It's a really complicated subject to tackle due to an immeasurable amount of 1.8 players being obsessed with things staying the same, a lot of them were prepared to hate it before it even dropped. Finding people who actually have legitimate reasons to like/hate either version are the best people to talk to.
I personally 100% agree with this above by
@XtremeElectrix
Combat is seriously not complicated. You time your hits with a clearly visible cooldown. Simple.
Fights ARE exciting.
The justifications behind the PVP change are completely false in my opinion.
however... 1.9 is exciting only
once it gets to a really competitive level, I think he may be referencing from a survival or adept player standpoint, look at those players on SkyWars who can barely hit anything, is it fun for them? but 2 very good players who land every hit, they clash hard and love it. 1.8 seems to be more fun straight out the can for new/bad players and ALSO highly skilled players also.
I love a lot of the changes in the new combat update, critting through shields & instant-deflection from shields mean bow spamming is completely out the window, which I love, it's still useful since their speed is reduced. Not sure what I think about the hoe range being higher.
Obviously I'm not a fan of having to learn to pvp all over again, but I did it from 1.8 to 1.9, so I'm cool with that. I'm totally onboard with this combat update, I see what they are trying to do and I like the combat being universal between all versions and generally getting the entire community under the same roof again would be amazing.