely so they got that going for them, they got unique skills which is awesome, but the fundamentals... I just got this feeling theyre gonna fall flat on their face and it's such a shame. They're either trying too hard to be unique, they don't really understand what makes combat fun in MMO rpgs, or they think it can just be this simple and still be fun.
And sure, it will be, for a little while, but not for long, and not THAT fun. And this game has so much potential for so much replayability. I can see people playing this game in 20 years, lots of people, if they do the combat right and deliver on everything else they've talked about so far.
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Have thought about freezing myself until launch - but I never even gave ANY serious thought to time-travel! I can't wait to play too, so I can write a forums-thread just as-insightful and knowing as you did, here.
I certainly do agree that this is a game that has a lot tied to its combat and if it doesn't provide avenues for depth it could lead to trouble long term for the game which would be heartbreaking. However we have the advantage of Alpha2 coming up, it should give us plenty of time to react to abilities and for them to change accordingly if needed.
Unveiling combat on a class with a single skill that debuffs any negative effect immediately shows the path that Intrepid is walking in regards to combat, even if the game is in alpha.
It shows they don't have a great idea on what to do.
In game design not many things turn out too great just tossing things in there, most great things are pretty thought out and based on other things which might be even based on other things.
That's because each implementation of something is laying a foundation and they are 100% not going to go back and completely rework it from the ground up(at least not until another "expansion", and even then not unless they know what they're doing).
I have a strong feeling we'll see this be an issue all the way through development and like the second poster here said, i'm voicing my concern now, and hopefully I won't be bringing this back up throughout the persistent alpha, but I got the feeling I am. I got a really really strong feeling Intrepid for some reason or another is going to struggle HARD with combat.
Though, like I said, they're doing some cool stuff already in terms of some unique skills and the action combat, and of course the rest of the game and what they've said they're going to do sounds(minus some of the much finer details) incredible. So clearly they're trying, but I really do expect to see this be a big issue. I also expect to see a large portion of the community downplay it which I really hope doesn't happen.
I'm not trying to be a downer, I want to see this game succeed. If anyones played other MMORPGs, if they've played WoW, and they've payed attention and thought about it really hard, given the fundamentals of standard MMORPGs like buffs, debuffs, classes, skills, resources to use those skills, ect, if you've reallllly thought about it you'll know WoW, for the most part, does combat as about great as it can get, minus homogenization and pruning of the skill tree's and taking away hybridibility(is this a word lol?)
There's gonna need to be macros, instant cast skills that don't trigger the global cooldown, a global cooldown, really cool thought out hidden interactions between those, buffs, debuffs, several different ways to rid those debuffs, resources to cast skills that work differently than mana, ect, ect. This isn't copying WoW, these are things that originated from WoW who set the fundamentals of great RPGs, there's a reason they're copied.
I'm telling you the people who designed WoW thought REALLY hard on just about everything you can do in regards to combat in an RPG with the tech they had at the time and they designed it about as well as it could be.
Apart from technical limitations and a few odds and ends they nailed it. You can flavor it differently, you can fix those few odds and ends, you can implement some things that were limited by tech/understanding/time constraints of the time(tab action hybrid combat, flying combat, mounted combat). You can interweave new aspects of the game with the combat(weather modifiers, new professions, world boss modifiers on the zone effecting the weather which effects the skills). But lets not reinvent the wheel, cause the circle is the wheel and it's clearly, now that it's been figured out, the best shape for the wheel.
But it's not clear if you're suggesting that they don't WANT it to be better than this, or that they're just not CAPABLE of making it better than this.
The first 'doesn't need solving', it just needs clarity. The second, I feel could be solved and they're actively in the process of it.
So are you saying 'your gut tells you that they will never nail the combat' (and maybe don't plan to) or is it 'that they wouldn't manage it in within the last year' and you were right to be concerned a year ago about slow progress?
The more I hear Steven talk, and the more they are showing; the better the combat looks in my eyes.
Steven likes to talk about synergies so here's a quick suggestion regarding that skill: Class synergies. Instead of dispelling all negative effects, make it dispel one type, and one class another, and another. Very simply you will have different classes for different situations creating synergies, and a more intricate combat.
Though I can agree with they're not so sure on the direction they're going to take.
