Which is better? 1.8 or 1.9? Firstly, understand one thing,

MINECRAFT IS NOT A PVP GAME.
I said it! Minecraft is NOT a pvp game. Mojang didn't make MC so you and your buddies could hop onto PVP legacy or Hypixel duels. But it is still an important aspect of the game for obvious reasons.



Another important thing to understand before we dive into this is that due to Minecraft's grace period, you can only get a maximum of 2 hits in one second. In other words, whenever the player takes damage for the next 1/2 second you can't take damage. (Whenever an entity turns red from taking damage.) Note: You can still jitterclick a player holding a shield and the shield will take all the durability damage from the hits I believe. Any form of damage counts as a hit when I say "2 hits a second."


So why is CPS useful in 1.8 if you can still only get 2 hits a second? Simple. The first player to get a hit is basically the player who wins. The higher your cps, the higher your chance of getting the first hit. And yes, first hit usually means a combo follows. Since players being knocked back have a slightly lower reach than players running forward, its hard for a player getting combo-ed to land a hit on his/her combo-er. Though this remains in 1.9+, it is less so due to cooldowns and shields. Another reason high cps is useful is in situations where you are being attacked by crowds since you can hit one player after another relatively fast. In survival situations this is useful. But I think we'll come back to this later.

Another topic of interest is sword blocking compared to shield blocking. Although I think shields are pretty broken, they can be worked around under the right conditions. Shields should only block % of damage not all damage. I think tiers might be a good idea but at the same time, maybe not.

Also, just as a side note, tridents are not worth it for how hard they're to get for an unlucky person! They should do wayy more damage considering they're late game items! For combat they're not too great unless everyone is still in diamond unenchanted?

So which is better? 1.8 or 1.9+ combat? 1.8 is definitely more skill and ability based than 1.9+. In 1.8 you need to be able to strafe, have a high cps, etc, etc. which are relatively skill-based abilities. It doesn't take much strategic ability to click fast and strafing does take more strategy I guess but its mostly muscle memory. (Of course in certain situations strafing could be very strategic.) 1.9+ combat, on the other hand, is much more strategy-based. You will benefit from understanding axe cooldowns and shield cooldowns of your enemies. You might think on whether you fire your crossbow or not. Switch to sword or stick to axe? Totem or shield? Crossbow or bow? These are all choices and strategic moves (I think). And choices are fun. Another thing worth notice is that skill-based games can be really frustrating. So much so that they can cause many players to leave certain games.

But to understand which combat system is better, lets see what Mojang wanted with MC and why they switched to 1.9+ combat. Mojang created Minecraft as a survival game. NOT a pvp one as I mentioned earlier. ^^



Since Mojang is creating a SURVIVAL game I think it is easy to understand why Mojang switched over to 1.9+. It is not uncommon to hear that combo-ing a zombie to death is pretty dumb. Sure it's fun but it is not balanced at all. Just pull out your sword and combo any entity you see. In 1.9+ you have to time your hits. You can't just click click click on entities until they disappear. The regeneration system might be overpowered but try fighting a piglin brute with no cooldown then with a cooldown. Yeah, harder. In a good way. The harder a game is the more you have to think on it (usually). And thinking is fun (sometimes).

My last point on why 1.9+ is better than 1.8 is because 1.9+ IS BETTER THAN 1.8. I said it! Don't dox me please! It's all just a block game. I know people get deathly mad about this but I don't want to start an argument so please don't get mad. Lets just talk in the comments.