I've had two particular ideas for enchantments for a while: Crushing Edge for axes, and Detonation for crossbows.
Crushing edge is exclusive to axes, and grants additional damage on critical strikes (I'll call them jump crits from here). At level 1 the enchantment adds 2 damage, and at level 2 it adds 4 damage.
There are two reasons this enchantment would be exclusive to axes: First, axes don't have any unique combat advantages like swords do, and can't actually get knockback or looting to give it the utility that a sword has. Second, swords would not be able to make full use of crushing edge due to sweeping edge encouraging sweep attacks instead of jump crits.
Crushing edge would allow a sharpness 5 netherite axe to kill a normal mob in one hit. Without crushing edge, this axe would deal 18 damage on a crit, which is only enough to kill a spider. Crushing edge 1 could kill skeletons and creepers, and crushing edge 2 could kill zombies. A diamond axe would need crushing edge 2 to one-shot a normal mob, including zombies.
While the damage bonus from crushing edge is not necessarily huge, meeting these breakpoints would make axes a lot more practical as a combat option in PvE, while not being too strong in PvP.
Another thing to mention is that pairing smite 5 with crushing edge 2 would be an extremely effective way to kill the wither. The best way to kill the wither currently is a smite 5 sword, because the smite enchantment is a flat addition to existing damage, meaning that a smite axe will still only deal 2 more damage (9.75%) than a smite sword, while retaining the same recovery time.
Now for detonation! This enchantment would be maxed at level 1, and be mutually exclusive with piercing. With detonation, when a rocket fired from a crossbow comes within a 1.5 block radius of any mob, it detonates itself. My reasoning for this one is a little more in the weeds:
I see three viable ranged weapons in minecraft: a bow, a piercing crossbow with arrows, and a multishot crossbow with fireworks. A trident is technically a ranged weapon and is the only actual option in ocean monuments, but on land I see it as more of a utility tool disguised as a weapon, with riptide and channeling being the main uses. I want to cover the pros and cons of the main three weapons:
A power 5 bow is capable of one-shotting mobs, which in itself makes it incredible for high priority targets and satisfying to use. The drawbacks of a bow are its long charge time and inconsistency of getting one-shots while firing uphill.
A piercing crossbow has a much faster charge time with quick charge 3, has the ability to remain loaded after charging, can pierce targets, and has consistent 3 shot kills no matter the angle you fire at. The most important feature of a piercing crossbow to me is that you can pick up your spent arrows after they've been fired. Another fun use of crossbows that the community taught me is the ability to dual wield them, unloading both at once for two consecutive hits. That's a lot of pros, but crossbows do sport a lot less raw damage than bows do.
A multishot rocket crossbow has the best crowd clearing abilities, and has the same fast fire rate and loading ability of a piercing crossbow. A multishot rocket crossbow suffers from the least consistency in damage, as fireworks vary in damage when they explode. It also has inconsistent crowd clearing abilities, due to terrain not being perfectly flat. The damage of a seven-star firework is actually kind of underwhelming, at an average of 14.5 per rocket (a power 5 bow deals 25 damage on a crit, which happens at a full charge). The rockets used cannot be picked back up, and already are a lot more expensive than arrows. Fired rockets are the only ranged weapons that suffer from a limited range, unless more gunpowder is used in the rockets (at the cost of the seventh star). And finally, while arrows can be loaded into a crossbow in your offhand, rockets cannot, making it much more difficult to use the weapon with a looting sword in your main hand.
Detonation solves or at least eases two of the biggest problems I have with a rocket crossbow with one enchantment: Ammo use, and reliability. By allowing the rocket to hit enemies that it would have otherwise missed, it saves ammo (especially with the side rockets) and more consistently deals damage.
I'd love to hear any more ideas or tweaks about these!
I've had two particular ideas for enchantments for a while: Crushing Edge for axes, and Detonation for crossbows.
