Skill vs. Statistics Pt. III - Special Maneuvers

As long as player action sequences are the driving force behind special maneuvers, MMOs will be nothing but a numbers game. The key to break this cycle is to focus on responses to the enemy's actions.

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The combat stile system in Dark ages of Camelot had many reactionary stiles which could turn a fight to your advantage if used and/or timed correctly.

Not only did they use after parry, block or evade attacks, sometimes with chains of attacks and many melee based players specifically duel wield and some two handed specs had stun stiles which could open up an enemy to positional stiles and chains from the side or rear doing more damage than most frontal attacks while the target was stunned.

This system was very good in 1 vs 1 situations where a players stiles would dictate the outcome or the battle most of the time making some fights very tactical and rewarding to players who could use their skills appropriately.

The problem i found is that with chains of attacks using sometimes 3 buttons per chain would mean players creating macro's to swap hot bars to get to the reactionaries and positional stiles using sometimes up to 4 or 5 hot bars and switching backwards and forwards between them as needed.
This could become very hard to get used too but was very good fun once a player could master it without accidently switching to the wrong bar when it counted most.

Although Dark ages is quite dated by today's standards and the combat feels very slow compared to say Warcrafts button mashing dps i still think after 12 years of playing MMO's and different games/combat variations that it has the best melee combat system i have used, a fight was never lost until you where dead since there was always a chance to turn it in your favor.

I feel the newer games are dumbed down slightly to encourage younger players into the genre, having combat systems which require players to learn to fight properly with their character
can be confusing and frustrating to some and it is much easier for newer players to learn simple button mashing.
To avoid this i think games developers are deliberately simplifying it down to the numbers game as you have stated.
This then causes the problem of boring combat where mashing keys faster wins most fights or having much better equipment than your opponent with no real skill involved in game play whatsoever.
The only variation of this is when a player has a an ability to use at a certain time (usually with a cool down period) which if timed right can sway the balance but still only requires timing rather than actual tactics and maneuvering to win.