If you want to survive through the varied and dangerous dimensions of Minecraft, then you’re going to need armor. These adventures demand you make the most out of your resistance and defense. Only through enchantments can you make the journey easier, and in this article, we’ll rank the best armor enchantments for you!
The best armor enchantments in Minecraft include Blast Protection, Fire Protection, Feather Falling, Protection, and Projectile Protection. Enchantments can be excellent for raising your character’s stats, adding resistance to additional damage types, and making unique builds.
You can’t understate the importance of Armor in Minecraft. They come in various types depending on the material you use to craft them.
Enchantments can be particularly important to enhance the effectiveness of your armor. Check out these enchantments if you don’t want a creeper blowing up on you and instantly killing you.
10. Soul Speed
Our first armor enchantment is the Soul Speed enchantment. This enchantment increases your movement speed when walking on soul sand or soul soil. Although initially, it sounds like it’s not particularly useful, however, it has a lot of viable applications.
One of the most common tactics employed by players is that you can create paths in the Nether out of soul sand.
This will let you get to faraway places in the Nether quite easily. It is also particularly helpful in certain arenas for dealing with enemies or boss fights that use soul sand as a mechanic.
Each of Soul Speed’s enchantment Tiers provides a large buff to movement speed on the affiliated substances. However, I do recognize that the use factor is limited which is why this enchantment has been placed this low on the ranking.
| Tiers | Speed Increase |
|---|---|
| 1 | 40.5% |
| 2 | 51% |
| 3 | 61.5% |
9. Aqua Affinity
The next enchantment on our list is the Aqua Affinity. This enchantment will allow you to mine at an increased speed underwater. This can be exceptionally useful when you’re exploring the depths of the sea, or traveling through caves with material locked behind water bodies.
Although this enchantment has no combat benefits, its overall benefit in terms of traversal and increased access to items makes it one of the best armor enchantments you can get.
| Tiers | Effect |
|---|---|
| 1 | increases underwater mining speed. |
8. Depth Strider
The 8th best armor enchantment on our list is the Depth Strider. Although it is very similar to Aqua Affinity, it has several benefits that make this enchantment significantly better than its counterpart. The most important aspect of it is that it increases movement speed underwater by a significant margin.
This means you get to access mining locations more easily, and can traverse through large ocean and river bodies with insane speed and urgency. You can pair this armor enchantment with another enchantment called Respiration, and it’ll make going through any water area an absolute joke.
Depth Strider is great, and we can recommend it to you if you’re looking to go up and down water elevators, and want rapid movement through water spaces in your game world.
| Tiers | Water Slow Reduction |
|---|---|
| 1 | 33% |
| 2 | 66% |
| 3 | 100% |
7. Respiration
As we mentioned in the previous ranking, Respiration is another exceptional armor enchantment. It is another water-based enchantment that makes water traversal even more fun. If you enjoy traveling through and exploring water, then Respiration is the best enchantment for you.
Respiration allows you to hold more oxygen whilst you are entirely submerged in water. This means you can mine underwater for longer, you can stay longer in the water to get to areas deeper into the water and can give you extra time to get back to safety if you need.
Another major benefit that we haven’t mentioned so far? You don’t have to keep popping your head out of the water for air often.
It can honestly become incredibly annoying to keep sticking your head out of the water, just to have enough air to complete what you’re doing. Respiration makes things far less tedious.
| Tiers | Underwater Breathing Duration |
|---|---|
| 1 | +15 |
| 2 | +30 |
| 3 | +45 |
6. Thorns
Our next enchantment is the Thorns enchantment. This has to be one of the most useful combat-related armor enchantments. Thorns reflect a portion of the damage that you are dealt back to whoever attacked you. This makes it an incredibly effective soft crowd control.
With the Thorns enchantment, you can essentially kill enemies, while they attack you, and you do nothing. It works spectacularly when fighting a horde of enemies and will provide you great utility when facing off against boss monsters, skeletons, and zombies.
The only downside? Your armor will take a lot of increased damage to its durability. This means you can expect your armor to break far more easily, so you best have the materials nearby necessary to repair frequently.
