The Breach enchantment causes protection IV leather armor and protection IV netherite armor to protect nearly the same amount, so much so to the point that with Strength 2, a player wearing either leather or netherite armor will take 4 critical hits to be defeated.
This would not be the case if Breach negated armor less (ie: -5% per level rather than -15% per level), and the mace's base damage was higher instead (ie: 11 attack damage rather than 6 attack damage).
In the attached video, both skeletons, one wearing prot 4 leather and the other wearing prot 4 netherite, take 4 critical hits with a Breach IV mace and Strength II to defeat.
Steps to Reproduce:
Spawn two skeletons with no AI that can pick up loot
/summon skeleton ~ ~ ~ {NoAI:1,CanPickUpLoot:1b}Give the skeletons full prot 4 leather armor and full prot 4 netherite armor respectively
Give yourself Strength 2 and a Breach 4 mace
Observe that both entities take 4 critical hits to kill, even though one is wearing leather and the other is wearing netherite
Expected Result: The skeleton wearing prot 4 netherite takes more critical hits to kill than than the skeleton wearing prot 4 leather when the user has strength 2
Observed Result: Both skeletons take 4 critical hits to kill, due to the overtuned strength of the Breach enchantment combined with the undertuned base damage of the mace
Attachments
Comments 7
Leather and Netherite armor protecting the same in practice is not expected. Obviously there is a tiny difference but the point of the report is that in practice they're the same, which is what matters.
I cannot reproduce this. When using a Breach IV mace without Strength, it took me one more critical hit to kill the skeleton with netherite armor.
Updated the title and description. You will never have protection 4 armor without also having strength 2 unless a given PvP kit is bad, in which case leather armor and netherite are the same in practice, so I think this bug should stay up for that reason.
Please update the description to include steps to reproduce this issue, as well as expected VS observed results.
Please also attach any needed commands, datapacks, resourcepacks, screenshots, videos or worlds needed to help reproduce this issue.
Thank you for your report!
After consideration, the issue is being closed as Working as Intended.
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In your test, the one with full netherite set takes 6.12 damage per hit, while the other takes 6.48.
Both take 4 hits to defeat, as expected.