What Happened To Minecraft’s New Combat Update?

Minecraft has had countless controversial updates over the past decade but one update has stood far above the rest with that being 1.9 the combat update which left the Minecraft PVP system completely destroyed but what if I told you that there was an update that could have entirely fixed this the

Key word being could have on February 29 2016 Mojang released a 1.9 combat update for Minecraft which made some of the most controversial changes to Minecraft PVP and gameplay in the game’s history players from all around the globe hated this update because of the combat changes as Mojang decided to add the

Worst feature ever to PVP a weapon cooldown before this update PVP was entirely based on how fast you could click and hit your opponent it was simple fun and players enjoyed the fast pace despite this Mojang felt the need to fix this which they tried doing by making a more realistic cooldown

Spamming still hadn’t disappeared at this time but a Spam swing did so much less damage than a fully charged swing so trying to use it quickly became the easiest way to get yourself killed in a fight despite this the combat update delivered so much more to Minecraft with

Changes focused on the end that included a revamped ender dragon fight and cities shulkers and yet another extremely controversial item the elytra however the new combat mechanics overshadowed these from the player’s perspective as many had already gotten used to fighting in the game before the update players

Found all of these changes to be hard to adapt to and most either retreated back to playing 1.8 on servers that still allowed it such as Hypixel or decided to quit the game altogether top level pvps had to throw away their entire skill set and develop a whole new one if they

Wanted to keep up with the modern game of course thousands if not millions of players complained about these changes but I guess Mojang found it better to ignore nearly their entire fan base as they made absolutely zero changes to the combat system well not until years later anyway the biggest change to Minecraft

That the first version of the combat update brought was the influence of players to start using axes in combat more often even though most players hated this update because of the new combat system they slowly started getting used to it some of the players weren’t so Cooperative however and they

Still exclusively played on Old servers where their favorite modes such as Bed Wars SkyWars and Duels have slowly been decreasing in popularity for quite some time now a few years later when players had already gotten used to the new combat system and fewer servers were running on older versions rumors about

The new combat update started at this point several theories had already been created surrounding the contents of the potential new update so when famous Minecraft developer Jeb tweeted about this update it went absolutely viral within just a few minutes for years players in the community had simply been

Dreaming about this update so when in 2019 Jeb tweeted that the combat system in Minecraft finally deserved a change by stating that Java and Bedrock should have the same combat system it’s safe to say the community was absolutely ecstatic and during his research into the 1.8 scene of Minecraft Jeb also

Stated that he found Jitter clicking to be funny I can’t even imagine what he would think if he saw drag clicking a few months later in July of 2019 Jeb posted a Reddit thread with a custom Java Edition snapshot that would allow players to test out and provide feedback

On a potential new combat system the main and best thing that this update would bring back was of course an ability to spam click while still dealing the full damage of a weapon not only that but you could also spam attack and charge at the exact same time that

Change itself would already make PVP much more interesting axes would also deal much more damage but have slightly less range than before and combine these two features overall still made the ax a very strong option but it wouldn’t be so interesting if that was the best and

Only way to win a fight so Mojang decided to spice things up by increasing the attack range while charging essentially what this means is that if someone’s spamming you you can hit them by charging at them during a Spam combo in order to break their combo chain at

This point you would think that the update couldn’t possibly get any better but mojing also completely changed up the trident’s functionality by increasing its range by an entire block up to four blocks this made the Trident a perfect weapon that would be used for breaking combo chain all in all it’s

Safe to say that this update would have made Minecraft have literally perfect all you would need to win every fight was a sword ax and a trident using the ax to get burst damage the sword for Combos and the Trident to break your opponent’s combo after the release of

The snapshot 1.8 players finally decided to test out another version using trident’s elytra’s Shields and all of the improved weapons and the response from these players was overwhelmingly positive players that had previously avoided the newer versions due to their inability to spam attack finally we’re

Able to do so on a newer version and for a second it seemed Mojang finally realized that they should listen to advice coming from the actual Community thousands of people at this time were excitedly commenting on Jeff’s Reddit thread suggesting more changes to the PVP system he should make such as

Stacking eggs and snowballs into a full stack or an enchantment for bows and tridents that turns them into homing missiles but of course as we know now these were never added you see the last snapshot for this update was uploaded over three years ago so what happened to

The official release of this new combat update and why haven’t we at least got a new snapshot well the latest snapshot was released shortly after the 1.16 update which of course was followed by the 1.17 Cliffs and caves update on April 14th of 2021 Mojang announced that

The 1.17 update will be split into two updates due to the amount of complexity of content as well as making sure that things weren’t too overwhelming for their developer team and while it was never confirmed it’s likely that Jeb dedicated most of his time towards fixing all of the issues to previous

Updates brought and decided to postpone production on his unofficial combat update it was at this time that the community decided to take things into their own hands which became even more apparent last year when a YouTuber by the name of mindmanner uploaded a short video of all of the PVP changes we could

Expect to see in the combat update but instead of playing on the official snapshot he was playing on a community made snapshot and his video instantly went viral everyone was super eager to test out this update and servers that allowed for this gameplay saw a massive

Spike in popularity so in my channel if you hit the Subscribe button him over the following weeks more YouTubers would post videos and continue to build a hype around the update which led to more players downloading the custom snapshot this community made mod United the whole Community once again with 1.8 players

Loving this mod because it allowed them to once again break their Mouse in each fight and spam attack their opponent and the 1.9 players felt like their PVP style had been integrated as well leaving nobody left to complain the snapshot continued to grow in popularity at this time with countless YouTubers

Sharing their experiences with the update and providing tutorials and explanations for the new mechanics to their fans of course this continued to build a ton of hype and many believe the changes would be released in the 1.19 update which as we know now ended up being completely untrue at this point it

Seemed inevitable that 1.20 would bring the changes to the combat system that everyone had been waiting literally years to see after the recent 1.20 trails and Tails update didn’t include any changes to PVP it now seems likely that we’ll see the improved combat system in a future update all the though

This has never really been confirmed the past few updates including the 1.20 update have had much more of a focus on storytelling and World building really trying to focus on enhancing gameplay for the general Community the problem here is that Minecraft is now filled with infinite new items materials and

Gameplay features yet the PVP hasn’t changed in over 10 full release updates and with only swords and axes serving as effective melee weapons ranged weapons limited to just a Bow crossbow and Trident and only having a single Shield type Minecraft relies a ton on its enchantments to add variety to its

Combat it’s no secret either that multiplayer Minecraft has lost a lot of its popularity in recent years as well with players losing interest in the game’s combat system especially for modes such as Bed Wars and SkyWars which used to be massively popular but now only average a few thousand players

Combined at this point though all we can do is hope for the best with this update being released as that’s the only way we’ll ever get to see a perfect PVP system in Minecraft but no matter which PVP version you’re on let let’s be honest you’re still going to lose anywhere