Minecraft: Sword vs Axe – Which is Better for Combat?

Today we are taking a look at the most popular melee weapons the sword and the axe and comparing the two and finding out which one is the superior weapon to use so here we are inside of minecraft at our own little arena i’ve upgraded it since the

Last time we were here looking at all the enchantments for different uh combat things so today we are taking a look just at swords and axes and i’ve honestly had this debate myself which one is better to use an ax or a sword well right off the bat you

Kind of think okay combat i’m going to be fighting creatures other players that sort of stuff definitely the sword that’s what it is made for but there are some crazy advantages to having an axe so first let’s just start off by looking at enchantments that you can get on each of

These then we’re going to take a look at some of the base attacks and then what happens when you combine the two so starting off this is a wooden axe and a wooden sword so what are the differences if you hover over it in your inventory

You can actually see a few stats about them and the wooden sword has an attack speed of 1.6 and an attack damage of four then the axe has an attack speed of 0.8 and a damage of seven so right off the bat you see a big difference we have

A dummy here with his health indicated above his uh name here or above his head under his name and so with the sword if you do a critical strike you will get six points of damage if you do a normal strike you will get that four points of

Damage so you can see the attack damage four it will always be that four assuming that that player or mob or creature is doesn’t have any type of enchantments potion effects or uh armor on so that is that attack damage of four then with the wooden axe

You can see that attack damage of seven so every time that i hit this player then their damage goes down their damage points and their health goes down seven every single time if you use a critical attack then that goes down 10 so you have 10 points of damage on a

Critical attack by the way if you don’t remember critical attack is when your player is falling and you attack at the same time so you have to get that jump up in the air and you can tell the difference because a normal attack will just be a normal

Attack but a critical attack will have particles coming off of the player so that was a normal attack critical attack oh my gosh and they died so you can see just off of the sort of the wooden versions of these weapons that the axe has a big advantage attack damage of

Seven versus four now we are talking about wooden items here so that should be taken into account but attack damage seven that’s pretty good that means that with two hits if you hit the critical which i didn’t just then then you could kill another player with an axe and this

Is also all before the combat update which we should get a new type of enchantment chopping so there may be even better things for the axe in the future now let’s take a look at enchantments you can get sharpness 5 on both weapons so that will change

This is just a wooden remember so that changes your critical from the and by the way it says right here attack damage seven so sharpness five is what you need in order to get the same attack damage as a unenchanted wooden axe and the sharpness five on that

Wooden axe is attack damage of ten so no critical that is the seven no critical on the axe that is the ten and then if we do a critical attack with the axe wha bam that’s crazy 13 and then the sword that is nine so

You can see that the damage is quite a lot moving on after sharpness then we’re going to talk about fire aspect and fire aspect is not available on a axe it’s just you can’t enchant even with commands you just cannot get that fire aspect so fire aspect will add

Seven points of damage over time assuming that the other player does not heal themselves it will give that seven points of damage so you can see that we’re at nine we our original attack was for four so that brought us to 13 health and then that missing seven is from the fire so

Fire aspect could be a big advantage to a sword if you really want that damage over time and it’s just not possible even with books to get that on an axe so you should keep that in mind when deciding between the two next is knockback knockback also cannot be

Enchanted onto an axe knockback all it does is knock back the player mob or creature to far far away this is knockback two so this is the most advanced knockback and you can see it pushes the player back about six blocks there around six blocks in order to get that

Crazy amount of knock back and this would be great if you had a big group of mobs that you were fighting or a large group of people you could keep them away from you and off of you so that they wouldn’t hit you next is smite and bane

Of arthropods now i’m fighting a player here and so those enchantments don’t actually apply but you can get both of those enchantments on both a sword and an axe so really the only two enchantments the axe is missing is fire aspect and knockback so if those are

Something that you need on your weapon then you’re gonna go and choose a sword now let’s talk about the base level of attack damage starting off with swords you have your wooden and your golden swords those both have an attack damage of four and what am i talking about i’m

Talking about when you hover over it it says attack damage and when you attack something that’s the amount of points damage points that it applies to that player or creature next is a stone sword and that has an attack damage of five then an iron sword

That has an attack damage of six and a diamond sword that has an attack damage of seven but what else has an attack damage of seven a wooden axe that’s right a wooden axe has the same attack damage as a diamond sword so you can really see if you’re playing early game

Why a wooden axe makes a ton of sense because it does the same amount of damage as a diamond sword an unenchanted diamond sword mind you but still a diamond sword also you get the same thing with the golden axe moving on to a more rare type of material you have stone

Iron and diamond that is all attack damage nine so it does pack a punch to have some of these more powerful items now you may notice that these are in two groups tech damage seven attack damage nine and if a stone axe does the same damage as a diamond axe why on

Earth would you spin to the diamonds to get a diamond axe well the reason is because a diamond axe is going to attack faster than a stone axe so inside of the axe is really its attack speed that matters so you can see that the attack speed on the stone axe is 0.8

Then it goes to 0.9 with iron and one with diamond the faster the attack speed the better and you can see over here on the sword the attack speed is 1.6 so it’s much faster than the diamond axe even and so really now that you’re up into the damage aspect

You’re really talking about speed because one the sword is gonna attack a lot faster and the axe is going to attack a lot slower when it comes to swords all of their attack speed is the same it’s 1.6 for every single sword it’s the same but then when it comes to

