Vanguard: Saga of Heroes E3 Previews

A couple of new previews for Sigil Games' Vanguard: Saga of Heroes have surfaced, both of which are based on firsthand time with the MMORPG at this year's E3. The first is at Killer Betties:
A really interesting feature of combat is perception. The perception box can tell you a lot about combat. If your skills are high enough, it will tell you who the monster is currently attacking and what attacks or spells it has queued. Perception is very important in combat. If you see that a monster has a certain spell queued, you will be able to interrupt the spell by using a special opener. One opener that you can use to cause interrupts is called Knee Breaker. If you successfully perceive an enemy monster completely, you may have a chance to learn their skills. This is one of the unique aspects of Vanguard that has not been widely used in other massively multiplayer online games. Learning skills from enemy monsters were part of successful offline roleplaying games such as the Final Fantasy franchise. There are three things you can do to affect an enemy's attack. You can reflect an attack back onto the caster so that it takes the damage or status effect. You can also deflect the attack so that the damage is not dealt to yourself. Lastly, you can dissipate the amount of damage that the attack deals to your character.

And the second is at Ten Ton Hammer:
Combat encounters have also been given an interesting twist. An encounter in a dungeon for instance, might go like this; The party enters the dungeon and begins taking on the denizens that lurk there. At some point they may trigger a "ring' event in which perhaps they need to clear several waves of baddies, or clear specific rooms. The "minion" mobs are not encounter locked in any way. Other players in the dungeon can take them out or even heal you or help you. Eventually you will spawn a "boss" mob which *is * encounter locked to your party. This stops would be griefers from letting you do all the work only to jump on the boss mob at the end.