Jump attacks and jump cancelling in Minecraft Dungeons II
Jump attacks are not always stronger than normal swings. Jump cancelling — a swing, then a jump attack in the same jump — lifted one slow weapon's damage per second by 70%.
Minecraft Dungeons II adds jumping, and pressing attack while you are in the air performs a jump attack. On an Xbox controller, attack is on X and jump is on A. Everything below comes from The Dungeon Fish, a creator Mojang gave early access to, measured on a pre-release build — it is one player's testing, not official data, and balance can change at launch.
Jump attacks are not a win button. A single jump attack usually hits harder than a normal swing, but it is slower to repeat. On the Emerald Hammer, normal swings landed about 15 hits (five combos) in 8.24 seconds, around 226 damage per second, while jump attacks hit for 205 each roughly every 0.95 seconds, around 216 per second. On another melee weapon, staying on the ground dealt 64% more damage than jumping.
Where jump attacks do pay off is with enchantments that trigger after a combo or a jump attack, such as Lightning Surge. A slow weapon like the Emerald Hammer can fit in more jumps per second than full combos, so a wave enchantment fires more often if you jump.
Jump cancelling works on weapons with a simple jump-attack animation and a long pause between normal swings. Swing normally, jump a fraction of a second later, then press attack again in the air. The first swing lands as you rise and the jump attack lands as you come down, so two hits fit into one attack window. On the Clobberer, the measured damage per second went from 126 with normal swings only and 151 with jump attacks only to 214 with jump cancels — about 70% more than swinging on the ground. It takes timing practice and suits slow, heavy weapons; on fast weapons the pause it exploits barely exists.
This page will be re-checked against the release build once the game is out.