PvP Science

Combat Science
Author: LoCr Translator: Zivkovic Writer: iDexy

In this part of the PvP Science guide we mostly describe some uncommon knowledge about combat in general which can help you to improve in being a better PvPer and give you advantages in some situations

Charging System
The minecraft melee system works with a charging system for weapons. That means every weapon has a cooldown which is determined by the attack speed. The attackspeed from swords which is 1.6 means that the weapon charges 1.6 times in a second so it takes 0.625 seconds to charge the sword fully. You can hit before a weapon is fully charged but you will deal less damage. The system behind this is a bit complex and also varies if you have the sharpness enchantment or not. To give you an idea of how much damage your weapon does, here are some examples:

.Damage percentages according to weapon charge per hit [options="header"]
 * Charge |Damage
 * 0 (Spam)|20%
 * 25%    |27%
 * 50%    |40%
 * 75%    |66%
 * 90%    |90%
 * 100%   |100%
 * 100%   |100%

If you have sharpness on the weapon the sharpness bonus will be linear.

Hit Types
You can perform 5 different hits in minecraft. Its important to know how to use them and their specific advantages. For each hit except the pick hit you need a charge of at least 84.8%. Hits which aren't fully loaded deal less damage, as explained in hit-system

Normal Hit
The normal hit deals weapon damage and normal knockback (1.989 blocks). You can do them while hitting when standing or walking or as a second hit while sprinting after your sprinthit is gone with any item except swords. To do them with swords you need to hit while jumping up

Sweep Hit
The sweephit is a special sword attack. You can do them with the sword like you do normal hits with other weapons. Its special ability is to knock back multiple opponents in front of the player. The player you hit will take weapon damage and normal knockback (1.989 blocks) while the other targets will take 2.98 blocks knockback and 1 hp damage. The damage of the sweephit to the other targets can be increased with the enchantment "sweeping edge"

Sprint Hit
The sprinthit can be only performed while sprinting and only the first hit while sprinting will be a sprinthit. It deals weapon damage and extra knockback (3.615 blocks). It can be used for combos and to control your opponent with them

Critical Hit
The critical hit deals 1.5 x weapon damage and does normal knockback (1.989 blocks). You can do them while falling when standing or walking or while falling as a second hit while sprinting after your sprinthit is gone. Because of the extra damage, they are mainly used in PvP

Pick Hit
The pick hit is a hit which isn't fully charged 0-84.7%. It deals less damage (spammed it deals 20% damage) and normal knockback (1.989 blocks). They can be used to control opponents after a missed a hit so they don't combo you.

link:assets/vid/hit_types.mkv[Heres a video with all the hit types and their sounds], pay attention to the sounds! For more information about techniques and how to use the hits, take a look at the sword guide, where all these things are covered offensive-explanations/defensive-explanation/basic-knowledge

Critical Hits
A critical hit is a melee attack and one of the 5 hit types, it has the ability to do +50% more weapon damage. When doing them critical hit particles appear around the target. We will take a look about how the calculation works and how different kits and scenarios change the crit damage

The requirements for a melee critical hit are:

- A player must be falling - A player must not be on the ground - A player must not be on a ladder or any type of vine - A player must not be affected by blindness - A player must not be affected by Slow Falling - A player must not be riding an entity - A cooldown charge of at least 84.8% or higher is needed

+50% isn't always +50%
For unarmoured scenarios the +50% stays, but due to the 1.9+ armour system, the bonus damage of critical hits ignores some armour points so it rises to around +70%. For more about this, take a look at 3-armour-decisions, it is explained better there

IMPORTANT: The sharpness enchantment doesn't get multiplied with the critical bonus. So the higher the sharpness damage gets, the lower the bonus damage of a critical hit is

Critical hits in limited situations
.Criticals in water You can only do them in Water when swimming on the surface. To do them you need a good timing. When moving down after you swam up, release your w key and hit to perform a crit. link:assets/vid/criticals_in_water.mp4[Video example]

.Criticals in caves/mines When you have less space the jump will be stopped by blocks so the timespan when falling is pretty small. There are two ways of doing them in mines, you can sneak which makes your hitbox shorter so you have more time while falling but with the cost of mobility. The harder method is to jump normally, your timespan is pretty short. It will give you more mobility but it needs some practice. Make sure you release your w key to stop your sprint for the 2nd method. link:assets/vid/criticals_underground.mp4[Video example]

Sharpness
Sharpness is an enchantment for weapons to increase their damage. Level 1 adds 1 hp damage, each following level adds another 0.5 hp (0.25 heart) damage on your weapon. So a maximum enchanted sword with sharpness 5 deals +3 hp (1.5 hearts) damage

What is special about it is that it gets added after the bonus damage of critical hits. That means the +3 hp (1.5 hearts) damage from sharpness 5 doesn't get multiplied with the critical hit bonus.

