Combat Improved

Improved Combat v1.2.0: The Parry Ages.

As of this update, the mod now stores all its config files within a improved_combat folder!

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NEW IN THIS UPDATE

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PARRY WINDOW

Shields have a 0.3 second parry window, starting the moment the shield is raised, during which:

1. Parried melee attackers (mobs and players) will be stunned. Stunned mobs are frozen in place, can't attack and take no knockback (see STUN below).

2. Parrying melee attacks that would've disabled the shield won't do it.

3. Parried projectiles will be thrown back at their owners.

4. Parried mob explosions will stun all nearby mobs affected by the explosion radius. Won't destroy the terrain or items on the ground.

5. Attacks a shield can't normally block (Warden sonic boom, Evoker fangs, Guardian and Elder Guardian beams) can be parried too.

6. Parrying any attack will deny 100% of its damage regardless of the shield's strength attribute.

Stunned players can't parry, and hits from the Shield Charge ability (described below) can't be parried.

Shield protection arc: outside the parry window it is 148 degrees, narrower than vanilla. During the parry window it is more forgiving: 180 for melee (vanilla), 200 for projectiles, 240 for explosions.

STUN:

Stunned mobs are frozen in place: they can't move or attack, and they take no knockback (spears still knock them back). You can tell how much stun time is left by the stun particles above the mob's head, 1 particle per second.

Stun time is stackable: new stuns are added to the remaining time. But mobs adapt: every time the same ability stuns a mob again, it is less effective by: 50%, then 0%. At 0% the mob is slowed by 50% instead, for the time it would've been stunned. Parries, Shield Throw and Shield Charge adapt separately from each other, and the counters reset when the stun ends.

If a player gets stunned (PVP):

• All items on the hotbar (except the offhand's) get a gray cooldown.

• Movement speed gets reduced by 80%, easing back to 25% by the end.

• Attack speed gets reduced by 80%, easing back to 25% by the end.

• They can't parry, throw or charge, and only the offhand shield can block.

• An after image will show up, messing with your vision. It gets stronger after being hit by a Shield Charge:

Shield stamina based abilities/enchantments:

STAMINA SYSTEM:

Loyalty, Shield Charge, Vigilant and Assimilation (all described below) each add one stamina bar to the shield (up to 4). 100 points each bar. Stamina belongs to the shield itself. Stamina gets built up by engaging in the parry and stun mechanics:

• 5 points for hitting a stunned mob.

• 25 points for parrying a melee attack.

• 25 points for parrying a projectile.

• 25 points for parrying an unblockable mob attack (sonic boom, fangs...).

• 25 points for killing a stunned mob (5 if the mob has 10 hp or less).

• 25 extra points for parrying an attack that would've disabled the shield (50 in total).

• 25 points for parrying a mob's explosion.

Parrying a melee attack lengthens the stun by 0.5 seconds per filled stamina bar, up to +2 seconds with 4 bars. Parrying a mob explosion does the same on top of its 2 second base stun (melee base stun is 1 second).

SHIELD ABILITIES:

1. Loyalty: Can now be applied to shields. If so, will grant +1 stamina bar. Press the shield throw button (default R) to throw the shield. It deals no damage, but stuns the first mob it hits for 2 seconds, consuming 50 stamina points and putting the ability on cooldown (10 seconds, which vanishes after performing a parry). Hold the button to charge it up to 3 levels: 1 second for level 2, 2 seconds for level 3. Each level costs 50 more stamina, lets the shield hit 1 more mob (on the way out or the way back) and stuns for 1 more second.

2. Shield Charge: New enchantment. Will grant +1 stamina bar. While blocking (and within 3 blocks of the ground), press the shield charge button (default shift) to lock onto the target you're looking at or the closest to the crosshair (24 blocks; passive animals can't be targeted by default, players can). Release the button to rocket into them, dealing damage and stunning them, consuming 1 stamina BAR per level and putting the ability on cooldown (10 seconds, which vanishes after performing a parry). It also stuns and deals damage in an AOE, but it affects the target the most on a direct hit. Damage is a % of the targeted mob's max health plus a flat bonus, capped at 50. You can hold the button to charge the ability to 3 levels: 1 second for level 2, 2 seconds for level 3. Level 2 costs 2 bars and level 3 costs 3 bars. The damage, stun time and AOE all scale with the level. At level 2 and 3 the player is projectile immune during the dash and all projectiles that touch the player are reflected back at their owners. Players hit while blocking get their shield disabled for 5 seconds.

NEW SHIELD ENCHANTMENTS (all four are treasure enchantments):

1. Vigilant: Will grant +1 stamina bar. +15% chance of enemy projectiles near you to glow. Glowing projectiles fired by mobs are slowed as they close in on you. Parrying a glowing projectile reflects it at its owner at double speed, homing in on them, and stuns them when it lands: 2 seconds, +1 second per filled stamina bar.

2. Assimilation (Max level: 3): Will grant +1 stamina bar. +15% chance of enemy projectiles to glow (adds up with Vigilant). Parry a mob's special attack to steal it, then use it against enemies every time you parry a glowing projectile. 10 abilities can be stolen (Warden sonic boom, Evoker fangs, Ender Dragon fireballs, Wither skulls, Ghast fireballs, hostile arrows, Blaze fireballs, Guardian laser, Shulker bullets, Vexes), but a shield holds only one.

3. Steadfast: While held, the shield slowly regains stamina on its own (1 bar per 60 seconds), up to the next stamina bar. Parrying speeds up the regeneration by up to 100% for 5 seconds. Gives no bar itself.

4. Counter (Max level: 3): works like thorns, but only while blocking. Parrying melee attacks instead deals 4% / 8% / 12% of the attacker's max health (up to 50).

