Player (Elemental Battlegrounds)
+ Movement on ground is significantly faster
- 9.84452424 m/s while walking and 19.1059234 m/s while sprinting respectively
- Can be amplified even further with spells such as Spectral Embodiment, Flame Body, and Angelic Aura
- Angelic aura, for instance, only takes 3.64 seconds to travel the same 91 meter length John EBG did in the calculation. That is 25 m/s, which is getting dangerously close to Steve's Elytra speed with fireworks
barring divebombing at a 90 degree pitch
- They can also move around at full speed with many projectile/multi-projectile spells attacks, so they don't usually need to sacrifice movement when attacking.
2. Many transportation spells can easily move faster than this.
+ AP for most attacks is generally higher
- 46 kilotons scaling to this, which does 200 damage
- They also massively upscale from this, which is 7.4 kilotons. These meteors do 60 damage to them, which is essentially fodder.
- Can do loads of damage by spamming spells in quick succession, which would easily overwhelm Steve and force him to start popping totems if he doesn't try to escape fast enough
+ Ranged options are better
- Many spells are able to do high amounts of damage from afar.
- Many of their ranged options have AoE
- Multi-Projectile spells usually have a chargeup option that helps conserve mana (mana regens even when you're charging them) and can do massive damage if all hit. Even if all of them don't hit, they still do a fair amount of damage.
- Has crazy range with options like this or this.
+ Ace Up the Sleeve
No, seriously, the movement reverse on this spell is stupid. Steve has never dealt with anything like this and this would heavily **** with things like Elytra (which is going to be his main movement option if they don't want to immediately die).
- Healing options aren't as pervasive as Steve's
- Healing spells are locked behind cooldowns
- Lifesteal relies on enemies to heal
- Body spells with passive healing (Angelic Aura) require them to have that as their active body spell, instead of something like Inertia or Flame Body
- Lacks Elytra flight
- Elytra flight is just that good.
- They can technically fly, but it requires them to be actively using a specific set of spells and will eat into their mana.
Steve
+ God apples, shields, and totems of undying gives them bullshit survivability
- Can potentially tank some of the weaker spells that Player (Elemental Battlegrounds) throws at them so long as they keep eating enchanted golden apples, due to their absorption.
- Totems essentially require them to get killed multiple times (if they're eating god apples, they essentially refresh an extra HP bar while healing)
- Shields no-sell all attacks including point-blank End Crystals, which can already oneshot them.
+ Has high AP with point-blank End Crystals and sufficiently high mace drops
Mace drops that are high enough could potentially instant-kill enemies like Withers, which would be around as durable as the Player (Elemental Battlegrounds) without defense boosts or blocking.
End Crystals can kill Wardens, which are slightly tankier than the Player (Elemental Battlegrounds)
+ Doesn't have to rely on mana or high attack cooldowns for most of their options
They can eat god apples, pop firework rockets w/ elytra, attempt to End Crystal rush, or attempt a mace drop from anywhere.
+ Can construct Withers
Withers are tanky and can distract Player (Elemental Battlegrounds) from Steve for a bit
- On Bedrock edition, they don't rushdown enemies and instead fly around to different spots and fires skulls, which makes them more annoying
- They have really weird resistances so they might take a while for Player (Elemental Battlegrounds) to figure out how to kill them at first.
- Slower outside of Elytra flight and specific tools like Ender Pearls
1. Even with Swiftness II, they run as fast as Player (Elemental Battlegrounds)'s walking speed. They get hopelessly outsped as soon as the Player start running.
2. Many transportation spells widen the grounded speed gap even further
3. They have to take a significant risk every time they equip elytra, as they have to lower their defense enough that Wardens can easily kill them in a few hits.
At 1:25 in the video, the warden can get Steve down to 2 hearts from a full bar of health + full absorption if they only switch to the Elytra. Getting hit by spells when Steve's flying with an Elytra is essentially a death wish.
- Ranged options are worse
Power V bows take too long to charge up and require precise aim
Crossbows don't support the Infinity enchantment and don't do too much damage
- Has limited resources
- If the fight lasts too long, their armor could potentially break (if they run out of spare armor sets/bottles of enchanting)
- They could run out of God Apples, fire works, ender pearls, etc. if the fight goes on for too long.
- If they run out of objects in their inventory, they would have to open up a shulker box/ender chest and grab stuff from it, which would involve having to stop any elytra flight, land on the ground, and potentially risk taking damage.
My verdict: Voting for Player (Elemental Battlegrounds).
Their travel speed is passively higher, several transportation spells can make them faster than Elytra's rocket flight, their attacks generally hit harder and can hit around as hard as Steve's End Crystals with certain spells (or combinations of spells), they have better ranged options overall, they can move fast while using attacks, and they don't have to even get close to do most of their shenanigans.
