Button Smashing - Skills or Statistics

I like stats as much as the next person (probably more), but when warfare is boiled down to raw probabilities, battlefield skill disappears. The building of the best stat base becomes much more important than any sort of tactical competency. Instead of seeking a skill based work-around, games come up with new statistical probabilities.

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sounds like a good idea, adds a level of realism missing from some of these games.
should be really easy to implement too:
in your example, the player in water has a "water" status effect (-10 movement for argument sake) just change the parameters so it also affects attack speed, dodge and strength etc.

am looking forward to the mmorpg that lets the tactical rather than the best buffed survive.

Personally I think skill should be more important then statistics however I agree that having environmental effects would increase realism. Statistics should add a degree of how difficult a character to use it but the act of using the player should just be skill.