So I was playing Vanilla Minecraft again recently, and per usual I found myself complaining in my head about how busted skeletons were and how broken shields were for like- the hundredth time, but then I thought to myself
"Okay I know this sucks, but whats the simplest thing that could be done to fix these two problems?"
The biggest problem I have with skeletons is that they kinda just shoot you whenever they want, or at least that's what it feels like, there isn't a tell for when they fire, its just kind of a guess based on internal timing, and the fact that the timer changes when you hold up a shield makes it a lot more awkward to tell when you should be attacking- but whats something that could fix this? I mean- what other mobs hold bows? Pillagers? What do they ha- OH MY GOD AN AUDIO CUE
Would this not fix so much??? Like- all that you'd need is a little wind up noise for when they're about to fire their bows, and then immediately after it finishes playing they fire, BOOM, the unpredictability is gone.
What about shields though?
My biggest problem with shields, (and why they're so busted in general) is that they can block nearly every form of damage (arrows, swords, explosions, ect) with basically 0 effort, by simply holding down a key, you become neigh immune to most forms of melee damage, so ideally, a fix for shields would be to make it so you cant just hold them in front of you consequence free.
So what if, it worked like a parry?
The longer you hold a shield in-front of you, the less its effectiveness is, after a second the shield will slowly lower down, and if you block late, you'll only get reduced damage, not a complete block.
HOWEVER, if you time it right, and block just as something is about to hit you, you'll do a parry, which can reward you by doing damage to the mob instead, maybe even granting a bit of XP and some knockback to make it feel more satisfying.
This can make it so shields are good but require a higher skill cap to use effectively, and combined with the skeleton having an audible tell for when it fires, it would go together like bread and butter.
...Or you could just play Ultrakill, that works too.
