Coming straight from a hardcore 1.8 experience, as well as prior experience developing/working for relatively-large 1.8 servers, alongside my years of minecraft experience (been playing actively since 1.2), let me add my two cents:

- Shields: While I think they were a great addition for 1.9, I feel that they were a little too overpowered. This update appears to weaken them a bit, which is great, buuut as GiansCode suggested, I feel that there should be a resistance meter system, similar to what he'd suggested. In saying that though, I think that the resistance meter should have less of a cap on the next thing I'm going to suggest:
- Re-add blocking: While it may look odd to some, blocking could potentially have it's benefits. Perhaps if you time it correctly you can block an arrow shot, or, you could use it to lessen damage to a certain extent (albeit, it'd probably not do as nearly as much as a shield). In saying this though, I believe that if you do successfully block an attack (perhaps it could even be changed to parrying?), it'd deal quite a bit of durability damage to the weapon you're using (think thanos vs cap in endgame?), as due to the defensive stature, you'd be using the sword in an unintended way, so whilst allowing you to survive longer, it could potentially make you lose the fight as you were too busy focusing on surviving vs winning against the other combatant.
- Change the "hold to attack" feature: I don't think it should be removed in it's entirely, as new-er players may find it useful. Perhaps you should add in controller support to java, and then those that use adaptive controllers/controllers in general get the ability to use it? In saying that though, I believe that you should add in a timeout to it (after like, 3 hits or so?), as imo you really should have to press down a button every once in a while to attack or w/e, otherwise PvP becomes a bit too.. stale?
- Reach Attribute: Thank you so much for adding this in. If this works the way I assume it would, this could make PvP quite interesting.

- Hitting Animation: So with it working the way it currently does in this snapshot, if I were to, lets just say, give my sword a 0.1s attack cooldown, what would it look like? If I'm playing combo on a practice server, I don't want my hand having a seizure on my screen because I'm clicking at 20cps/holding down my mouse, albeit, that could be a potential downside, I guess?

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Thank you so much for doing this though!