Ghast fireballs sometimes deal no damage

It seems that Ghast fireball deal damage only inside the block that it hits. If Player is standing next to that block, they will not receive explosion / blast damage.

This bug was shown by a YouTuber Silent Whisper in one of his videos 

He said the bug has been in the game for a long time so i tested it on 1.14.60 and in 1.16.63 and it still there

good to know i hope this is fixed soon

Reopened, still an issue

Affects 1.18.20.27

The reported behavior is not due to blocks nearby the player absorbing damage. It can be reproduced readily in a flat world (no walls nearby) with the player taking direct hits. This does not occur in Java Edition. It seems like it could involve something like dead zones in the explosion radius, client-server desyncing related to knockback, damage immunity getting locked on, or floating point errors.

To reproduce:

1. Open a creative flat world with mob griefing turned off.

2. Give yourself fire resistance.

3. Make a ghast containment box and summon/teleport a ghast into it.

4. Stand about 15 blocks away and let a ghast shoot you multiple times.

Expected result

Each fireball deals damage.

Observed result

Many fireballs do not deal damage. Also observed (see

):

• Typically, if you stand still after being hit once, subsequent fireballs will not deal damage until you move position by more than a few pixels.

• When fireballs do not deal damage, they do not deal knockback either, nor set the player on fire (even if not using the fire resistance effect).

• Sometimes fireballs will deal partial damage from a direct hit. When this happens the knockback also gets interrupted in a glitchy way. This seems more likely to happen if the player is moving during or just before the hit.

After looking more closely at a video of the equivalent bug for wither skulls (MCPE-152907) it occurred to me that this bug could be the result of a combination of MCPE-153740 (ghast fireballs do not deal projectile damage) and MCPE-109423 (projectiles sometimes hit a few blocks in front of their target). If the projectile "hits" a few blocks from the player then it will be far enough away that the explosion damage does not reach.

Update: I've determined that MCPE-109423 is just a result of projectiles moving >1 block/tick and not updating their position on the tick that they "hit". That means the distance away from the mob that projectiles hit a deterministic result of the distance from shooter to target. Further, that explains why moving a few pixels can resolve this bug. Ghast fireballs only move a little bit faster than 1 block/tick, so adjusting the distance a small amount is enough to put the player back within the blast radius of the fireball's last updated position before the hit. It is now quite obvious to me that this bug is a direct consequence of MCPE-109423 and MCPE-153740, and that if you fix either of those bugs then this bug will also be fixed.

Thank you for your report!
However, this issue has been temporarily closed as Awaiting Response

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Tested and this is indeed fixed in 1.19.20 by the fix to MCPE-153740