You can also pair this enchantment with Unbreaking on your armor to slow or at least severely reduce the durability damage. This will make armors with Thorn enchantments far more viable and for far longer in your runs. Thorns are a brilliant enchantment to have on your side.
| Tiers | Damage Return Probability | Average Reflected Damage |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 11.25% | 1.1 |
| 2 | 28.83% | 1.9 |
| 3 | 46.33% | 2.6 |
| 4 | 61.18% | 3.09 |
5. Projectile Protection
In the middle of the pack, we have the Projectile Protection enchantment. Many people will consider this enchantment even more useful than what I’ve ranked it as, simply because it is an exceptional counter to so many enemies. But I think that its use cases are far fewer than most people give it credit.
Nonetheless, I’ve got to agree this is one of the best enchantments that you can have on your armor. Projectile Protection does what the name says, it reduces incoming damage from projectile attacks. These include attacks from Skeletons, particularly those that shoot arrows at you with their bows.
Not taking a lot of damage from enemies that strike you from afar, and being able to close the gap is great. I’d recommend your armor to have Projectile Protection if you can muster it. It’s niche in its uses but will give you a big advantage against some supremely annoying enemies.
| Tiers | Reduces Damage From Projectiles |
|---|---|
| 1 | 8% |
| 2 | 16% |
| 3 | 24% |
| 4 | 32% |
4. Feather Falling
The fourth enchantment on our list is Feather Falling, and it is one that you’ll appreciate a lot if you’ve played Minecraft recently. We’ve all accidentally jumped too far or have fallen from someplace too high.
Feather Falling essentially makes the issue of fall damage a thing of the past. With each level, Feather Falling reduces the damage you take from falling.
For those of us who are a little clumsy, and can often find themselves at the end of a steep drop Feather Falling is a great enchantment. Additionally, it can make quick escapes from fights far more possible. Dipping out of combat and still surviving with considerable distance is always a benefit, and I’m sure you’ll appreciate it.
| Tiers | Reduces Fall Damage |
|---|---|
| 1 | 12% |
| 2 | 24% |
| 3 | 36% |
| 4 | 48% |
3. Protection
The more generic version of Projectile Protection is the enchantment just called Protection. This is a generic all-damage-reducing enchantment that will reduce the amount of damage you receive from most types of damage. Each Tier of this enchantment will reduce a progressively larger amount of damage you receive.
At Tier 4 as we mention below you can reduce a whopping 16% of damage. This is spectacular because in some instances that sliver of HP can be the difference between beating a Boss fight and surviving a tough fight or escaping a dangerous mob.
You can pair Protection with other similar types of enchantments, such as the Projectile Protection that we mentioned above. This covers two avenues of damage and increases the survivability of your character by a considerable margin.
| Tiers | Damage Reduction |
|---|---|
| 1 | 4% |
| 2 | 8% |
| 3 | 12% |
| 4 | 16% |
2. Fire Protection
Most often the things you can expect to find in the Nether are fire, blazes, and lava. This means at the endgame of Minecraft the armor enchantment that’s going to give you the most utility is Fire Protection. This enchantment will reduce the amount of damage your character takes from fire including the amount of time you spend burning.
The Fire Protection is a great enchantment that will save you from many different situations against Skeletons with Flame enchantments on their bows, or in PvP when faced against enemies with Fire Aspect on their Swords. You simply cannot go wrong with putting Fire Protection on your armor.
| Tiers | Reduces Fire Damage |
|---|---|
| 1 | 8% |
| 2 | 16% |
| 3 | 24% |
| 4 | 32% |
1. Blast Protection
Perhaps my most vivid memory of playing Minecraft was sleeping soundly on my bed, and finding a Creeper exploding in my face and instantly killing me. The Blast Protection enchantment makes this fear a thing of the past.
The Blast Protection enchantment will eliminate the risk of running into a Creeper, and you will not have to be afraid at all of the fact that it might explode. Anything that makes the most annoying enemy in the game easy, is the best enchantment in my book, but there are several other advantages as well.
You see, not only does Blast Protection save you from dying to explosions, but will also reduce your knockback as well. This will make sure you don’t accidentally fall off a cliff and die from being pushed too far.
Additionally, TNT will also no longer be scary to you and will allow you to survive cheeky PvP players that make excessive use of explosion tactics.
| Tiers | Reduces Explosion Damage |
|---|---|
| 1 | 8% |
| 2 | 16% |
| 3 | 24% |
| 4 | 32% |
There you have it folks, the best armor enchantments in Minecraft ranked from the worst to the absolute best. Let us know what you think about this, and stick with GameVoyagers for more guides on Minecraft.