Every Melee Weapon in Minecraft, Ranked

A netherite sword deals 12.8 damage per second. A netherite axe deals 10. A mace swung after a twenty-block drop deals 40 damage in one hit — and 90 with Density V. There is no single best melee weapon in Minecraft. There are five, and each one wins a fight the others lose.

Every number here is Java Edition, current version, measured with a full attack cooldown. Swing before the meter fills and you get a fraction of it, which is why a timed stone sword genuinely beats a spam-clicked netherite one.

The ranking, short version

1. 1.Mace — the largest single hit in the game by an absurd margin, and close to useless if your feet are on the ground.
2. 2.Netherite axe — hardest-hitting conventional weapon, and the only thing that switches off shields.
3. 3.Netherite sword — highest sustained damage per second, clears crowds, cheapest to keep alive.
4. 4.Trident — solid melee, devastating underwater, and a throwable on top.
5. 5.Netherite spear — the worst damage of the five and the only one that reaches 4.5 blocks. A horseback and chokepoint weapon, not a duelling one.
6. 6.Everything else — pickaxes, shovels, hoes and your fists. Emergency use only.

How the numbers actually work

Every weapon sets two values: attack damage and attack speed. Attack speed is swings per second, and multiplying the two gives you DPS. That is the whole model.

Three rules sit on top of it:

• The cooldown meter. Attacking below a full charge scales your damage down sharply. Wait for the bar.
• Critical hits add 50%. You must be falling, not sprinting, not in water, not climbing, not riding anything, free of Blindness, Levitation and Slow Falling, and at 84.8% charge or higher.
• Sprinting cancels crits. A sprint attack applies extra knockback instead. You cannot have both.

One weapon is exempt from all of that: spears cannot crit or sprint-attack at all, which is the only case in the game where holding a weapon is worse than holding nothing.

Our combat basics guide covers the timing in detail. Read it before you memorise a single damage figure — the mechanic is worth more than the weapon.

1. The Mace

6 damage, 0.6 attack speed, 500 durability. That is 3.6 DPS standing still, worse than a wooden axe. Judged as a conventional weapon the mace is the worst thing in this ranking — every sword and every axe out-damages it over time.

Then you fall on something.

Attack while falling more than 1.5 blocks and you perform a smash attack, which adds:

• +4 damage for each of the first 3 blocks fallen
• +2 damage for each of the next 5 blocks (blocks 4 to 8)
• +1 damage for every block after that

So the real damage curve looks like this:

• 3-block drop: 18 damage
• 8-block drop: 28 damage
• 20-block drop: 40 damage
• 30-block drop: 50 damage

There is no cap. Two things make it better still: a successful smash resets your fall distance to the height you struck from, so a forty-block dive costs you nothing if you connect, and every entity within 2.5 blocks of the impact is knocked back like a wind charge.

Crafting it

One heavy core plus one breeze rod. Breeze rods come from breezes, which is easy. Heavy cores only generate in ominous vaults inside trial chambers, which is not. Note that since 1.21 a raid captain kill no longer hands you Bad Omen directly — the captain drops an ominous bottle instead, and drinking that bottle is now the only way to get the effect. Carry it into a trial chamber, let it convert to Trial Omen, and the vaults turn ominous. The heavy core is then a 7.5% drop from an ominous vault, so budget for several runs. Our trial chambers guide covers running them efficiently.

Mace enchantments

• Density (max V) adds 0.5 damage per block fallen, per level. At Density V a twenty-block drop goes from 40 damage to 90.
• Breach (max IV) reduces the effectiveness of the target's armour points and armour toughness by 15% per level — 60% at IV. It does not touch Protection or Resistance. This is the PvP and armoured-mob choice.
• Wind Burst (max III) fires you back into the air after a smash, letting you chain hits without climbing again. It only appears in ominous vault loot, and it can only ever be applied with an anvil — no enchanting table will roll it.
• Density, Breach, Smite, Bane of Arthropods, Sharpness and Impaling all conflict. Pick exactly one. The mace cannot take Sharpness at all, so in practice the choice is Density, Breach, Smite or Bane.