Calculation of a critical hit with sharpness:

.... w = damage of the weapon s = sharpness damage

Incoming damage=(w * 1.5) + s ....

IMPORTANT: The strength effect bonus is counted as weapon damage. That means too that strength level 1 is stronger than sharpness 5 even when both deal +3 hp (1.5 hearts) damage because it gets multiplied with the critical hit bonus.

.Sharpness 1 Iron Sword and unenchanted Diamond Sword

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==================== A sharp 1 iron sword is weaker than a diamond sword, even though both do the same normal damage (7 hp (3.5 hearts))

.Damage of iron sword sharpness .... Normal hit: 7 hp (3.5 hearts) Critical hit: 10 hp (5 hearts) .... .Damage of diamond sword unenchanted .... Normal hit: 7 hp (3.5 hearts) Critical hit: 10.5 hp (5.25 hearts) ....

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====================

So in game modes where you have different swords with enchants and need to decide, when they both do the same damage, _always choose the unenchanted sword_

Special cases
There are cases where one sword does higher critical hit damage and the other sword does higher normal hit damage

For example when you have a sharpness 4 wood sword (6.5 hp (3.25 hearts) damage) and an iron sword (6 damage) in your inventory, the iron sword does 9 hp (4.5 hearts) critical hit damage and the wood sword does 8.5 hp (4.25 hearts) critical hit damage

So in this case the unenchanted iron sword is better for critical hits while the wood sword deals more normal hit damage. If youre fast you can switch between them in those situations, or take the sword which fits your playstyle

.Sharpness and the weakness effect

Another special ability of sharpness is that it isn't affected by the weakness effect

So even when the weakness is higher than your weapon damage, you can still deal damage with the sharpness, no matter how strong the weakness effect is

This ability leads to interesting scenarios. When a player has the weakness effect, their critical hit bonus is reduced because less weapon damage gets multiplied with it

For example a diamond sword sharpness 5 deals 10 hp (5 hearts) damage and weakness level 1 reduces it -4 which leads to a normal hit damage of 6 hp (3 hearts)

Because of the critical hit calculation explained above, only the remaining 3 hp (1.5 hearts) damage from the weapon gets multiplied by 1.5

So we have 4.5 hp (2.25 hearts) + the 3 hp (1.5 hearts) bonus damage from sharpness which leads to a final damage value of 7.5 hp (3.75 hearts)

So a normal hit does 6 hp and a critical hit does 7.5 hp (3.75 hearts) damage which is 25% more. Without sharpness and weakness it would be +50%, which means weakness reduces the critical hit damage when you use weapons which are enchanted with sharpness

Summary
Fights with sharpness have less critical hit damage and fights with sharpness and weakness combined have even less crit damage. So you can use that to your advantage in those scenarios if you prefer combos over critical hits. If you want to troll people in kit 1vs1, you can create for example a kit with a wood sword sharpness 5 and weakness level 1. In this kit critical hits don't deal extra damage at all because the weakness removes the 4 attack points of the wood sword and only sharpness gets calculated(but sharpness isn't multiplied for crits). So a normal hit does 3 hp (1.5 hearts) damage while a critical hit also deals 3 hp (1.5 hearts) damage. link:assets/vid/sharpness_weakness.mp4[Video example]

Melee Range
When it comes to the melee range you will hear a lot of stuff, things like "it varies depending on which direction you move" but that is false. The programmed range is constant and doesn't change (at least in vanilla). The reasons why the range can look different has to do with the data transfer between clients and with the tick system

So how far is the range?
The vanilla range is 3 blocks from your head to opponents head. But its not that easy, because this number measures the distance which starts in the center of your own hitbox and ends at the edge of the opponents hit box. That means if we want to know the maximum distance between both hit boxes, we need to do 3 blocks minus a half hit box. A players hit box is 0.6 blocks long so we must do 3 blocks - 0.3 blocks and we get 2.7 blocks which is the real distance between your hitbox and the opponents hitbox. That range is what you will see in fights

Differences
The range to the opponents chest is 2.967 blocks and a bit less compared to when you aim at the head. The reason for this is that your range starts at your head and is a straight line so when you change your angle you cover less distance. That's also the reason why you have a range advantage with low ground, because the distance from the player on the ground to the player who is above is less to the opponents hitbox compared to the player who is looking down

link:assets/img/melee_range.png[Hitboxes with labeled ranges]

Knockback
Check out S10_DATA for some raw data about the knockback of different weapons and enchantments

