How to Get Better at Minecraft PvP

Playing Minecraft in single-player is a unique experience; getting pro at the PvE combat can feel difficult but is somewhat quick for most players.

In contrast, Minecraft PvP asks for a considerably higher value of skill and combat knowledge since you’ll be coming up against other skilled players.

It’s therefore a necessity to understand the best duel techniques and to understand Minecraft’s fundamental moves.

As with most games, you’ll benefit from studying and applying the best combo of weapons, armors, and buffs to your character to get passive advantages. For active advantages, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with attack range, hit combos, criticals, etc.

If all of that sounds confusing, or if you just need to learn a little more about getting better at Minecraft PvP, don’t worry. I’m going to teach you how to improve at Minecraft PvP in this guide.

Minecraft’s Combat

Minecraft has various elements that serve as a factor in the combat performance of a player. The game works with passive and active advantages that hugely impact the fighting outcome between two players. Hence, Minecraft’s PVP’s success on most multiplayer servers.

Let’s divide Minecraft’s combat advantages into five categories:

• Armor
• Weapon
• Food
• Enchantments
• Decision

Each of the topics mentioned above holds specific critical points to a successful dueling performance, both against mobs or players. Weapon and armor types are intuitively important, but foods and enchantments grant passive “buffs”, which greatly matters.

Armor

To excel in Minecraft PVP, you must remember that if your opponent has a better armor set than you, they’ll be able to take more damage. Therefore, they’ll have to strike you less to defeat you.

Armor in Minecraft grants a defense bonus, which absorbs a portion of the damage you typically take from a hit; this works as a passive advantage in combat.

Make sure to study the game’s minerals and understand the ranking dynamic of armors; to illustrate this, let’s grade them from the most robust material to the lesser one.

• Netherite
• Diamond
• Iron
• Gold
• Leather

Before venturing into PVP, ensure you’re familiar with the server’s map and areas. Note which areas usually host highly-equipped players and which contain beginners and intermediaries. You can start by identifying the armor set players typically use in these areas.

If a player is engaging with you in combat, think strategically. For example, will this player overpower me based on their equipment? If so, it might be ideal to avoid a duel.

Engaging in a fair fight is an exciting activity. If the player holds similar equipment to yours, the outcome will mainly base itself on skill. Avoid being overpowered by a highly buffed player while you’re in a lower-tier armor set.

By having a leather armor set, limit yourself to novice duels.

Still, if you want to risk while having a low-tier defensive bonus, try engaging in combat using long-range weapons and ensuring no melee attack gets quickly to you.

The netherite and diamond armor sets are the most potent ones. Therefore, if you have them, you can engage in any fair PVP situation without worrying if the player will overpower you based on equipment.

Weapon

Minecraft has various weapons, covering all combat mechanics in the game. For instance, you might benefit from making melee attacks by using swords, axes, and tridents. Or, you can resort to long-range strikes with bows and crossbows. The best weapon in Minecraft depends from player to player.

In addition, some weapons divide themselves into different tiers.

For example, swords range in attack points, considering the materials you use to make them. So, a wooden sword has a lower combat value than a diamond one.

Close Combat

This is the ranking of swords in Minecraft, from the highest to the lowest quality, with the damage level:

• Netherite – 4
• Diamond – 3.5
• Iron – 3
• Stone – 2.5
• Gold – 2
• Wood – 2

In a PVP duel, your and the opponent’s weapon will be crucial to the combat’s outcome. Like we’ve seen with the armor set, a player can overpower you based on their sword type.

Based on stats alone, the netherite sword is the best weapon; they are limited to melee combat, though. So avoid getting into a close-combat duel with a player holding a netherite or diamond sword while you have a wooden or stone one.

But, since swords excel in melee, you might engage an overpowered player with a long-range alternative such as crossbows or bows. Remember, he can’t creep up on you, so confront them in an open space, where they’ll be easy to hit.