Crushing edge is exclusive to axes, and grants additional damage on critical strikes (I'll call them jump crits from here). At level 1 the enchantment adds 2 damage, and at level 2 it adds 4 damage.
There are two reasons this enchantment would be exclusive to axes: First, axes don't have any unique combat advantages like swords do, and can't actually get knockback or looting to give it the utility that a sword has. Second, swords would not be able to make full use of crushing edge due to sweeping edge encouraging sweep attacks instead of jump crits.
Crushing edge would allow a sharpness 5 netherite axe to kill a normal mob in one hit. Without crushing edge, this axe would deal 18 damage on a crit, which is only enough to kill a spider. Crushing edge 1 could kill skeletons and creepers, and crushing edge 2 could kill zombies. A diamond axe would need crushing edge 2 to one-shot a normal mob, including zombies.
While the damage bonus from crushing edge is not necessarily huge, meeting these breakpoints would make axes a lot more practical as a combat option in PvE, while not being too strong in PvP.
Another thing to mention is that pairing smite 5 with crushing edge 2 would be an extremely effective way to kill the wither. The best way to kill the wither currently is a smite 5 sword, because the smite enchantment is a flat addition to existing damage, meaning that a smite axe will still only deal 2 more damage (9.75%) than a smite sword, while retaining the same recovery time.
Now for detonation! This enchantment would be maxed at level 1, and be mutually exclusive with piercing. With detonation, when a rocket fired from a crossbow comes within a 1.5 block radius of any mob, it detonates itself. My reasoning for this one is a little more in the weeds:
I see three viable ranged weapons in minecraft: a bow, a piercing crossbow with arrows, and a multishot crossbow with fireworks. A trident is technically a ranged weapon and is the only actual option in ocean monuments, but on land I see it as more of a utility tool disguised as a weapon, with riptide and channeling being the main uses. I want to cover the pros and cons of the main three weapons:
A power 5 bow is capable of one-shotting mobs, which in itself makes it incredible for high priority targets and satisfying to use. The drawbacks of a bow are its long charge time and inconsistency of getting one-shots while firing uphill.
A piercing crossbow has a much faster charge time with quick charge 3, has the ability to remain loaded after charging, can pierce targets, and has consistent 3 shot kills no matter the angle you fire at. The most important feature of a piercing crossbow to me is that you can pick up your spent arrows after they've been fired. Another fun use of crossbows that the community taught me is the ability to dual wield them, unloading both at once for two consecutive hits. That's a lot of pros, but crossbows do sport a lot less raw damage than bows do.
A multishot rocket crossbow has the best crowd clearing abilities, and has the same fast fire rate and loading ability of a piercing crossbow. A multishot rocket crossbow suffers from the least consistency in damage, as fireworks vary in damage when they explode. It also has inconsistent crowd clearing abilities, due to terrain not being perfectly flat. The damage of a seven-star firework is actually kind of underwhelming, at an average of 14.5 per rocket (a power 5 bow deals 25 damage on a crit, which happens at a full charge). The rockets used cannot be picked back up, and already are a lot more expensive than arrows. Fired rockets are the only ranged weapons that suffer from a limited range, unless more gunpowder is used in the rockets (at the cost of the seventh star). And finally, while arrows can be loaded into a crossbow in your offhand, rockets cannot, making it much more difficult to use the weapon with a looting sword in your main hand.
Detonation solves or at least eases two of the biggest problems I have with a rocket crossbow with one enchantment: Ammo use, and reliability. By allowing the rocket to hit enemies that it would have otherwise missed, it saves ammo (especially with the side rockets) and more consistently deals damage.
I'd love to hear any more ideas or tweaks about these!
1. Crushing edge - it sounds like interesting concept, but I'm somewhat afraid of imbalances in PvP - it's already useful at very least as support shield-breaking weapon and can be used for trading hit-for-hit against swords.
