Vanilla Combat in 1.9+ has changed a lot, as far as I can tell, the change is bigger than what any mod I know of has done to combat pre 1.9.
I would suggest you learn about vanilla 1.9 combat before you try modded versions of it or else you'll be like DireWolf20 and his silly "I don't understand basic vanilla things."
Basically; Mojang made it so that it is no longer possible to spamclick. The attack speed of a weapon is now an attribute that is different for different weapons. And because you can't spam click,
you are forced to consider tactics, you can't just rush into a mob and start spam clicking.
If you are cornered by a bunch of mobs, you'll lose.
Swords can no longer block, but now there exist a shield that will block melee damage for a high % and missile damage for 100% . The shield is rather cheap to make so a good early game item.
You now have an off hand, you can use for a shield, or even an other weapon, or for torches.
You can not block and attack at the same time, and you can't "quickblock," you must start blocking well before the mob actually attacks. This means you must time your attacks and your blocks.
It takes a bit of practice to get it right. But you can take out skeletons with zero damage. even with just a shield and a stone weapon.
Swords have a normal attack speed and do the same damage as pre 1.9. Higher tier swords both do more damage and have a faster attack speed.
Swords now have a swipe attack, that does damage in an
Area Of Effect.
Axes now all do 9 damage but are slower than swords, higher tier axes have a faster attack speed but do the same 9 damage.
Because crits do extra damage (jump attack) this means you can now 2 hit kill most vanilla mobs with a mere unenchanted stone axe. However
you need to time and execute the attacks just right to do it.
Axes also can only attack one mob at a time, but this can be an advantage, if you are fighting mobs among pig man, and you want to avoid accidentally hitting them.
Hoe's and shovels do a lot less damage than swords, but they have a very fast attack speed. So you can almost spam click with them.
The sharpness enchant has been nerfed again, and Bane and smite have been boosted again. Sharpness 1 adds 1 damage, but other levels add only 0.5. So sharpness 5 adds 3 damage in total. Bane and Smite add 2.5 damage per level making it really worth considering those enchants.
from what I read it was just a kind of charge to the attack with a sword (the longer you hold = more damage), did not know about the other changes you mention, thank you.
If you try to spamclick anyway, the weapon does a lot less damage. The weapon does not have a charge, but it does have a recovery time. It doesn't do more damage if you wait, it just does less damage if you don't wait. It is balanced so that it is really worth it to wait for the recovery. However, if you are panicked and you "need" to spamclick to safe yourself, then spamclicking still works a tiny bit, just very very badly.
