I've only got 6 years of combat roleplay experience, sadly. Skallagrim and co was around at that time as well, if memory serves me right. 

I hurled into the habit of checking for every exploitable opening available pretty early on (not to say I managed to actually do it), by repeatedly getting matched up against fucking water elementalists. Who would burst into water and reform every frickin time I hit em. Then there was the all-around "I can control every element there is, including light and darkness!" fucktards. Oh how I hated them and their "I bounce away because I have an air shield" and the "I summon a volcano and hurl fireballs at you!" - Terrible times. Much suffering. 

I think I fought Rilla once though. He burned down my forest or something. Kind of hazy. 

Fondest memory of a fight I have, though, was this one time I fought a wereleopard (or whatever), and she carried like.. frickin silver shurikens. Yes, SILVER shurikens. That she threw at my guy, who took it like a man, because.. you know, shurikens aren't really that deadly unless you go for the throat or something equally lethal, only to have it thrown back at her face, blinding her, followed by six posts of being impaled repedeatly by a wooden spike every time she tried to pounce, of which she kept regenerating. 'Twas good torture practise.