I wanted to separate this discussion from the other thread because I find it rather interesting.
Blocks are not terribly interesting to me, to be honest. That makes it far too easy for skilled players to just avoid way too much damage. Now, granted, you can already do that by dodging. But the entire point of some of the varied terrain layouts is to make it so that sometimes your ability to dodge is compromised by tight spaces. Block couldn't be effectively diminished in that fashion, and so that leads to less tactics.
Both blocks and combos tend to trend toward fighting games, and I'll warn you that's a genre I don't like or particularly understand.
Just from reading through the other thread, here's how I understand it so far (correct me if I missed anything):
-Some players don't like getting stuck in tight quarters where dodging to avoid damage is not possible.
-Some players want some other way to avoid damage besides dodging that adds some extra tactical element to the combat.
-Some players want some other way to avoid damage that isn't tied to or needs to have several different types for different elements.
-"Blocking" has problems because it may be abused to the point where dodging is no longer required, and dodging is an important part of the combat.
It seems to me that some players want a way out of situations where they simply cannot dodge and may take a lot of damage because of it. Currently there are shields, but some people don't like the fact that they take mana and have different variations for different elements. At the same time it shouldn't replace dodging as the primary way to avoid damage, because tight spaces in the game are supposed to make dodging more difficult and having a straight up "block" might undermine that.
Obviously anything that might come out of this would probably have to wait until after 1.0 release, but I think it might be something interesting to discuss.
