How do the 1.9 changes feel, especially the combat?
Honestly, and this is just my opinion from playing a couple dozen hours with the 1.9 snapshots, while they certainly made the combat harder it still feels very much the same to me. The shields are neat but their durability is so crappy that it borders on annoying to me, and they really do block a lot of your view. Skeletons have better AI and are more deadly now, thats cool, and we have neat arrow effects, but actually swinging the sword now with the recovery mechanic it takes more time to kill things, hence the biggest aspect of the "harder" combat IMHO.
So, for me, it's a mixed bag, but it still is squarely Minecraft combat for better or worse and for me at least it really hasn't changed all that much. It might be an entirely different thing in PvP, I wouldn't know how it effects that.
I like a lot of other parts of 1.9 much more than anything combat related, like:
- the new End and Dragon fight
- finally lots of Strongholds per world, not just three anymore
- lightning skeleton traps out in the world!
- dirt paths are sweet
- some new block types for building
- the wings you can glide with
- new boats!!!!!
- new sounds
All of that means more to me than what they improved with the combat, IMHO.