Blazes are flying pillars of smoke, surrounded by 12 rods that rotate around their ‘body’. They also have a yellow face, which is pretty much a recolored ‘Steve’. When a blaze dies, it’ll drop 0-1 blaze rod, but only if it’s killed by a player. It also drops 10 experience points.
Occurrence and Behavior
Blazes spawn mainly from monster spawners found inside Nether fortresses, but can also be found elsewhere inside the fortresses. Like any other spawner, up to 4 blazes can spawn at once from a single spawner, but they require a light level of 11 or lower.
Blazes have the ability to fly, which makes it tricky to fight them. When a player gets close enough, the blaze will keep its distance, similar to a ghast, and fire 3 fire charges towards the player. Before these charges are fired, the ghast will catch fire for a brief moment. If you haven’t already, this is the moment to take cover. Unlike the ghast’s fireball, these fire charges cannot be deflected. Anything the charge hits will be set on fire, this includes any solid block.
Between each attack burst, the blaze will have to recharge, in this brief moment the player can move a little closer before taking cover again. Just like endermen, blazes take damage from water, including rain. However, it’s impossible to place water in the Nether so their weakness is hardly a disadvantage to them.
In addition to water, blazes are also damaged by snowballs. However, snow golems cannot be used as they’ll melt in the Nether.
Killing and Surviving Blazes
Killing blazes can be very tricky, especially if you’re unfortunate enough to find a blaze spawner that isn’t inside a room. They have a fast attack rate and their ability to fly means your sword will often be useless, and because a spawner can spawn up to 4 blazes, focusing on just one of them while dodging the attacks of the others becomes a near impossible task.
Luckily their range is quite short, much shorter than the range of your bow, which means you can snipe them from a distance. However, this distance makes it harder to aim and considerably harder to get the loot before others have respawned. Because blazes can fly, their drops can often fall into lava pits and other inaccessible areas.
Using a fire resistance potion is highly recommended, this renders their attacks useless and allows you to simply walk to the spawner, place some torches to prevent respawns and finish off the remaining blazes.
Alternatively, by using a fishing rod you can simply pull them towards you and finish them off with your sword. Blazes do have a melee attack, so even with a fire resistance potion you can still take damage when you’re too close.
Farming
It’s recommended not to destroy their spawners, as they offer a great source for blaze rods, used to make brewing stands and blaze powder, an ingredient used in brewing. In addition to their item drops, blazes also drop 10 experience points, which is a great way to gain large amounts of XP in a short time. Most hostile mobs only drop 5 experience points.
The easiest way to farm them is by simply building a room around their spawner, large enough to make sure they don’t spawn outside the room, but small enough to make sure they can’t fly away. They always spawn near the ground, so a few quick strikes will finish them off in no time. It takes only 2 strikes with either a stone, iron or diamond sword.