Combat is still bare bones. No direct demo of augments, yet, so...
No. They have not nailed down their combat design yet.
Which is probably fine since Alpha 2 is not yet on the horizon.
@ChipsAhoy007 WoW did have a "pvp game" but it was never a PVP GAME.
It's important to understand that tactful+world/player/guild building mmorpg's the PvE and PvP have to mesh and judging by your opinion it appears as you consider WoW as the best to ever do it but there's so much to unpack with your standards and what you consider to be a social and team work orientated world game.
Yep.
As @Tyranthraxus said, the OP has formed their judgment already … despite it being common knowledge that the game still has years of development (and player feedback) ahead.
A mantra we see in the forums a lot might have application here:
“Ashes will not be for everyone.”
/thread
1) You seem to be taking a negative from a clerical spelling cleansing the most recent debuff, as a foundation of your complaint. its just the most negative debuff, not all debuffs if i am understanding correctly. I dont see a major issue with that. the clerical spell can be on cool down, cost mana or be a perk that is in the talent tree I havent done enough research on it to be honest. And its not that I dont care I am just waiting to get my hands on the game when they come out with Alpha 2. I feel this is what Alpha 2 is all about helping to refine the game. let them come up with something then we as players give our feedback on what seems to be working vs what isnt. what need improving and what is over powered and needs the nerf bat.
2) you state that every class will use mana. I think what you are referring to is every class having some sort of resource they need to balance. which makes sense in most cases. EG you can just build one massive awesome skill and spam it over and over again with zero resource management, is what most devs do not want to create. but they even mention this in the live stream: hey what do you guys think about stamina for tanks when blocking? again play testing we can try this out and see what works and what doesnt. if its an active mitigation or should it be a "stance" where it is a passive ability?
3) your references to modern wow, i have zero comment on i tried modern wow and its a hard pass for me. seems more like an mmo version of diablo than the retail wow i remember from playing vanilla thru wrath. but thats just me
4) Not sure what you mean by some dev thought we need CC, debuffs ect. I think most games have those? I played Asherons Call back in the day and even then there we debuffs and buffs you could use (no CC though). So not sure where you are going with this one.
5) I cant follow why you think the Combat is a fail system. Maybe I just dont know as much about it. maybe I am more patient because its hard for me to tell what exactly is going on with mechanics till i can get into the game and start really breaking stuff apart. maybe its the fact that (to me) the UI needs a massive amount of love to help me figure out everything thats going on. I think one thing that we both agree on is that the devs are really trying hard to put out an absolutely amazing game. and I am not kissing ass when I say that I am blown away with the level of detail they are putting into every aspect of the game they have shown.
Summary: be patient, get into alpha 2 try the systems, give feedback.
One last point, if you see something you dont like or that could be an issue be very specific, and even better come up with a couple ideas for solutions.
Just my 2 copper
Letterz
-What? The Alpha-2 didn't come out yet, it is too soon to judge the combat system
Also WoW combat isn't good that is dated and old now. Though my experience is mostly in the older WoW and not all the newer expansions in the past many years. Sure they added some more modern mechanics still going to be dated and not good imo.
Actually, WoW’s vanilla combat was very basic, a lot more basic than it is now. At the height of WoW’s popularity there were still classes with 1 button rotations. Over time what happened was they took away character customization (nerfed spec trees) and added more complex rotations. The timelines for these changes correspond directly with the decrease in popularity of WoW, meaning there’s not only no evidence you’re right, but there’s evidence that it’s actually the opposite of what you’re saying, what’s popular is more character customization and less complex gameplay.
About AoC itself, I agree it looks basic. Some of the mechanics look like prototypes rather than fully flushed out systems (for example every class uses mana, and mana is depleted while sprinting).
In development usually you have an architect who comes up with the overall plan and then developers implement that plan. AoC reminds me of a project with no architect, and some of the systems are being flushed out as they go. We’ll see, but usually that results in a disorganized mess that constantly needs to be refactored. The stat system and mechanic basics should be fully thought out before creating abilities, so I’m worried a bit about AoC’s systems too, just not for the reasons you say.
The whole reason to have open development IS to provide judgement, comments, opinions and God forbid negative feedback at ALL stages of development.
