Mojang has been quietly tweaking Minecraft's combat for a while: unless you're a power user of the game's forums or reddit you probably don't even know they're happening. The latest, version six, is now available to install manually for the Java version (check this thread) and it's mostly a series of compensations for the previous version of the test.
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For example: six months ago Mojang tested 'coyote time' in combat. This is basically a small auto-aim that was designed to help make combat against smaller enemies, like bats and rabbits, less frustrating. But the implementation proved unpopular— especially for players focused on PvP—so the new version of the test has removed it entirely.
Instead of 'coyote time' smaller creatures will now have "bounding boxes" that are slightly larger than usual, so you're not maniacally swinging for too long to little avail.
There are a number of other changes, mostly stat changes: natural healing is faster by a second, and being attacked will interrupt eating.
Here are the full changes, via reddit:
Aim assist:
- Removed "Coyote Time"
- Entities with bounding boxes that are smaller than 0.9 of a block are inflated (for targeting purposes) to be 0.9 of a block (rabbits, bats, etc)
- Swords always have sweeping attacks again, axes have it with the Sweeping enchantment
- Missing now only puts a 4 tick delay until the next attack regardless of weapon.
- Increased base reach to 3 (was 2.5) and removed bonus reach for delayed attacks
Changes to shields:
- Shields now only protect up to 5 damage for melee attacks (still 100% against projectiles)
- Shields recover faster after an attack
Changes to axes:
- Renamed Chopping to Cleaving
- Removed other weapon enchantments from the enchanting table. The axes simply had too many possible enchantments. It also feels a little bit fitting with a rare Cleaving enchantment than a common Sharpness enchantment for axes
Changes to bows / projectiles:
- Player momentum is added to thrown projectiles, but only in the direction you are aiming
- Bow and arrow accuracy now slowly decreases the longer you pull the bow
Changes to food and hunger:
- Reverted eating time to 32 ticks
- Eating is now interrupted if something hits you
- Natural healing is even faster (2 seconds, was 3 seconds)
- Natural healing drains food 50% slower
- By popular request - Reintroduced the rule that sprinting requires more than 6 points of food
Other changes:
- Removed the attack indicator completely since it is no longer used by any systems
- Fixed knockback calculation
- Fixed damage value on items being off-by-one client-side
- Fixed bug that caused players to be unable to attack/interract after respawning
- Nerfed Sweeping Edge enchantment to 25/33/37.5 percent (was 50/66/75%)