Without reaching you their swords are useless.

Apart from swords, Minecraft also has axes and tridents to complete the close-range arsenal. However, they tend to be inferior, especially axes.

So in a PVP match, avoid using axes instead of swords.

On the other hand, tridents are slightly inferior, mainly because of their low durability. However, they deal more damage than a diamond sword, which is neat on PVP. Also, you can throw tridents, making them a versatile weapon.

Yes, tridents are close and long-range weapons. Unfortunately, although they appear superior for their traits, they’re pretty weak and do not last too much on an extensive duel. Also, if you throw them, you need to get them back.

Nevertheless, with tridents, you can engage in any PVP encounter; just make sure to keep an eye on the item’s durability.

Now, if it’s raining for any chance, tridents can be quite an excellent primary since their damage enhances on water. Consequently, using them in underwater PVP fights is pretty optimal.

Every melee weapon has a critical strike, and differently from most games, it doesn’t happen by luck. To deliver a critical strike in Minecraft, you need to attack while jumping. Critical hits deals an additional 50% damage to the player or mob.

Ranged Combat

The long-range alternatives in Minecraft are pretty balanced and do not diverse in terms of tiers and material quality. This category only holds three types of weapons:

• Bows
• Crossbows
• Tridents

Bows are the most popular ranged weapon in Minecraft; they have a good distance coverage and reloading speed. Also, they’re pretty easy to craft, so you can resort to making them quickly to avoid being overpowered by a melee player.

The downside of this weapon type is that they need ammo, in this case, arrows. Without a substantial arrow quantity, you’ll risk running out of strikes with a bow or crossbow, making them useless. You can fix this problem in bows by acquiring the “Infinity” enchantment.

With crossbows, there is no solution; they’ll require you to walk with plenty of arrows.

Crossbows have a more significant damage per hit, quicker shot velocity, and further firing distance. However, they have a much slower reloading speed than bows, making them riskier in specific contexts.

When using either crossbows or bows, the player stands at a considerable advantage against melee players. The fact that you can continuously hit a player while not receiving any attack turns the odds significantly in your favor.

In Minecraft’s PVP, a good sharpshooter can excel hugely without the need for high-quality equipment. However, missing a single arrow can impact the combat’s outcome extensively.

Moreover, to ultimately succeed with ranged weapons in Minecraft, you must hope that the other player isn’t going to shoot arrows back at you, which isn’t always the case. In the case of a ranged PVP battle, ensure you know your limitations and capabilities.

Expect that the opponent’s aiming is better than yours and play strategically; choose advantage positions on top of buildings or mountains and do not stay in the same location. Move and shoot.

Favor the bow if you’re not as good at hitting a moving target since it reloads faster, allowing you to shoot more times. If you’re a good shooter, the crossbow might be more valuable to you for its projectile speed, distance coverage, and damage.

Tridents differ from other ranged weapons since they also perform well in melee attacks. In addition, they are retrievable, which means you have to get them back once you throw them; otherwise, you’ll lose the weapon.

Still, they cause significant damage and perform incredibly in the rain, becoming the best weapon for rainy/water scenarios.

The ideal is always to carry a melee high-tier sword, a trident, and a bow/crossbow if you plan to combat other players.

Food

Food in Minecraft has many vital roles; it can restore the player’s health bar and hunger level, even granting a few buffs.

Eating in Minecraft has become a PVP strategy because of the buffs you get by consuming specific food types in the game.

Using one of these types of food will grant you advantages in PVP combat:

• Enchanted Golden Apple
• Golden Apple
• Suspicious Stew

If you consume an Enchanted Golden Apple, your character will receive these perks:

• Regeneration: The character will keep gradually healing for the next 20 seconds.
• Absorption: This status pads the health bar with additional hearts, lasting for 2 minutes.
• Fire Resistance: Significantly increases the player’s resistance against fire for 5 minutes
• Resistance: Increases the player’s overall resistance for 5 minutes.