If not, why the hell are we doing it this way?
What I think you have is a fear. And now you are trying to justify your fear by accusing the combat of being bad.
It's still way too early to make comments about how good or bad combat is. Still so many changes to be made. IS has been listening to the community and adapting quite well imho. Thats the reason I have no doubt the combat will be good. THey give a lot of opportunities for testing and player feedback, and they adjust in consequence. If the combat is bad now, it will only get better.
I tried really hard to comprehend this point OP but wasn't able to reach anything reasonable other than"it's too generic" but WoW also has generic dispeling, could you possible elaborate on why such skill/mechanic completely makes you "know immediately that the combat is going to be really lacking."?
"Dispelling mechanics" present in WoW, also existed in Lineage 2(MMORPG older than WoW which Ashes takes alot of inspirations from) but were known as "Cancelling mechanics" also containing both generic and non-generic canceling skills.
Already Confirmed
Unpredictable, any specfic reasons to believe those things?
Aren't we all sinners?
So WoW and all other mmorpgs should remove action combat elements?
I can imagine a world where they can use them both on a single skill, one example being a charged bow shot where when you're within tab targeting range it can act like a normal MMORPG locked on shot and when they're out of that range you can aim and shoot them at a further distance.
Another being the prismatic beam, being that you can lock onto someone or spin it around freely to hit multiple targets.
That being the case I'd imagine certain skills would have a further range than others, fizzling out(fire ball fizzling out sooner than fireball perhaps), melting(similar to it's fiery counterpart), dropping off(arrows) at different distances. But this of course opens the game up to a range meta that would severely trivialize melee classes and make open area NPC's a little chees-able(not a really big issue, they still have to run up and loot them, plus there's the inherent rotation dps solution I mentioned below)
They could make block completely negate ranged damage outside of the tab distance and give melee classes a rage resource/skill/passive/talent that stacks up potential when they get hit so they can bait for shots or block incoming shots to friendly players to gain increased potential damage or damage reduction upon the face to face encounter.
There is also the factor that a characters dps is going to be balanced around a rotation of attacks, so action combat ranged dps, at least at a distance where you're likely to miss, is going to be severely limited. Especially considering the drop of arrows and the slower projectile speed of spells.
I'd love to hear some more thoughts on this. Because as far as I can tell now action combat seems like they put an awful lot of work into it, for something that seems to mostly exist just as a personal preference.
I think they're capable and they want to. I think it's possible though that they're going to try too hard to individualize themselves in terms of combat, and fail.
Whether or not it's their own preference, or the view of their target audience that would limit them from taking too many examples from another successful MMORPG, I don't know.
In either case about all I can do is say I give my approval for them to copy damn near every aspect of WoWs combat fundamentals, try to tell the community to get their word in now about it, and talk/think about the new aspects of combat that are unique to AoC.
A part of me thinks they'll never nail it unless we press about this, unless we tell them it's okay, possibly unless we tell them "hey, don't %$#& the combat up, if you literally copied every single class/skill/talent tree from world of warcraft and put it into AoC(don't actually do this) and delivered the rest of the game the way in which you told us it would be, you would sell 50x more copies than WoW has ever sold in it's lifetime and probably become the most successful video game company of the next 100 years"
Yea, that's a slight exaggeration, but really.. a slight exaggeration. They have to nail the combat, the game is built around it, centered around the combat and group play.
WoW, for the most part, apart from it's combat mechanics, actually isn't that spectacular, it's not really super thought out, not super involved, nothing really that special about it. It's the combat that carries it 1000%. The profession systems are real meh and got worse, the transportation system is really basic, flying mounts up until the dragons in dragonflight(and still even now its only the new dragons, woooo) felt terrible to fly on, let alone do combat on, underwater content is terrible, wpvp is dead since sharding/layering and since you can't CC people on flying mounts(but you can on ground mounts, hmmm) and now people can fly everywhere in the game, also because there's no system for griefers and wpvp scenarios are underdeveloped or non existent.
Intrepids idea for everything but the combat(they don't even have an idea on it for the most part) is PHENOMENAL, so $#$^%&# top tier, honestly when I heard Stephen talk about this game, the more and more I heard, the more and more I kept getting this overwhelming thought "this is special, this isn't just a game, this is %$^&*#$ spiritual, I would not be surprised if God himself came down and gave him a vision of this game".
