Minecraft's Annoying Trend of "Tank" Enemies

To fill a new niche with challenge, Mojang want to add a new, tough enemy into Minecraft. 

What's the simplest, easiest, and dare I say, laziest, way to do that?

A tank enemy.

I define a tank enemy in Minecraft as a hostile mob with lots of health and attack damage, but can only do melee damage. Before quite recently, the only real tank mob was the Iron Golem. All enemies had different attributes that varied their combat style. Zombies were the simple melee enemy; skeletons used ranged attacks; spiders were nimble and creepers harness the power of TNT itself.

Of course there's other melee enemies such as silverfish, but they aren't meant to be super threatening.

Think about enemies like the Enderman. They literally TELEPORT. Other really awesome enemies include the Guardian, Evoker and Shulker. These enemies are some of my favourites. They not only have incredibly unique and original designs, but they are really fun and legitimately challenging to fight. The Guardian utilises a thorns attack and a really unique laser-beam attack and you have to try and break contact before it does damage. The Evoker casts multiple spells including using another very well-designed mob, the Vex, and a fang attack which can defend itself and even negate armour protection. The Shulker shoots homing projectiles that literally weaponise fall damage!

All these enemies are really unique and interesting, and they were all added more than four years ago.

Since the Evoker and Vex were added, pretty much all new enemies they've added that are meant to be tough, have been tanks. Nothing clever, no really unique designs or combat styles. Just a crapload of melee damage.

Need a mini-boss as part of the raid? Add a really big cow with 100 health and high melee damage of 12. Need a new enemy in the Nether? Add an inflated pig known as the "Hoglin" which isn't even fire or scary-themed at all but rather just an angry pig (I may rant in future about why I think the Hoglin is one of the laziest mobs in the game). Need a new enemy in the new Bastion? Add a variant of an existing mob with 3 times more health and... insanely high melee damage. 

The trouble with these enemies is that although they seem tough, but are actually incredibly easy to defeat, even if you're early-game. All you need to do is build a dirt pillar 3 or 4 blocks high and shoot them with a bow until they die. They're not challenging in the slightest. Pillaring a few blocks up with dirt, and all their health and high attack stats are totally useless. They can't get you, they just stand there hugging the pillar and totally defenseless to certain death from your arrows.

Pillaring 3 blocks up with dirt won't save you from a Blaze now, will it? But when you're being charged by the toughest non-boss mob in the game, the Ravager, 3 dirt blocks and boom, you've outsmarted it. Your IQ is 300, the Ravager's IQ is 3.

And sadly, it appears as though this trend is to continue into 1.17. The Warden seems really tough, being able to penetrate Netherite armour. But 3 or 4 dirt pillars and you can guarantee you've beaten it in a fight. Given kingbdogz has stated the Warden is an enemy you're supposed to run from rather than fight, it seems they are going to be just as much of a pushover as these other tank enemies. Why run if you've got the tools to defeat it - 4 blocks of dirt, a bow and 10-15 arrows that you made in the first 20 minutes of your new world?

Also it's worth noting that these tank mobs can be simply outsprinted anyway. They don't have any sort of charge attack, so simply outrunning them until you've broken range with them is so mindless it removes pretty much all the fear factor from these mobs. Remember how scary the game was before sprinting was added, when you couldn't outrun the enemies? 

I just miss the days when new enemies were actually really exciting and novel, and didn't just simply bludgeon the player to death. This is part of the reason why I wanted the Iceologer to win the mob vote - it would have been the first enemy in YEARS that actually had a new and exciting attack. But alas, Dream wanted his glow squid. A rant for another time.

Hopefully they will either give the Warden a range roar attack that will knock players off their 4-dirt-block podium, or we will just have to hope this annoying trend of tank enemies is broken in future.