Axes and let me grab let me actually get rid of this sword and then grab a golden and a wooden axe so in between the lower level axes so wood and gold you got attack speed 0.8 on wood an attack damage of seven and then attack

Speed of one on gold attack damage of seven so with your attack damage of seven you go from point eight to one and then attack damage of nine you go from point eight to one as well with the iron axe in the middle there so your wooden

Axe and your stone axe are gonna attack at the same speed just a different damage and your golden axe and your diamond axe are going to attack at the same speed just different damage so you can sort of see how that works out now practically what does that mean so i’m

Going to attack with a wooden axe here and you can see i’m gonna try to attack as fast as i can so one two three and that’s about as fast as i go then with a sword we got one two three and you can see that it is much faster

And you can kind of see this if you just look up into the air and see that little reticle underneath your crosshairs counting up you can see just how slow a axe is this is the 0.8 axe and then how fast a wooden sword is so

What we should be looking at now now that we checked out the slowest axe let’s look at the fastest axe so let’s compare diamond and diamond so here is the slower of the two the axe so you can see that reticle sort of popping up boop boop

Boop and then with the sword one two three so you can see that it is much faster with the sword so really this matters only whatever your preference is so all that it matters is are you going to be someone who needs to attack faster and

That attacks the moment that you can so are you going to be spam clicking or are you going to be holding off on your attacks are you the type of person that can hold off oops sorry uh that can hold off from attacking and wait until your

Weapon is fully charged can you do that well then maybe you should be using a axe because if you can then it’s going to have a better damage so let’s also take a look at these diamond level when it comes to attacking a player we do

Know that the axe will do nine and that the sword will do seven so the up that makes sense but what about your critical hits so the sword does seven but on a critical hit it’ll do ten and the axe does nine but on a critical hit it will do thirteen okay

Now let’s take a look at some of the enchantments and because the only enchantment that really affects players and the only enchantment that both the axe and the sword can have together is sharpness both of these are both this sword and this axe are enchanted with sharpness 5. just by hovering over them

You can see that the sword is an attack damage of 10 and the axe is attack damage of 12. going back and forth between unenchanted and enchanted unenchanted it is seven with sharpness five it is ten unenchanted the axe is nine and then enchanted it is twelve so

Both of those add three extra damage points let’s do it without a critical hit obviously it’s going to be 10 then with a critical hit that will be 13. so remember that our diamond acts unenchanted with a critical hit was the same 13. so a critical hit with a enchanted sword

Is more than or is the same uh as the unenchanted axe but let’s look at the enchanted axe critical hit 16. that takes the damage i mean it’s just incredible i i’m just amazed 12 damage if you are not getting a critical hit and then

16 damage if you can manage to get that critical hit that’s pretty astounding now one thing to mention is their crafting recipes and that is because a sword will only take two diamond and then an axe that will take three diamond to craft so if you are in a

Situation where your diamonds matter possibly how many diamonds it takes to create one of these will will change what you decide to use so like if you’re in a uhc or pvp situation where you’re mining for your own resources it may be better to stick with a sword

Because that’s all you can craft or if you are in a situation where you are enchanting but at a lower level of enchanted where you’re only enchanting sharpness one or two and combining them in an anvil well you can basically get three swords for the

Price of two axes so it may be smarter for you to aim for swords over axes if you get more chances to enchant with those uh with that those diamonds and just for fun because you almost never fight a player that’s completely naked let’s add some armor onto the player so with sharpness

5 a critical hit with diamond armor that is four around four four to five because armor sometimes takes like uh uh an extra amount uh and sometimes sometimes it rounds in one direction or the other and then so four to five and then with the diamond axe with critical hits that’s six that’s

Another six and that’s another six so four to five versus six with diamond armor if we enchant with protection four so this is fully enchanted protection for diamond armor with the sharpness five diamond sword and a critical attack it looks like we’re getting one to two yeah that’s another one that was two

Two one so one to two points of damage remember it takes two points of damage to equal a whole heart so that’s between half a heart and a heart of damage and then with our sharpness five axe that is two that is two looks like we’re getting two

Every single time so with the sword you got oh wait that was one that was one so you have a better chance of getting a two point damage hit with the axe over the sword and finally before we close out of this axe versus sword debate

There is one more thing that the sword has that the axe does not and that is sweeping edge so if you have a large group of any type of enemy and you attack multiple enemies can get hit with the same attack well i guess not if i’m

Flying up here but you can see that i’m hitting multiple of these enemies but with an axe you’re only ever going to hit just one enemy at a time so this is an advantage or a disadvantage because whenever you’re playing in maybe a multiplayer pvp situation a friendly fire is turned on

And you can hurt your own teammates then a sword if you’re in close battle may be bad because you’re you may have some collateral damage whenever you attack the person you’re trying to attack and they’re nearby and you actually hit them for damage where it an axe you’re only

Ever gonna hit one of whatever you’re hitting it’s not gonna have any sweeping edge uh uh attack and so you’re only ever gonna hit that one thing that you are attacking so take that however you want on one hand you could attack a big group

Of play of things or players uh and some people may be playing on single player watching this video so that doesn’t matter at all you’re never gonna have another person in your world or you may be in a situation where you’re learning because you’re going to get into a pvp

Situation and you want to make sure that your own team members are safe so then you may want to choose an axe there you go hope you enjoyed the video and found something useful from it if you did please give this video a big ol thumbs up also make sure you subscribe for

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