Sorry to the people who have some bone to pick with WoW and want to shrug this off, but the game has demolished every other MMORPG in history by leaps and bounds, landslides, avalanches, you name it.
It's not because they(initially) appealed to many different kinds of players, it's cause they did something really really well. And for most people that have played MMORPGs, WoW included, and thought about it, to most people who haven't hopped on that weird hate Blizzard train, they understand what that is. Asmongold(a large streamer and pretty dang intelligent MMO player) has said it before, a couple times, WoW is so popular, and stayed popular, cause of it's combat.
Intrepid clearly wants to do something novel, something groundbreaking, so don't worry about the game being new and interesting even if they open up the WoW dev manual and start copying stuff over line of code for line of code, cause they'll figure out how to add their own twist to it.
No, be concerned that no other MMORPG in 17 years has been able to do anything but become big on the basis of a 2 decade IP of popular(and albeit great) playstation games and because they appeal thematically to what is now probably in the top 3 list of largest cultures in the world, weebs.
And I mean big in relative terms, no Lineage 2 was not big, Archaege was not big, Guild Wars 2 was not big, they were hefty and yea they were great, but if the games built around combat, which they all are, and the combat is out of this world, the game isn't going to be either, unless you sell a Japanese product to weebs.
I know AoC has taken examples from many different MMOs, especially Archeage, which is so wonderful, but for the combat they would do very well to go to the king of combat and start taking some serious notes.
You're looking through the lense of single expansions, if Classic was done right they'll learn from all this, eventually you'd imagine lol..
Most people seem to agree that, all things included, Vanilla had the best combat. That's not to say aspects of it weren't improved in other expansions, but it's also not to say that aspects of it were made worse in other expansions.
They did take away character customizations, which is one of the main things people wanted to replay Classic for and is the main reason they put talent trees back in Dragonflight.
People certainly weren't happy with 1 button rotations though and as far as rotations go, after Legion is the best spot they've ever been.
They quit making sub counts public after WoD, but it's well known Legion was very well, more than well received by the community, so odds are the sub count spiked.
No, high customization and low complexity is not preferable, a balance of customization and complexity is preferable, in terms to the majority of people. Not peoples personal preference so much, but just how humans typically operate. Not complex enough you get frustrated, but as close to that as possible so it's as rewarding as possible. Not too much customization so as to get lost(present day path of exile), but enough that it grants the game a lot of replayability.
When I mention the fundamentals of combat in regards to WoW doing well, I'm not really counting the customization, they were always really lacking on that in my opinion, and probably in most peoples opinion if they were given the option.
It's skill/class resource variety, a global at 1.5 seconds plus or minus 0.5 seconds(this is a sweet spot for most peoples reaction time given a class skillset complexity that's also in the sweet spot), casting skills, channeled skills, instant skills, instant skills that don't trigger the GCD, macros to handle intricate functions of the combat skills and item use and targeting that has a degree of automation but not enough that you can make a button play for you(a buffer for the complexity of it all so that more things can become relevant and so that the game design isn't capped by human ability). It's base attributes work really well, although they can be added to or substituted in some cases
You're looking through the lense of single expansions, if Classic was done right they'll learn from all this.
Most people seem to agree that, overall, taking into account profession items, proc weapons, talents, Vanilla had the best combat, because of the really unique customizability. That's not to say aspects of it weren't improved in other expansions, but it's also not to say that aspects of it were made worse in other expansions.
They did take away a lot of customizations, which is one of the main things people wanted to replay Classic for and is the main reason they put talent trees back in Dragonflight. It's not the simple rotations people like in Vanilla, it's the customizability with all those things I just mentioned. Despite the fact it was majorly unbalanced.
This is why I like AoC's approach of rock paper scissors, because balance still does matter a little bit, but as long as they make sure one class can counter another and be countered by others it doesn't matter a bunch. the rock paper scissors approach also encourages grouping up which is awesome, such a great alternative to just balancing everything equally.
People certainly weren't happy with 1 button rotations though and as far as rotations go, post Legion is the best spot they've ever been, which is more complex. WotLK is where WoW subs spiked. The reason sub count wasn't higher in Vanilla is because it was still gaining velocity. WotLK balanced things quite well and really fleshed the classes out, so it was great for rated pvp.