On the second thought, even with improved critical damage sword still has an edge of sheer DPM, especially on Netherite tier, plus swords can make up for decreased alpha damage with fire aspect.
In the end, I'd say I support the concept, though personally I'd also like to see looting being introduced to axes as well - it doesn't make a difference in PvP but heavily favors swords in grinding mobs.
2. Detonation - What I'd like to point out is that rocket crossbow also has a different edge over bow - it can detonate around shields and ignores wither armor, so it doesn't scale 1v1 in terms of damage - just like piercing crossbow can penetrate shields and inflict status effects with tipped arrows even if damage compared to bow is poor. With proximity-based detonation, it would become even more capable of negating this kind of defense, so while I'd normally support it due to how prohibitively high cost of rocket ammunition makes it hardly viable in most situations I'd rather see this kind of upgrade implemented with carefulness.
Side note: Unlike in more consistent melee combat, whether or not bow scores a critical hit is matter of RNG - only about 25% of all maximum-pull arrows are critical.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Dwarf gamer found:
Buildings - square, not round
Materials - from rubble mound
Dark caves - lit 'n' cleaned out
Settlements - deep underground
Farmability - to grinder bound
Shields - made creepers but sound
Axes and crossbows - taking mobs out
I was blissfully unaware of the fact that rockets ignore wither armor lol, that is a super cool detail. I think after seeing this I was tunnel visioning too hard on PvE, and while I don't think crushing edge would cause too much of a problem (the damage values I listed could be altered), rockets definitely do have a high advantage over shield users. I wish there was a more clear cut way to make rocket crossbows better or at least more ammo efficient in PvE exclusively. I haven't tried shields in pvp much, or really much pvp at all, so I don't know if that's a viable option in combat or if maybe it too needs some revising.
I also didn't really think about the absence of looting on axes, there's rarely a point to using axes to kill mobs when you could do the same a bit slower with a sword and get way more loot, so I like that idea too
I've had two particular ideas for enchantments for a while: Crushing Edge for axes, and Detonation for crossbows.
Crushing edge is exclusive to axes, and grants additional damage on critical strikes (I'll call them jump crits from here). At level 1 the enchantment adds 2 damage, and at level 2 it adds 4 damage.
There are two reasons this enchantment would be exclusive to axes: First, axes don't have any unique combat advantages like swords do, and can't actually get knockback or looting to give it the utility that a sword has. Second, swords would not be able to make full use of crushing edge due to sweeping edge encouraging sweep attacks instead of jump crits.
Crushing edge would allow a sharpness 5 netherite axe to kill a normal mob in one hit. Without crushing edge, this axe would deal 18 damage on a crit, which is only enough to kill a spider. Crushing edge 1 could kill skeletons and creepers, and crushing edge 2 could kill zombies. A diamond axe would need crushing edge 2 to one-shot a normal mob, including zombies.
While the damage bonus from crushing edge is not necessarily huge, meeting these breakpoints would make axes a lot more practical as a combat option in PvE, while not being too strong in PvP.
Another thing to mention is that pairing smite 5 with crushing edge 2 would be an extremely effective way to kill the wither. The best way to kill the wither currently is a smite 5 sword, because the smite enchantment is a flat addition to existing damage, meaning that a smite axe will still only deal 2 more damage (9.75%) than a smite sword, while retaining the same recovery time.
Now for detonation! This enchantment would be maxed at level 1, and be mutually exclusive with piercing. With detonation, when a rocket fired from a crossbow comes within a 1.5 block radius of any mob, it detonates itself. My reasoning for this one is a little more in the weeds:
I see three viable ranged weapons in minecraft: a bow, a piercing crossbow with arrows, and a multishot crossbow with fireworks. A trident is technically a ranged weapon and is the only actual option in ocean monuments, but on land I see it as more of a utility tool disguised as a weapon, with riptide and channeling being the main uses. I want to cover the pros and cons of the main three weapons:
A power 5 bow is capable of one-shotting mobs, which in itself makes it incredible for high priority targets and satisfying to use. The drawbacks of a bow are its long charge time and inconsistency of getting one-shots while firing uphill.