Looking at these stat changes, you can notice how fortunate it is to carry an enchanted apple to combat. Any player with these four buffs mentioned above will have a significant advantage in a PVP battle against a buff-free opponent, considering both have identical gear.

It’s like using steroids; you’ll passively enhance your attributes.

The regular golden apple is also a suitable consumable to carry around in a PVP server; it provides absorption for two minutes and regeneration for five seconds.

The suspicious stew is also highly valuable if you get its recipe correctly. For starters, this food has various crafting ways, each using different flowers to complete. Consequently, each recipe provides a specific suspicious stew with distinct effects.

For instance, depending on the flower you use in the recipe, you can get regeneration, jump boost, poison, wither, weakness, blindness, fire resistance, saturation, or night vision—all effects for up to 11 seconds.

Strategically speaking, the suspicious stew is the most valuable food for players with a specific idea in mind.

For example, the jump boost effect might assist in long-ranged combat since you’ll be able to get to higher ground quickly; combine it with night vision, and you’re trouble.

The downside of the stew is that it lasts for a relatively short time. Hence, you’ll need to prepare a good amount before walking around in a PVP server.

Kind-of-useful Food For PVP

The consumables mentioned above are best for PVP since they improve precious attributes for combat.

Still, there is alternative food you can use during a fight that do not strengthen any qualities.

For example, the chorus fruit has the skill of teleporting the player whenever they consume it. In a scenario where you’re being overpowered and don’t want to lose any XP or loot, eating one of these can save you from a dire fate.

Additionally, in some cases, your opponent might be pretty skillful with poisoned vials or arrows, and getting hit with those is a pain. In this case, keep a honey bottle in your inventory; this item removes any poison effect from your character.

Enchantments

The weapons and armors in Minecraft can receive attribute enhancements and even new perks. But, since we’re focusing on PVP, let’s only go through the combat-centered enchantments.

Armor Enchantments

You’ll need to ensure that the enchantments will enhance the armor’s capacity to provide a defensive bonus for the character by enchanting armors. In this case, opt for granting your leggings, boots, chest plate, and helmet with the Protection enchantment.

Additionally, the unbreaking enchantment is also a must for most armor pieces since it’ll avoid them breaking easily.

Weapon Enchantments

With weapons, you’ll want to provide the highest amount of damage possible. So, value enchantments that increase the weapon’s DPS.

The Sharpness and the Sweeping Edge enchantment significantly increase the weapon’s attack power for swords. So, always prioritize these two traits in any sword you use in PVP.

Now, you’ll need to opt for different enchantments for long-ranged weapons. In this category, the most valuable traits are capable of dealing more damage, causing a more significant knockback, and hitting more quickly.

Therefore, for bows opt to achieve the Power and Punch enchantment, granting more damage and knockback. Additionally, bows can benefit greatly from the Infinity perk, providing unlimited arrows.

For crossbows, focus on achieving the Quick Charge and Multishot enchantments, which provide a faster reloading speed and two additional projectiles. In a 1v1 fight, your opponent might jump around constantly after spotting your crossbow. Hence, the multishot.

Multishot will shoot two additional projectiles. So, if the other player shifts to the left, they might get hit with a side arrow.

All ranged weapons’ durability also suffers a reasonable penalty if you don’t enchant them with the Unbreaking spell. Therefore, I highly recommend pursuing this trait for such weapons.

Conclusion

The most valuable tool for a successful PVP run is your decision-making skills. Avoid unfair challenges whenever possible and always keep different tactics in mind.

Use different things in your favor. As aforementioned, a chorus fruit can save your run by teleporting you away from an unmatched fight.

Use flasks, vials, and other throwable enchantment items to either buff yourself or nerf other players. Some opponents might poison or diminish your attributes with enchanted flasks; if you also know how to use them, implement them in your arsenal.