They quit making sub counts public after WoD, but it's well known Legion was very well, more than well received by the community, so odds are the sub count spiked. Generally peoples favorites are a tie between WotLK, Vanilla and Legion.
High customization and low complexity is not preferable, a balanced customization and complexity is preferable, in terms to the majority of people. Not peoples personal preference so much, but just how humans typically operate. Not complex enough you get frustrated, but as close to that as possible so it's as rewarding as possible. Not too much customization so as to get lost(present day path of exile), but enough that it grants the game a lot of replayability.
Complexity has also been found to be best tuned at variable levels, similar to mythic and mythic+ dungeons in wow. You can see and complete most content without understand much complexities of the game, but if you want to knock up the difficulty you have to understand more complexities. So in that, complexity isn't super relevant, apart from that it's there if people want it and that it's not high enough that the game can't be balanced. With AoC being rock paper scissors it allows the game to be more unbalanced which means the complexity is allowed to be even higher without effecting the PvP as much.
When I mention the fundamentals of combat in regards to WoW doing well, I'm not really counting the customization, they were always really lacking on that, especially this day in age where people are more tempered to these things. WotLK added more talents like TBC did but changed them around in a way you couldn't hybrid, so that was a downside.
It's the skill/class resource variety, the spell coefficients, a global at 1.5 seconds plus or minus 0.5 seconds(this is a sweet spot for most peoples reaction time given a class skillset complexity that's also in the sweet spot), casting skills, channeled skills, instant skills, instant skills that don't trigger the GCD, macros to handle intricate functions of the combat skills and item use and targeting that has a degree of automation but not enough that you can make a button play for you(a buffer for the complexity of it all so that more things can become relevant and so that the game design isn't capped by human ability). It's base attributes work really well, although they can be added to or substituted in some cases.
Someone here wanted me to give an example of class combos I think it was, well one example that ties all this in together is warriors, how they generate rage when being attacked or when attacking. Now a shaman has a totem that gives haste, which makes you attack/cast faster, which would make anyone do more dps, but it's especially useful for the warrior because the faster he attacks the more rage he gets as well. Whereas when a rogue attacks faster he does more damage, but since haste also lowers the global cooldown(to a maximum of 1 second), he uses his skills faster which depletes his energy faster and since he already is using his energy as fast as possible, he doesn't benefit as much from the haste as the warrior.
There's the rotations that have been developed over the course of many years and have gotten to a really great state, a state better than they were 15 years ago when Wrath of the Lich king was selling copies that still dwarfs every other MMO to this day.
The talent tree's were in their infancy since day one and have only struggled so that's one of the "odds and ends" I talked about. Professions and how they applied to combat as well. The lower ranks of your skills costing less mana is typically thought of as a superior system, diminishing returns, most people didn't like weapon skills. Spell batching, despite them removing it from the game, is probably something that should still be around considering anybody but fiber customers are getting 100+ms in an MMO.
Speaking of 100+ms ping lmao, the internet technicians here at the house to fix mine, so i'll probably add more later. Sorry I wasn't very eloquent, I just tried to write straight to the point, got a lot going on.
Ah I see.
I believe I fit the general definition of 'weeb' and I don't like what I've seen/learned of WoW combat so I hope they don't, but that's up to Steven's spot on the 'weebscale' I guess.
I don't think he intends for it to be 'big', just 'whatever he finds fun to play and believes should exist', but I agree that us 'weebs' have enough games upcoming that it won't exactly ruin the genre if Ashes becomes 'The Next WoW'.
There can have a single arrow like a left click completely have a new characteristic by modifying it with a button press.
There can be a button press sequenced into other skills that give the combat meaning.
Both capture the technical proficiency required by action combat and the acumen required by tab.
It's too much to speculate at the moment, but I hope they truly nail it.
I'm not going to agree with this at all. WoWs combat is not it's selling point. Warcraft 1 released in 94, it's 28 years old. It's got almost 30 years of rich history and lore and a cemented fanbase that will not abandon it for anything.
Warcraft has decent class expression, but I wouldn't call the combat good. I'd call it generic.