Button smashing isn't how you pvp, try it and you'll still lose
~ @legendcaleb
Firstly, let's settle something as a community of Minecraft players. I'm going to attempt to be as empirical about this as I possibly can.
In Minecraft, you'll notice when a living entity (players or mobs) take damage, they will go through a "damage phase," where their character model will flash red for an instant. This is known as the invulnerability phase, during which as the name implies, the living entity cannot receive any damage of the same type. Therefore, after I punch a pig, that pig cannot take any more damage from my punches until it completes its invulnerability phase. However, if I lit the pig on fire and started punching it, both effects stack, meaning fire damage will proceed along with my punches.
Now onto what non-pvpers egotiscally call "button smashing." This practice is known as jitter clicking and is solely useful in PvP because it allows you to attack another living entity almost instantly after its invulnerability phase is completed. It does not allow more actual hits to be counted in a given time frame. Clicking twice as fast does not correlate to twice as many hits, provided all of your hits land.
An example of this (sorry bud) is xtJunior's click speed versus my click speed. @xtJunior gets beyond 18 clicks per second with his jitter click, whereas I only get a modest 10 clicks per second with my jitter click. According to most non-pvper logic, I should get upright shrekt, however, it's always xt that gets quick-dropped. Why though?
I think the most crucial aspect of becoming good at Minecraft PvP is a firm understanding of how strafing works. A solid strafing foundation is comprised of both avoiding your opponent's hits, tricking them into attacking somewhere where you're not, and then hitting them out of your range at the right distance where you can hit them (if you're skilled) and they can't really do anything besides take damage or attempt to run away from you. This is known as a combo and is the heart and soul of competitive 1.8 PvP and below.
Due to the tool use timer implemented in 1.9, combos in this sense will no longer be a reality.
Now, onto my hypotheses about 1.9 PvP.
First let's assume that two players are in combat on 1.9 with only swords, but no shield and no speed buff. Assuming a player can hit the side of a barn with great success, this would mean that players will virtually always land their hits on each other, meaning that whoever gets the "ending" hit first, wins. The victor then will get cleaned up by some other noob with full health. Strafing only goes so far here as you're too slow to avoid hits consistently. Now, adding a speed buff, strafing will become more effective, although it will be annoying as players have to basically run away from players while their tool user timer expires. But let us remember, we're on Meep, so no one but the pros will be using speed.
With shields however, I foresee very little use for strafing. With a shield, players can walk in, literally straight in front of their opponent and block, then hit. Sound familiar? Block and hit. We're basically bringing back block-hitting, just in a way that prevents players from strafing as a viable alternative. Again, adding a speed buff in, strafing will become more effective but still will be annoying as mentioned earlier.
In essence, here are the following changes from 1.8 to 1.9 PvP:
- Jitter clicking is now obsolete
- Combos are now obsolete
- Strafing becomes a discombobulated shadow of its former incarnation
- (If you were a scrubby block-hitter, guess what, that's gone too)
What I see on that list there is the quintessential holy trinity of competitive PvP from 1.7 and 1.8. Non-pvpers, do you see why competitive pvpers are less than satisfied with this proposed update?
Now, here's what I propose for Meep. Meep as I have known it for three years is a Towny server. Given cool cosmetic ideas like capes that fly people around to fancy arrows that allow you to track mobs, Meep should update. It was never a PvP server at heart any way (It's becoming more of a mini-games server, but that's a different topic). What this means though, is that "pros" will adapt and still be better than your average noob, but for a while, there will be little difference between the two.
Personally, this means I won't frequent Meep as much (despite already not coming on often) as it was a fun place to go PvP and not have to try at all to win. It was "relaxing PvP" for me. Competitive PvP servers will remain on 1.8 with 1.7 compatibility, or they'll find a way to remove the tool use timer cooldown entirely. This is where I and other competitive pvpers will spend our time.
If Mojang were to ask me what should be added from the perspective of a competitive pvper, I'd propose things like:
- Shields (Good job on this one Mojang, this was actually a good idea.)
- Grappling hooks
- Boomerangs (Yes, I dig the Legend of Zelda, deal with it. This would allow players to collect dropped entities and perhaps knockback living entities when hit.)
- Static knockback (This was part of 1.7 PvP, players got pushed back two blocks from a normal hit and five blocks from a sprinting hit.)
- Aimable magic (Make it so players need actually have skill to attack players with spells.)
I could think of more things, but I really should be spending my time studying instead of writing this thesis-long post. Take care.
