Attacking illagers and witches makes them hostile towards players within an infinite distance

Affects 1.11.0.8

this will be fixed in next update/patch

affects 1.12.0.13

affects 1.13.0.1

Confirmed for all 1.16 builds.

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Happens in 1.17.11, 1.17.30.22.

(comment updated 7/6/23)
The behavior appears to be the same in Java:

The "Note" in the description is incorrect/misleading. Almost all mobs will follow their targets for an infinite distance as long as the target remains within a certain distance of the mob. The only mobs that do not do this are ghasts, which do not follow at all (they wander randomly even when they have a target), and a few mobs like guardians that have a "home" restriction. So for example, a wither skeleton or a creeper will follow a player for 1000s of blocks as long as the player remains within 16 blocks of it.

The "within" distance in which the mob keeps its target is set by the minecraft:follow_range component in the mob's behavior json. The default follow_range is 16 blocks. Many mobs have a longer follow_range (example: endermen, ghasts), but many mobs also have a too-short follow range in Bedrock Edition because their behaviors were ported from Java without accounting for the fact that Java does not have a distinct follow_range component (MCPE-50207, MCPE-51161). (In Java the mob's targeting range also serves as its following range, while in Bedrock these are set by different components: behavior.hurt_by_target and behavior.nearest_attackable_target set the range for acquiring a target and follow_range sets the distance for dropping/forgetting a target, with the result that targeting is in-effect capped by the follow_range, and capped to the default 16 blocks if the follow_range component is not included in the json).

The follow_range for illagers and witches is set at 64 blocks in the vanilla behavior files. Also, their range for targeting a mob that has hurt them is set at 64 blocks (in minecraft:behavior.hurt_by_target. If their follow_range was not 64 then the targeting-after-being-hit from up to 64 away would not work.

In conclusion, I believe this behavior is working as intended for 4 reasons:

1. It seems to match Java.

2. Almost all mobs have an infinite absolute follow range. (They will "follow infinitely" given the right conditions.)

3. Illagers' and witches having a longer relative follow range than other mobs makes sense because they are intelligent. (Players have to get pretty far away for illagers to forget them because they aren't mindless monsters.)

4. The long (relative) follow range is necessary for illagers' to target players who shoot them, and likely also necessary for them to reliably move into villages during raids.

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Affects 1.20.10 hotfix