How to obtain them: 1. Killing stunned mobs while holding a shield enchanted with either Loyalty or Shield Charge. 2. Killing mobs with Shield Charge. Each has a 5% chance to drop an enchanted book with one of the four at a random level (Vigilant and Steadfast are level 1 only). A shield will not drop an enchantment it already has maxed out, except Assimilation.

TIERED SHIELDS:

New tiered shields have been added: Wooden, Golden, Diamond and Netherite. The vanilla shield is the iron tier. They behave like the vanilla shield, so all shield mechanics work on them, and they can be decorated with banners. Block strength and knockback resistance follow their durability (see SHIELD DURABILITY BASED ATTRIBUTE SCALING below): Wooden (175 durability) and Golden (43) have the base 5 shield strength and 50% knockback resistance, like the vanilla shield (336). Diamond (672) has 8 and 65%, Netherite (1008) has 12 and 85%.

Diamond shields are rare: armorers sometimes sell one (25%) and bastion treasure chests can hold them.

BACKPORTED SPEARS:

All tiers, including copper, have been added. Spears behave the way you'd expect on modern versions, bugs and everything! (not really).

Differences:

1. Spears can be thrown: hold right-click, press and hold left-click until the throw is ready, then release. The delay is like the charge attack's, but reverse: higher tiers are slower to ready (0.20s wood, up to 0.37s netherite).

Its damage and distance scale with your speed, the same way the charge attack's damage does: standing still it lands 8 blocks away, at about sprint-jump speed it reaches the tier's maximum, and your speed keeps counting for 2 seconds after you stop. Lower tiers fly farther than higher ones.

They pierce depending on the tier: wood 0, stone and gold 1, copper and iron 2, diamond 3, netherite 4. Piercing also scales with your speed.

1. Lunge won’t trigger if you hit an entity.

2. Its reach is lowered by 1 point when the cooldown charge is below 195%. Like any other weapon.

3. Its minimum attack range, which prevents attacking entities within 2 blocks of the user, is disabled by default cause what the hell???.

4. Spears have 15% armor piercing.

5. Two options in the config: Lunge can consume 4 durability per level instead of hunger, and Lunge can be made incompatible with Unbreaking and Mending (which also makes the netherite spear repairable with gold instead of netherite).

New spear enchantments:

Dynamo: Lunges that hit nothing build a stack, up to 20. Each level adds +100% of the spear's base damage to jabs (+50% to throws, first target only) at full stacks. Standing throws also travel farther. A jab or throw that deals damage spends all the stacks. Crouching disables it. Treasure enchantment: killing mobs with a Lunge spear has a 5% chance to drop it.

Slapshot: Makes enemy projectiles glow (15%) and lets the jab parry glowing projectiles, reflecting them faster and stunning their shooter. Builds shield stamina if a shield with stamina bars is held, and grants +50% speed for 12 seconds.

MOB SPEAR AI:

Zombies, husks, zombie villagers, piglins and zombified piglins can use spears the same way they do in 1.21.11. Of the zombies that spawn with a weapon, 1 in 6 hold an iron spear. 1 in 10 of the golden swords piglins spawn with is a golden spear, and 1 in 20 zombified piglins carry a golden spear.

Naturally spawned zombie horses are ridden by a zombie with an iron spear.

Extra:

Plain and wither skeletons can spawn with a stone spear (5%, 10% on hard).

Skeleton traps have a 25% chance to be spear traps: 1 to 3 of the horsemen get an enchanted iron spear.

BACKPORTED MOBS:

Parched: a desert skeleton with 16 health. Its arrows cause Weakness and it's immune to it.

Camel Husks have been added. One in ten naturally spawned husks (the first of a group) now arrives riding a Camel Husk with an iron spear, and a Parched sits behind it. Husks that die riding a Camel Husk can drop rabbit's feet.

Zombie horses can now spawn naturally in plains and savanna biomes. They burn in daylight and despawn when far from players.

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CHANGES TO EXISTING FEATURES

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CLAWS:

Replaced the linear health scaling damage bonus with a square root formula. The bonus is a flat amount added on top of the claw's damage: 0.27 x sqrt(target max health) x (25% to 100% depending on rage). It's a significant nerf to the claws' damage output but makes the rage meter matter more at all HP ranges, removing the need for hard damage caps. Past 10,000 HP each extra HP only counts for 5% (configurable), a soft cap for extreme modded scenarios. It improves balance with vanilla but ultimately it remains a weapon that shines most in modded environments with progressive health scaling, high base health mobs or health buffs for mobs.

Fixed Feral Leap grabbing shulkers (and other immobile mobs); they are only stunned on landing.

Added tooltips.

SHIELD DURABILITY BASED ATTRIBUTE SCALING:

Shields have 5 shield strength and 50% knockback resistance, and gain +1 strength and +5% resistance at 400 durability and again for every further 100. The scaling gives diminishing returns after 1000 durability (each further 1000 durability makes a step worth 25% less, down to a minimum of 25%).

Knockback resistance is capped at 100%.

Shields with 100% knockback resistance build 1 stamina point per hit blocked (not parries), if the shield has a stamina bar.

Unbreaking increases shield strength by 1 and KB resistance by 5% per level.

BANNERED SHIELD ATTRIBUTE INCREASE:

The +5 shield strength of bannered shields is now optional and disabled by default.

PRIMITIVE CLUB (Alex's Caves):

Primal Cadence: after the club stuns a mob, the club cannot apply its stun effect while Primal Cadence is on cooldown.

QOL:

The disabled icon now flashes red and shakes in quick succession when you try to use the shield while disabled.

Fire in burning animations is now capped at the mob's head height (configurable).