Combat is very visceral as far as bodies actually having weight. You can't strafe and skate around as if you're character is floating on air, if you're running straight it takes time to turn and if you leap... you're pretty much feel like a fully armored axe-wielding champion jumping 10 feet forward. There's collision detection, and a lot of different abilities. All-in-all the combat could really be amazing because it seems to have a very high learning curve, and once they flesh out the animations and netcode it should be a lot of fun.
There's tons of combo's and counter combos, and each archetype seems to have their role. Knights can pull people with a hook, taunt, block with right mouse. Mages can summon tornadoes, and cast AoE, and use a blink to stay alive. Champions swing a big ass axe around, and knock everyone on their ass.
I'm not going to lie...I died to the very first creep I encountered, as a champion, twice.
There were 1-6 abilities, each with combos that could go one of two ways and have another two finishes. So pressing 1 would fork you into going into two routes, each having two different finishes. Then there's right mouse, left mouse, C, etc. Quite a lot of abilities, but not a lot of keys.
Mobs dropped decent armor, and if you wiped an enemy group you got their gear. If you lost teammates, they were gone. It was single elimination. There was a fog that would creep up on you, ala hunger games, and force everyone to congregate in the middle castle or die.