Hello and welcome to our Minecraft PvP Guide.
Here you will learn all the tactics professional PvPers use, and with good practice, you will become one of them.
Here are all the skills and tactics you will need to learn before going down the main road:
Basic things you need to do before starting to PvP
Make sure you have your sprint key bound to a comfortable key: If you have a big keyboard or small hands, it may be a little difficult to hold the ctrl key all the time while comfortably using WASD. Bind the sprint key to a key that you can comfortably hold down while using your movement keys, you can do this by going to Options > Controls > Sprint. I use Shift as my sprint key and Caps lock as my sneak key.
Make sure your FPS is good enough: If you have an fps over 60, great, you're good to go. If you have between 30-60, your pvp skill may be hindered a little. Anything below 30, you are at a fairly large disadvantage. There are many things you can do to boost your fps, such as install Optifine. You can do so by following our Optifine installation guide here.
Make sure your connection is good enough to play: If you get over 400 ping to a server, your internet isn't very good and you will find it hard to pvp on that server. You can check your ping to a server by hovering over the connection bar icon in your server list on the selected server. It will show "<Number>ms" The more ms/ping you have, the worse your connection is. You can certainly still play with 400 ping, but it puts you at a fairly great disadvantage. Any ping above 700 is pretty much unplayable.
Make sure you use a mouse; not a trackpad. This is very obvious, it is much easier to pvp with a mouse (preferably a gaming mouse) instead of a trackpad.
Make sure you have a nice resource pack to play with that features low fire. The default fire texture in minecraft covers up ~half your screen and makes it very hard to see. Search up "Minecraft PvP resource pack" or if you're not a big fan of packs and like to keep things default, here is a link to the default resource pack with low fire.
Strafing
Strafing is basically holding "W" and your sprint key and using your "A" and "D" keys to your advantage while hitting your opponent to make it harder for your opponent to hit you. If you just run straight while hitting your opponent, the opponent hardly has to move his cursor and can land all of his sword swings on you.
There are multiple techniques of strafing, here are a couple:
Zig-zag strafing:
Basically engage the fight holding either A or D, and change to the other key about 2-4 seconds later. If you keep doing this, eventually you will develop an instinct to move which way the flow of the battle takes you. By using this strategy, you can hold combos longer and make you a little harder to focus on for your opponent. However this strafe strategy is very easily anticipated/read by experienced opponents and easily counterable.
Circle strafing:
Circle strafing is pretty much holding "W" and your sprint button with either "A" or "D" (only one of them) until the end of the fight or until they turn around to throw a health potion or run. Since the zig-zag strategy is so easily anticipated, they will be expecting you to switch to a different strafe key within a few seconds, but you will keep using the same strafe key which will confuse them, once you get behind them and out of their line of sight or their far periphery, they will be even more confused and move their mouse around like crazy to try and get their cursor back on you. However, you must have very good accuracy to pull this strategy off, speaking of accuracy...
Accuracy
Here you will learn all the tactics professional PvPers use, and with good practice, you will become one of them.
Here are all the skills and tactics you will need to learn before going down the main road:
Basic things you need to do before starting to PvP
Make sure you have your sprint key bound to a comfortable key: If you have a big keyboard or small hands, it may be a little difficult to hold the ctrl key all the time while comfortably using WASD. Bind the sprint key to a key that you can comfortably hold down while using your movement keys, you can do this by going to Options > Controls > Sprint. I use Shift as my sprint key and Caps lock as my sneak key.
Make sure your FPS is good enough: If you have an fps over 60, great, you're good to go. If you have between 30-60, your pvp skill may be hindered a little. Anything below 30, you are at a fairly large disadvantage. There are many things you can do to boost your fps, such as install Optifine. You can do so by following our Optifine installation guide here.
Make sure your connection is good enough to play: If you get over 400 ping to a server, your internet isn't very good and you will find it hard to pvp on that server. You can check your ping to a server by hovering over the connection bar icon in your server list on the selected server. It will show "<Number>ms" The more ms/ping you have, the worse your connection is. You can certainly still play with 400 ping, but it puts you at a fairly great disadvantage. Any ping above 700 is pretty much unplayable.
Make sure you use a mouse; not a trackpad. This is very obvious, it is much easier to pvp with a mouse (preferably a gaming mouse) instead of a trackpad.
Make sure you have a nice resource pack to play with that features low fire. The default fire texture in minecraft covers up ~half your screen and makes it very hard to see. Search up "Minecraft PvP resource pack" or if you're not a big fan of packs and like to keep things default, here is a link to the default resource pack with low fire.
Strafing
Strafing is basically holding "W" and your sprint key and using your "A" and "D" keys to your advantage while hitting your opponent to make it harder for your opponent to hit you. If you just run straight while hitting your opponent, the opponent hardly has to move his cursor and can land all of his sword swings on you.
There are multiple techniques of strafing, here are a couple:
Zig-zag strafing:
Basically engage the fight holding either A or D, and change to the other key about 2-4 seconds later. If you keep doing this, eventually you will develop an instinct to move which way the flow of the battle takes you. By using this strategy, you can hold combos longer and make you a little harder to focus on for your opponent. However this strafe strategy is very easily anticipated/read by experienced opponents and easily counterable.
Circle strafing:
Circle strafing is pretty much holding "W" and your sprint button with either "A" or "D" (only one of them) until the end of the fight or until they turn around to throw a health potion or run. Since the zig-zag strategy is so easily anticipated, they will be expecting you to switch to a different strafe key within a few seconds, but you will keep using the same strafe key which will confuse them, once you get behind them and out of their line of sight or their far periphery, they will be even more confused and move their mouse around like crazy to try and get their cursor back on you. However, you must have very good accuracy to pull this strategy off, speaking of accuracy...
Accuracy