A piercing crossbow has a much faster charge time with quick charge 3, has the ability to remain loaded after charging, can pierce targets, and has consistent 3 shot kills no matter the angle you fire at. The most important feature of a piercing crossbow to me is that you can pick up your spent arrows after they've been fired. Another fun use of crossbows that the community taught me is the ability to dual wield them, unloading both at once for two consecutive hits. That's a lot of pros, but crossbows do sport a lot less raw damage than bows do.
A multishot rocket crossbow has the best crowd clearing abilities, and has the same fast fire rate and loading ability of a piercing crossbow. A multishot rocket crossbow suffers from the least consistency in damage, as fireworks vary in damage when they explode. It also has inconsistent crowd clearing abilities, due to terrain not being perfectly flat. The damage of a seven-star firework is actually kind of underwhelming, at an average of 14.5 per rocket (a power 5 bow deals 25 damage on a crit, which happens at a full charge). The rockets used cannot be picked back up, and already are a lot more expensive than arrows. Fired rockets are the only ranged weapons that suffer from a limited range, unless more gunpowder is used in the rockets (at the cost of the seventh star). And finally, while arrows can be loaded into a crossbow in your offhand, rockets cannot, making it much more difficult to use the weapon with a looting sword in your main hand.
Detonation solves or at least eases two of the biggest problems I have with a rocket crossbow with one enchantment: Ammo use, and reliability. By allowing the rocket to hit enemies that it would have otherwise missed, it saves ammo (especially with the side rockets) and more consistently deals damage.
I'd love to hear any more ideas or tweaks about these!
--Northie
1. Crushing edge - it sounds like interesting concept, but I'm somewhat afraid of imbalances in PvP - it's already useful at very least as support shield-breaking weapon and can be used for trading hit-for-hit against swords.
On the second thought, even with improved critical damage sword still has an edge of sheer DPM, especially on Netherite tier, plus swords can make up for decreased alpha damage with fire aspect.
In the end, I'd say I support the concept, though personally I'd also like to see looting being introduced to axes as well - it doesn't make a difference in PvP but heavily favors swords in grinding mobs.
2. Detonation - What I'd like to point out is that rocket crossbow also has a different edge over bow - it can detonate around shields and ignores wither armor, so it doesn't scale 1v1 in terms of damage - just like piercing crossbow can penetrate shields and inflict status effects with tipped arrows even if damage compared to bow is poor. With proximity-based detonation, it would become even more capable of negating this kind of defense, so while I'd normally support it due to how prohibitively high cost of rocket ammunition makes it hardly viable in most situations I'd rather see this kind of upgrade implemented with carefulness.
Side note: Unlike in more consistent melee combat, whether or not bow scores a critical hit is matter of RNG - only about 25% of all maximum-pull arrows are critical.
Dwarf gamer found:
Buildings - square, not round
Materials - from rubble mound
Dark caves - lit 'n' cleaned out
Settlements - deep underground
Farmability - to grinder bound
Shields - made creepers but sound
Axes and crossbows - taking mobs out
I was blissfully unaware of the fact that rockets ignore wither armor lol, that is a super cool detail. I think after seeing this I was tunnel visioning too hard on PvE, and while I don't think crushing edge would cause too much of a problem (the damage values I listed could be altered), rockets definitely do have a high advantage over shield users. I wish there was a more clear cut way to make rocket crossbows better or at least more ammo efficient in PvE exclusively. I haven't tried shields in pvp much, or really much pvp at all, so I don't know if that's a viable option in combat or if maybe it too needs some revising.
I also didn't really think about the absence of looting on axes, there's rarely a point to using axes to kill mobs when you could do the same a bit slower with a sword and get way more loot, so I like that idea too
--Northie
This detail really did changed my vision, I should say.