While Minecraft is all about building, farming and relaxing, there is quite an amount of hostile creatures in the vast open world. You can use a lot of methods to dispatch them, but the most common are still either sword or axe. In this article, we are going to compare sword vs axe in Minecraft to see which one is the better weapon.
1. Sword vs Axe In Minecraft
Damage
In Minecraft Java, the axe has higher damage than the sword. It allows the player to focus their power on a single enemy alone. This lets the player deal very high single target damage to an enemy, taking them out in just one or two hits. However, the weakness of the axe is its inability to deal damage to multiple targets.
The sword, on the other hand, deals less damage to enemies. However, it has the ability to do a swipe attack that damages multiple foes. Because of this, hitting multiple foes with a sword deals more effective damage than killing them one by one with the axe. Both swords and axes can be enchanted with various enchantments.
Cost and Durability
You need less material to make a sword as compared to an axe, however, this is not really a bad thing. While an axe is more expensive, it is also more durable. Swords usually break quicker than axes because of their lower durability.
Attack Rate
In Minecraft Java, swords have a huge advantage over axe when it comes to attack rate. The axe has a pretty slow recovery time, which can be difficult to use for some players. Swords, on the other hand, allows players to spam attacks repeatedly in a short amount of time.
2. Should you use sword or axe in Minecraft?
This actually comes down to personal preference and skill. Dreams and Technoblade, two of the best Minecraft players in the world, use Axe and Sword respectively. The Axe used to have lower damage than the sword, but that was changed in later patches.
In PVP
To use the Axe as a weapon, you need to practice a lot with the hit and run tactic, smacking the enemy then dodging to wait for the next attack to be available. Sword's fast attack, on the other hand, allow players to chain combo much easier. This matters a lot in PVP where you have to fight other people.
With Technoblade beating Dream using a sword, it is pretty clear that the Sword is better in Minecraft PVP.
In PVE
In Minecraft PVE, you often fight one or two enemies at the same time instead of getting yourself surrounded by a crowd. This is why the axe is effective - you can just one or two-shot an enemy so that they can't damage you. While the sword's sweeping attack allows you to fight multiple foes at the same time, you would not want to be surrounded at Normal or Hard.
The axe also allows you to break logs and blocks derived from wood faster than by using other tools. The Axe can also disable shields as well. From this, it is clear that the Axe is better in Minecraft PVE.
Interested in more of our articles related to Minecraft? Please check this post to find out more about Crossbows Vs Bows: Which Is The Better Ranged Weapon In Minecraft?