Shield durability
The shield has 336 durability points. When the shield blocks an attack of 4 hp (2 hearts) or stronger, it takes durability damage equal to the strength of the attack rounded up. That means for every incoming hp damage one durability point is taken away from the shield. Because of that the shield can be broken in a relatively short amount of time. Especially in long fights with limited resources like in kit 1vs1 scenarios it can be a strategy to break the shield if they only have one

.Unbreaking enchantment on the shield [options="header"]
 * Unbreaking level|Chance to lose a durability point
 * 1|1/2 (25%)
 * 2|1/3 (33.3%)
 * 3|1/4 (25%)
 * 3|1/4 (25%)

When a shield has unbreaking they are really hard to break, so the strategy mentioned above doesn't work

If you are interested in techniques which contain shields, take a look at the UHC guide

link:assets/vid/shield_durability.mp4[Video example]

Game difficulty
The game difficulty has an influence on PvP. Item drop chances change, spawning and strength of mobs is changed, and a lot of other stuff. If we focus on PvP, these are the major influences:

.Starvation .... Peaceful: no starvation Easy: starvation up to 10 hp (5 hearts) Normal: starvation up to 1 hp (0.5 hearts) Hard: starvation until death ....

Explosions
The explosion damage of all explosion types like crystals, respawn anchors, creepers, tnt, etc.. changes with the difficulty.

Maximum damage values when you get hit at the perfect angle
.Crystal .... Peaceful: 0 hp / 0 full hearts Easy: 43.5 hp/ 21.75 full hearts Normal: 85 hp / 42.5 full hearts Hard: 127.5 hp / 63.75 full hearts ....

.Respawn anchor and bed .... Peaceful: 0 hp / 0 full hearts Easy: 33.5 hp/ 16.75 full hearts Normal: 65 hp / 32.5 full hearts Hard: 97.5 hp / 48.75 full hearts ....

The time in Minecraft: Ticks
_This part is in maintenance and it gets outsourced to a new page about ping._

Projectile inertia
Since version 1.9 the movement of a player influences projectiles you can shoot or throw like arrows, potions, and pearls. This means the player's speed can influence their direction and make them move long or short distances

IMPORTANT: When an opponent deals knockback this also influences your movement which can lead to weird flight curves of the thing you threw. To avoid this keep control of your movement and try to throw when you're not being knocked back or change the angle to counteract your movement

So when you want to throw an item to its maximum range, look at an angle of 45 degrees, jump, and throw it shortly before you reach the highest point of the jump to give a maximum speed boost to it. Combine it with a short forward sprint to gain even more distance

link:assets/vid/projectile_inertia-potion.mp4[Example with a splash potion] link:assets/vid/projectile_inertia-pearl.mp4[Example with an ender pearl]

The Red Phase AKA i-frames
The red phase is what happens when a player takes damage, the skin turns red for 0.5 seconds (link:assets/vid/i-frames.mp4[video example]). When this happens, three things take place:

1. As long as you are in the red phase you are invincible, which means you can't take damage in this period (0.5 seconds) if the new damage source does the same or less damage than what caused the red phase

2. The damage can be updated. This means that if while in the red phase you are hit with a damage source higher than the one that caused the red phase, the damage you take will be replaced with the new higher damage

3. The knockback will be always calculated with the hit that started the red phase. This means as long as you are in the red phase you can't take knockback from any other sources except explosions

.Diamond axe/sword

=
======== After a player takes 7 hp (3.5 hearts) damage (diamond sword normal hit) he is in the red phase. A second player attacks him while he still is in the red phase with a diamond axe which does 9 hp (4.5 hearts) damage. the health bar which at the moment shows 13 hp (6.5 hearts) after the diamond sword hit gets updated to 11 hp (5.5 hearts) because the axe damage replaced the sword damage, so the axe hit technically does 2 hp (1 heart) damage in this case

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Some interesting things can occur ingame resulting from these 3 rules:

Knockback resistance due to fire or poison damage
We all know that when burning or poisoned you sometimes don't take knockback. That's because the fire/poison is what activates the redphase. So when a hit gets detected after you took fire/poison damage, the knockback will be calculated with the fire/poison damage, which is 0. After that the damage gets updated by the hit, but it deals no knockback because its the second damage source and not the one that activated the red phase.

Quick dropping in Crystal PvP
This describes a phenomenon where a player which has a totem gets killed by exploding crystals in under 0.5 seconds (before the red phase ends)

It happens because the first exploding crystal starts the red phase which activates the totem, and then a second crystal explodes but this time the crystal does more damage because its closer to the player so the damage gets updated to the new damage source. When the new damage source leads to over 6 hp damage (3 full hearts) to remove the absorption and health boost from the totem, the player dies

However, when the second damage source isn't higher than the first one, the red phase will protect you because the second damage source doesn't get counted