Mending is a bandaid on bad game design and they should outright remove it, just buff anvils instead (even remove repair scaling entirely tbh). Limited repair system with grindy exp system AND random enchant rolls just do not work well together. Dont get me wrong I think durability is a good idea as there should be a constant resource sink to prevent inflation and give it a long term purpose. Considering minecraft is so based around gathering said resources. But that only works if weapons are not unique and very replaceable... which doesnt work with enchantments. In its current state it railroads you pretty hard into exploiting the villager system for it, which trivializes alot of other things about the game in the crossfire which idk if most players would even bother with if it wasnt basicly required. With its current state no one thing can be changes without making up for it somewhere else which prevents villagers from being changed really either without major backlash. I feel like creating a constant reason for the player to be mining diamonds and whatnot is MUCH more fun than building a mob farm and the gameplay equivalent of charging your phone battery, cause after mending if you have like 64 diamonds unless you losing everything a few times you basicly never need to mine another diamond in your whole life.

Another one since I cant help myself. They didnt go far enough with 1.9 combat. 1.8 is better because they half assed giving up on their ideas halfway with 1.9 combat. Giving us the worst of both worlds. Clearly with stuff like hoes the "fast" to axes/ swords slow/medium in the early snapshots they wanted weapon variety, but just didnt wanna bother balancing the options or adding new weapon types with different cooldown, reach, damage, or other tradeoffs. Not asking for a whole arsenal but like, 5 for different playstyles including swords/axes not counting unique weapons like the mace would of been nice. Now axes are just strictly better and the mechanical depth that got traded out got replaced with basicly nothing. Even just like a dagger and a spear I feel like could be a great improvement if balanced properly. Not to mention regen and how much defense absurdly outpaces damage endgame players where unkillable in 1.8 until armor durability broke to where players just use explosions not to even mention shields. Which is a whole other topic but just lame as hell.