Steve is going to have to abuse Elytra as much as physically possible to really do anything in this fight. Their easiest wincon essentially revolves around getting a good mace hit in, which might be possible if Player (Elemental Battlegrounds) just lets them or whatever. If they get a mace hit in and it doesn't kill them, then the Player will learn that "oh shit, getting hit by this guy when he swoops down HURTS!!!". Player will obviously follow up with heals and run around. After which, they can pop Rock Armor and healing spells.
^ Just for reference, in this video I'm fighting a guy using Quill Daggers, that one stupid slime spell, and Bloodcurdling Blast. At 1:25 in the video, a combination of Rock Armor and blocking drops his quill daggers from 364 damage --> ~130 or so. My defense stat is maxed out, so his quill daggers dealing the base ~26 damage per quill must mean his power stat is maxed out too, which means he would've been doing closer to 455 damage without blocking, rock armor, or a maxed defense stat.
Alternatively, the player can try to play more aggressively with transportation spells. The player has
wayyy too many options here. ******* hell, a single timestop and spell spam would just straight up kill Steve here. If Steve can't switch to a totem in time stop, he just straight up dies and that's that. Totems don't insta-heal you when they break.
Players in PvP literallly just stand still scrambling to shift-click totems in their inventory to not die.
Hell, they don't even need the time stop. Even if regular spells aren't hitting for like point-blank End Crystal level of damage,
end crystal explosions not at point blank still do 4-5 hearts at a time,
similar to Warden hits in Prot IV netherite w/ god apple resistance active (see 0:39). Sure it's going to be spaced out if the Player might try to conserve mana, a burst of spells is still going to threaten Steve into having to pearl away and eat a god apple, which opens him up to more abuse. The player can easily give chase with spells like Flash Slash and force them into pearling again, or force Steve into the air with an Elytra in order to get some space to eat a god apple.
End Crystal PVP is not something Steve wants to do here. Ender pearls are the closest thing Steve is going to get to even getting close when Player starts sprinting. Ender pearls are committal and there's a small delay to using them, so changing direction counters attempting to rush the Player with End Crystals. Even if they do get close enough to the Player: 1). they have to run the risk of getting blasted in the face with 3 different spells, which would force him to equip totems or teleport away, and 2). if the player is using rock armor, then they might as well forget it because attacks that already upscale from the 45 kiloton Volcanic Eruption attack would already get outhealed with healing spells, and steve would counter-struck with a fully charged multi-projectile spell like Poison Needles and he would have to give up trying to End Crystal the Player.
Withers are basically the last good option and, yeah, they'll distract the Player for a while.
But remember that they can easily kill low level players with their spells. Volcanic Eruption (45 kiloton feat BTW) isn't their strongest spell; the charged water bullet attack in the video literally does 3x the damage of the volcanic eruption attack
at base (625 damage). Withers would just be really beefy enemies that gain an annoying projectile shield at half health & have a few unconventional resistances that would be annoying to figure out at first. I already demonstrated here how much the player's sprinting speed would let them run circles around the wither
Okay, I did a little bit of labbing ingame. The John EBG speed feat uses a 91 meter distance as a frame of reference:
I replicated a 91 meter (block) length in a Minecraft superflat world and did a few tests. The video is at 60 FPS, so any frames are 1/60th of a second each.
- Starting from 19 seconds and 25 frames, I sprint-jump with swiftness 2 and reach the end of the 91 meters at 31 seconds and 15 frames into the video. This is about 11.8333333 seconds.
- This comes out to 7.69014087 m/s, which is juuust below the sprinting speed that the wiki said. John EBG is faster than this while walking. Keep this in mind.
- Then I cleared my speed effect and set my speed attribute to 0.4. At 44 seconds and 9 frames into the video, I start running and reach the end of the wall at 49 seconds and 27 frames. This is a timeframe of 5.3 seconds.
- This comes out to 17.1698113 m/s. This is slightly below the sprinting speed of john EBG
Steve with a speed attribute of 0.4 is a bit below what speed John EBG can sprint at without any spells like Flame Body or Spectral Embodiment. If you skip to 1:13 in the the video, not even the Wither can catch up with me just walking with a little below John EBG's running speed lmao. ******* hell the wither even struggled with Swiftness 2, which is a little below John EBG's walking speed.
Using the Bedrock Edition wither for this matchup is a tradeoff. They move faster, yes, but they are significantly less aggressive (they don't chase you like the Java edition wither, they just hover in place & fire skulls before using their speed to fly to a different point) and they fire less skulls.
At half health they start firing faster and gain a short dashing attack that moves it towards its target that it also uses spontaneously. Both withers also just lose interest if you run away too far from it, lol. Even if we assume that last part is just game mechanics, they'll still attack everyone in the fight including Steve himself.
No, seriously, look at this.
Even if we assume the wither isn't mentally challenged and will try to predict their shots, or maybe they're as fast as the bedrock wither or whatever, those skulls are slow as shit. Player will just strafe them and blast them with a few multi-projetile spells and boom they'll drop to the ground and get their projectile shield. This shield isn't immune to fireworks, the Warden's sonic boom attack, so a few spells will work and melee spells will definitely 100% work.