4E Combat isn't like WoW, it's like Street Fighter.

[Ruin Explorer]

Isn't that what RPG combat systems always boil down to?

Tactical strategy with RP elements? No. Definately not. In the '90s I played a lot of cinematic-style RPGs where combat wasn't tactical in any normal sense, you got advantages from description and good ideas. I guess you could claim it was tactical but reliant on your imagination instead of your careful planning, but I'm not really sure if that makes sense.

Even in popular RPGs like the WoD ones, combat rarely particularly "tactical" in any strong sense. In Exalted 2E it's tactical, I'll grant you, but the tactics are positioning in time, not in space, which is kind of interesting. I could go on, but, yeah, no that's not what they always boil down to. Some are near-pure RP, some are RP-with luck and character investment in certain abilities being the leading determinants, some are RP with a little tactics and a little luck, and some mostly tactics with some RP and luck.

In fact, thinking about the WW WoD games, most of them are more "character investment" than "tactics" based. I.e. if you build a character to fight well, invested heavily in that, then you're likely to win even with mediocre or inferior tactics (I know this from hard experience). I've had similar experiences with Shadowrun, where smart play has been bulldozed by pre-play combat optimization. Tactics mostly worked in CP2020, at least. Mostly.