All righty, I'll go into some depth so people who're unfamiliar with the system will understand why I want it so badly.
The combat system of Haven and Hearth is vastly more complex than the salem one, which would of course lead to a higher learning curve to fight effectively, albeit it also results in some much more interesting fights cause the skill cap is quite a lot higher.
Basically when a player attacks another player in H&H, The assailant will start heading towards the victim, if anything is in his way, he'll run into it and stop, this is what we call clipping in haven.
Each player has a defense and an attack bar, representing the amount of a beating they can dish out / take before their armor and health is exposed to hurt.
When a player uses an attack on another player, it will do a certain amount of defensive bar damage depending on the skill of the attacking player in the type of combat he's attacking with, mixed with the "weight" of the move he's using to attack (different moves have different weight as to signify their effect on the defense bar).
To counteract this, there are several "moves" which will let a player replenish his attack bar, and defense bar, as well as gain an entity called "IP" (initiative points IIRC). These points are used for the vast majority of moves and can be obtained both at range and in melee depending on the move you use.
Another mechanic that can be influenced by moves is "Advantage". When you gain an advantage point over the enemy, your moves' inherent weight is increased against the enemy, thus letting you break his defense with less of a hassle, and take less defensive damage from his attacks and moves.
As a whole third mechanic, a player while performing moves will have an active "Maneuver"; a maneuver has an effect that is activated every time someone uses a move on the player that is using the maneuver, an example would be "Oaken Stance", which replenishes some defense at the cost of some attack bar every time a move is used on you.
The fourth and possibly least used mechanic of the combat system is "Intensity", this decides the cooldown there is between each move. This cooldown is also affected by the difference in agility of the two players fighting (This could be translated to say YB or phlegm in salem). And as thus, keeping the combat intensity low can give you more time to think, where as keeping it high will give you a higher effective damage output.
This system translated very well to pvp since mobs had certain maneuvers and moves they used uniquely that you had to counteract, or alternatively, just bruteforce through (in the case of weaker animals like foxes and rabbits).
What really made the system shine however, was an unintended mechanic known as "Movement combat" or "MERVMENT KAMBERTZ" (Hi Viggy baby
Which revolved around using certain long range maneuvers to replenish your bars, and constantly try to clip the enemy on terrain, letting you take advantage of one last mechanic I haven't covered yet:
Movement hits. Basically if you're struck by an attack while moving WITHOUT Having a move queued up on a target, it neglects your defensive bar and goes straight to damaging your armor (and in case of damaged armor or being naked, your health).
People proficient in this could experience some extremely satisfying combat with very intense chases and turnarounds, where one guy could defeat several higher statted players due to extreme levels of skill. Not all that many people mastered this style of combat, but of the few who did, it benefitted them greatly compared to everyone else, and it generally made combat and threads about ganks exciting.
Now, Haven also had several other systems to take into account like several layers of HP (Soft, hard and max) as well as stamina and hunger, all contributing to this very complex system, but it was an utter blast using, and it felt really engaging as well.
In my period of saleming, I eradicated the goons with my buddies in Peterville (back during closed beta first round). What we quicky learned, was that in salems combat, running away is ALWAYS easy.
Basically even with walk speed its rather easy to dodge most abilities in this game, and just walk out of their influence, of course if you're boxed in by 8 players you're screwed, but I personally spend 40 minutes dodging goons while traversing an ocean by foot on walk speed, in the end they left due to boredom and inability to hit me.
The haven system has targeting, abilities and fast reactions required to be proficient, but I cannot stress enough how engaging it is when it's done right, Jorbtar has made a true gem in haven unintentionally, and I feel this game would be infinitely better with that added to the game.
Hope this clears it up somewhat, also please ask if there's any questions regarding what i Just described. Have a good one sirs!
-Zero
