Blocking is a game mechanic that effectively resists attacks in Minecraft. Early MC defense was achieved through the "sword".
In general, the mechanism and logic of this resistance is an important part of the entire combat process, and it also directly affects the game combat experience. So after iterating over countless versions of Minecraft, what is the current defense mechanism and the future direction of development?
01, early defense - sword blocking!
In September 2011, the Java Edition Beta 1.8-pre1 made an innovative combat update that added a "blocking" mechanism to the sword's system. Players can use their swords in Minecraft to block physical attacks from monsters such as zombies, and blocking will reduce the original damage by 50%, and at that time, the sword's block can also offset the fall damage.
This block's defense mechanism continued until version 1.8.9. A player uses a sword block in JE, which blocks 50% of the damage.
02, the change of defense mechanism - shield!
In 2015, under the auspices of Jeb, Minecraft decided to make major changes to the defense mechanics, eliminating the blocking for the sword and adding the "shield", a new tool for defense. At the same time, after the shield successfully completes a resistance and reduces the damage of an attack above 3, the shield will consume a durability.
However, the biggest advantage of the shield over the sword's block is that it can block 100% physical attack damage, including melee damage, arrows and other projectiles, tridents, pufferfish bee thorns, shadow shell missiles, coolies, fireballs, TNT explosions.
The reason you will find yourself injured by the above damage is because the angle of the damage has exceeded the defense angle of the shield. Minecraft's shield is currently protected against attacks from the entire 180° range in front of the player. But the feet, the top of the head, and the sides cannot be defended.
There are also many damage that the shield cannot resist: arrows that penetrate the enchanted, lasers from the guardians, dragon breath, potions, high-altitude fall damage, transverse impact damage, etc., natural void, /kill This damage is not mentioned here, and it is definitely not among the shield's defenses.
Because the shield's defensive power was too strong, Mojang thus set up a weakness of the shield, the axe. That is, under the attack of the axe, the shield will be directly disabled for 5 seconds. A shield restriction was also added in version 1.19, and the guardian Warden's attack would also cause the shield to fail for 5 seconds.
03, the direction of the future defense mechanism:
At present, Minecraft has released 10 versions of the site test snapshot, distributed in 1.14, 1.15, 1.16. The official promise is that future battle updates will not be released as a separate battle update theme, but will be added to the game after the entire battle change is fully established. So what are the changes in the "defense" mechanism in this mature combat system?
Change 1: Remove completely, or reduce the cooldown time of the shield's left and right hand swaps, making the battle rhythm faster;
Variation two: Stealth Shield will become optional. At present, 1.19 will add the enchantment of swift stealth, and it is not ruled out that the shield can also move quickly in the future.
Variation three: The protective range of the shield will be reduced from 180° to 100°. As we mentioned above, the current shield's defense range is almost the entire front of the player. If it is described as a circle, then the shield's defensive range is almost a semicircle.
The changes are: Defense damage is reduced, future melee damage will have a cap value, the last battle test is 100% resistance to projectiles, and melee damage can withstand up to 5 health damage.
Variation 5: Shield + Banner, which can be combined to defend Gauguin's shield;
Variation 6: The shield does not resist the "knockback" effect of damage;
Overall, in the future Minecraft defense mechanism changes, the shield as the main blocking tool its ability will be further weakened is the fact that "iron bars". But while weakening, is it possible to add the "block" of the sword back? In fact, from a certain point of view, the block of the sword and the defense of the shield are not contradictory, weakening the shield and adding another kind of sword block that can be used for combat seems quite reasonable