2. Netherite Axe

10 damage, 1.0 attack speed — 10 DPS. The full axe ladder:

• Netherite: 10 damage, 1.0 speed, 10 DPS
• Diamond: 9 damage, 1.0 speed, 9 DPS
• Iron: 9 damage, 0.9 speed, 8.1 DPS
• Stone and copper: 9 damage, 0.8 speed, 7.2 DPS
• Golden: 7 damage, 1.0 speed, 7 DPS
• Wooden: 7 damage, 0.8 speed, 5.6 DPS

Note that a stone axe hits as hard as a diamond one — 9 damage each. Only the recovery time differs. Early game, a stone axe is a genuinely strong weapon.

The shield disable

This is the axe's real job. Hit a target who is actively holding a shield up with any axe and every shield they carry is disabled for 5 seconds. It is not a chance roll. It happens.

Two details that decide fights:

• It works regardless of your cooldown charge. You do not need a full meter for the disable — only for the damage. Against a turtling opponent, the first hit lands the disable immediately.
• It does not trigger during the shield's activation delay. Shields take 5 game ticks (0.25 seconds) to start blocking. Hit inside that window and the damage goes through normally, but no disable is applied, because there was nothing blocking to break.

The same mechanic runs against you. Any axe-wielding mob — vindicators, piglin brutes, armed zombies — plus the warden's melee attack, all disable your shield for five seconds. If you are relying on a shield in a woodland mansion, a bastion or the deep dark, plan for it to vanish mid-fight.

Enchanted, a netherite axe with Sharpness V hits for 13 damage — more per swing than any sword carrying the same enchantment. Note that axes take Sharpness only through an anvil; enchanting tables have not offered it on axes since 24w12a. It still loses the DPS race, and it burns durability faster because you are also chopping wood with it. Keep Mending on it; the anvil and mending guide explains how to combine books without hitting "Too Expensive".

3. Netherite Sword

8 damage, 1.6 attack speed — 12.8 DPS. Every sword swings at 1.6 regardless of material, so the ladder is purely damage:

• Netherite: 8 damage, 12.8 DPS
• Diamond: 7 damage, 11.2 DPS
• Iron: 6 damage, 9.6 DPS
• Stone and copper: 5 damage, 8 DPS
• Wooden and golden: 4 damage, 6.4 DPS

Sharpness V adds 3 damage, taking a netherite sword to 11 per hit and 17.6 DPS — the highest sustained output available against anything without a damage-type weakness. Smite V adds 2.5 per level against undead, so 20.5 damage a swing and 32.8 DPS against zombies, skeletons, drowned, phantoms and the Wither itself.

Sweep attacks

A grounded swing at 84.8% charge or above that is not a sprint attack performs a sweep, hitting everything in a short arc for 1 damage. Sweeping Edge raises that to 50%, 67% and 75% of the sword's own damage at levels I, II and III, which turns a crowd of zombies into a single problem. It is a sword-only enchantment — no axe, mace or spear can sweep.

The catch nobody mentions: sweeps require you to be on the ground, crits require you to be falling. They are mutually exclusive on the same swing. Jump-crit single targets, stay planted against crowds.

Getting the material is the gate here — see how to find netherite if you are still on diamond.

4. Trident

9 damage melee, 1.1 attack speed — 9.9 DPS. Almost netherite-axe output, from a weapon you can find in the first week. The catch is 250 durability — exactly an iron sword, against 1561 on diamond and 2031 on netherite — and no Sharpness, since tridents get their own enchantment set, so general melee damage never scales.

• Impaling (max V) adds 2.5 per level against aquatic mobs. That is 21.5 damage a hit against guardians, drowned and elder guardians.
• Loyalty (max III) returns the trident after you throw it. Thrown damage is 8.
• Channeling (max I) calls lightning on a struck mob during a thunderstorm.
• Riptide (max III) hurls you forward in water or rain. It conflicts with both Loyalty and Channeling.

The correct answer is two tridents: one Loyalty III / Impaling V for fighting, one Riptide III for travel. Farming them takes patience — how to get a trident covers drowned drop rates and the fastest approach.

