Keep Attribute Swapping - Removing it Slows PVP

Lets start from the beginning: Attribute swapping is caused by one line of code that has existed in the game since beta Minecraft.

It has existed long before people could break bedrock and go on the nether roof. It even existed before the nether!

Removing it would remove a bug that only became well known in the 1.21 snapshots, but has existed for a long time, both before it was discovered and after!

Now the most important bit: Removing Attribute Swapping Slows down PVP and will Divide the Community!

Lets just focus on shields, but many others are affected by this.

Shields in Minecraft PVP have been an overpowered and disliked item from the beginning. Mods have been made to nerf shields and PVP practice servers frequently have kits that don't allow shields. In vanilla Minecraft, disabling a shield gives the player who's shield got disabled 0.5 seconds of invulnerability! And to disable a shield you need to use an axe. Players, at least, are still able to disable a shield in one tick because they can attribute swap from the far more useful sword to the axe. By removing attribute swapping, disabling a shield takes 3 ticks to complete instead of the previous 1 tick. This is obviously sluggish.

The more important point is this: By removing attribute swapping, the PVP community will divide (again).

When attack cooldowns were first added in 1.9, the PVP community split to modern and 1.8 PVP. This is a big enough change that many have already stated that they will stay on 26.1.2.