Spear
The Spear is Clash's first "two handed" weapon, featuring a left click attack and an ability when right click is held. In the spear's case, it allows the player to charge up a stabbing attack with extended reach.
The spear's normal attacking stats are somewhat paltry, dealing damage of a stone sword, but with a substantially increased swing speed.
The right click attack takes a small amount of time to charge (10 ticks), and crits when fully charged (14 ticks). You can tell it will crit when the spear starts pulling backwards in the charge animation. The charge can be held as long as you want, and you can start charging regardless of attack cooldown.
Your attack range will be increased for the stab attack, as indicated by the tooltip. For survival mode players, the 2.5 block increase represents almost doubled attack range. The stab's knockback increases linearly as it charges.
Due to the stab being a right click input, you can use it from the offhand. Though you cannot use torches or shields while using it in your mainhand either.
The spear has access to Looting, Impaling, Unbreaking, and Mending in addition to its own enchantments.
Flurry increases the spear's swing speed by .2 per level and reduces minimum stab charge time by 1 tick per level (charge time to crit is unchanged). It is the most common spear enchantment and has 3 levels.
Sweet Spot doubles the spear's stab damage when the attack lands outside of the player's normal attack range. This is indicated by particles bursting from the target. This is a rare enchantment and has 1 level.
Agility makes the player perform a short dash when starting to charge the spear. Doing so places the spear on a short cooldown, but the stab can still be performed as long as you keep holding the button. The dash goes in the direction that the player is already moving, or backwards if the player is standing still. If the player is in the air, the dash will also send you downwards. This is a rare enchantment and has 1 level.
Jab is a treasure enchantment which swaps out the charge time for the spear's stab for a cooldown and a movement speed penalty after using it. You can still hold the button to hold the stab attack, but there is no charge time so it is always fully charged. This enchantment is mostly intended for PvP purposes and is more a design experiment than anything, hence its treasure status.
The spear has a few variants which share its stab mechanics and enchantments.
The Billhook is a variant of the spear which charges slightly faster and has the unique property of pulling the target towards you.
Maintaining the tradition of weapons that only use one tripwire hook to craft.
The minimum charge time is 2 ticks shorter than the normal spear, and the max charge time is 4 ticks shorter.
The way the knockback works is a little strange. When you hit something normal knockback is applied, and then the target's momentum is redirected towards you. There is no vertical force applied, for that you'll need a fishing rod.
The Echoing Spear is another spear variant which has vastly increased stab range with some explosive knockback.
The echo spear's stab attack has huge range, and sends the target and user flying in opposing directions. Be careful with this thing.
Of note: Technically, Sweet Spot procs when an attack lands within 2.5 blocks of the maximum range of the stab. For normal spears this is the entire bonus attack range, so I simplified the explanation earlier. Sweet Spot does work, but it is significantly harder to land with this spear variant.
I generally want the spear to feel like a "finesse" weapon, which emphasises some sort of spacing and planning over brute force. This is why the damage output is so low. Though to be realistic, I think this is generally a failed idea which doesn't play out well in Minecraft. It's been interesting seeing designs like the spear struggle, as things worked out quite well on paper. Sometimes things just need to do more damage.
To fix it, I've been thinking of a new enchantment which gives +1 damage every time you hit something with the spear, up to the level of the enchantment (probably 5), for a short time. This would allow some synergy with Flurry (which is generally pretty bad because it messes with crit jump timing) and some silly damage if you manage to pull back and hit with Sweet Spot.
I also don't know what to do about not being able to use a shield while holding a spear. I think it's a major weakness which I can't really interact with. One of my principles for this project is not changing how Minecraft's items work. My items just do things on right click, it isn't some "ability" or something. To be honest though, I can probably just fudge that a bit and give the offhand priority over the spear if the user is sneaking or something, we'll see.
Other than those issues, I quite like the spear. I think it is executed pretty well and manages to be interesting without being distracting. It was also the first item added to Clash and the main inspiration for starting this project. I recall distinctly looking at a creeper standing on an elevated ledge, it was stuck, but getting closer risked it detonating on its own. I really wanted a melee weapon that could take advantage of this and just poke it to death. Then I remembered I know how to make mods and got planning.
The Echoing Spear was a sort of impulsive addition. In some ways, it goes against what I wanted out of Clash. It isn't remotely subtle. I usually want items which are modest in their presentation, to preserve player identity. To explain; I believe that Clash is a mod about player expression. Minecraft's combat kinda... doesn't matter. Introducing new options doesn't really change much about the survival PvE experience. But it does let players choose something that they identify with. That's why all the weapons have an intended "fantasy" centered around their mechanical uses instead of a thematic element (for example, an evoker staff that shot vexes or something). This lets me focus on letting the player be something they imagined rather than having to conform to something else. To that end, the Echoing Spear kinda goes against the grain by introducing a somewhat loud aesthetic and being difficult to integrate into a true "playstyle". However, I think it doesn't end up being too distracting due to the clean presentation, and the mechanics are... fine. It definitely still feels like a tool, which means it can stay. If anything, the addition has pretty eye opening, and I'm looking forward to adding more like it.