5. Spear

Added in 1.21.11, the spear is the newest melee weapon and the most misunderstood. Judged on raw output it is terrible — a netherite spear deals 5.5 damage at 0.87 attack speed, which is 4.35 DPS, roughly a third of a netherite sword. The ladder:

• Netherite: 5.5 damage, 0.87 speed, 4.35 DPS, 2031 durability
• Diamond: 4 damage, 0.95 speed, 3.81 DPS
• Iron: 3.5 damage, 1.05 speed, 3.16 DPS
• Stone: 2 damage, 1.33 speed, 2.67 DPS
• Copper: 2 damage, 1.18 speed, 2.35 DPS
• Wooden: 1 damage, 1.54 speed, 1.54 DPS
• Golden: 1 damage, 1.05 speed, 1.05 DPS

You craft one from a single ingot, plank set, stone-tier block or diamond plus one stick, so a stone spear costs almost nothing.

What you are paying for is reach. A spear jabs out to 4.5 blocks where every other melee weapon stops at 3, and it cannot hit anything closer than about 2 blocks. That makes it a weapon for fighting over a wall, down a one-block corridor, or from horseback where you want to stay outside a creeper's blast.

The second trick is the charge attack. Hold use and the damage is based on your velocity relative to the target rather than the item's attack damage — you need about 5.1 blocks per second of closing speed before it does anything at all, and the tier applies a multiplier from 0.7 on wooden up to 1.2 on netherite. A galloping horse supplies that speed easily. On foot you will almost never reach it.

Two hard limitations decide whether the spear belongs in your hotbar:

• Spears cannot land critical hits and cannot sprint-attack. They are the only item in the game, bare hands included, that gives up both.
• Lunge (max III) is their exclusive enchantment: a jab shoves you forward, up to 1.374 blocks per tick at level III. It needs 7 or more hunger points to fire and will not work in water, on a mount, or while gliding.

Spears do take Sharpness, Smite and Bane of Arthropods, which softens the damage problem but never fixes it. Bring one for mounted combat and for anything you would rather not stand next to. Do not bring one to a boss.

6. Everything Else

• Pickaxes and shovels deal middling damage at slower recovery than a sword. Fine in an emergency, never a plan.
• Hoes always deal 1 damage per hit, but they are not all equal. Attack speed climbs with the material: wooden and golden hoes sit at 1.0 speed for 1 DPS, stone and copper at 2.0 for 2 DPS, iron at 3.0 for 3 DPS, and diamond and netherite at 4.0 for 4 DPS. A netherite hoe therefore does four times the sustained damage of a wooden one, which is four times almost nothing.
• Bare hands deal 1 damage at 4.0 attack speed — 4 DPS. That ties the best hoe in the game and beats every hoe below diamond, which tells you everything.
• Copper gear slots in at stone tier — a copper sword deals 5, a copper axe deals 9 at 0.8 speed — with better durability than stone at 190. Cheap stopgap, not an upgrade over iron.

What to actually carry

Three slots solve almost everything:

1. 1.Netherite sword with Sharpness V, Looting III, Unbreaking III, Mending — your default for mobs, crowds and anything you want drops from.
2. 2.Netherite axe with Sharpness V and Efficiency — swap to it the instant anything raises a shield, and for single high-health targets where per-hit damage matters.
3. 3.Mace with Density V, Wind Burst and Mending — for bosses, raids and any fight where you can gain height. It is a scalpel, not a sidearm.

Add a Smite V sword if you are heading for the Wither or a wither skeleton farm; 32.8 DPS against undead is not a marginal gain. Add a spear only if you are fighting from a horse or through a gap. Best enchantments ranks the full list by what it actually saves you.

The five mistakes that lose fights

Spam-clicking. Damage scales with the cooldown meter. Half-charged swings deal a fraction of the listed number, so more clicks means less damage.

Sprinting while trying to crit. Sprint attacks replace crits with knockback. Release sprint, jump, hit on the way down.

Using the mace on flat ground. 3.6 DPS. If you cannot gain height, hold literally anything else.

Missing the smash. No damage, full fall damage. Practise the timing on a passive mob from ten blocks before you try it on a raid.

Bringing an axe to a crowd. One target per swing at one swing per second. That is the sword's fight, every time.