Blaze

"Alchemy addicts and experience farmers are among the few who might have good things to say about the blaze, a ferocious, flaming mob that spawns in the formidable Nether Fortresses. There they patrol, to unknown purpose, aggressively flambéing any and all adventurers who enter their domain."

- Marsh Davies

Blazes are fiery hostile mobs found in nether fortresses.

Spawning
Blazes can spawn naturally in nether fortresses at a light level of 11 or less.

Monster spawners
Blazes spawn from spawners found in nether fortresses.

Drops
Blazes drop:
 * 0-1 s (or up to 4 with the Looting enchantment), but only if killed by the player.
 * 0-2 if killed by the player.
 * 10 experience points if killed by a player or tamed wolf.

Behavior
Although blazes are able to fly, they will stay on the ground or sink down slowly in the air when not attacking. Blazes will not attempt to swim upwards in lava or water, unlike zombie pigmen. Despite taking damage from water (see "Combat" section below), blazes will make no attempts at their protection if somehow pushed or dropped into water. Blazes' pathfinding does not avoid fire, avoids water like other mobs avoid lava, and treats lava like other mobs treat water.

Blazes will target players within 48 blocks. If a blaze is damaged by a player or other mob, it will alert other blazes within 48 blocks to target the attacker. When a blaze has a target, it will begin flying (attempting to remain 0.5–3.5 blocks above the target) and slowly approach the target.

The blaze's normal attack is a trio of fireballs, shot from up to 16 blocks away. Blazes will shoot even without line of sight to the target. When using this attack, the blaze will catch fire for 3 seconds, shoot three fireballs over the course of 0.9 second, then extinguish the fire and wait for 5 seconds before attacking again. A blaze shoots its fireballs with roughly the same lack of accuracy as a dispenser; however the blaze's shots maintain the same speed all the way to the target, unlike the dispenser's, which starts slow and accelerates.

Blazes within 2 blocks of their target will instead perform a melee attack that does damage on normal difficulty, once per second. This attack is not considered fire damage and will not ignite the target.

In Bedrock Edition, Blazes have much lower attack and sight range.

Blaze fireball
Blazes shoot fireballs at their target. If the fireball hits a block, fire will be placed at that location. If it hits an entity that is not immune to fire or does not have the Fire Resistance effect, the entity will take of projectile damage regardless of difficulty level. The target will also be set on fire for 5 seconds, which typically does an additional fire damage over time. A blaze fireball cannot be deflected by melee attacks or arrows, unlike ghast fireballs. However, it can be blocked by shields, which prevents the player from taking direct damage but not from being set on fire.

Data values
Blaze fireballs are also entities which have associated entity data.

Combat
In addition to normal weapons, blazes are hurt by snowballs, taking damage per hit, and by splash water bottles, taking  damage per hit. Like endermen, they are also damaged by water and rain by every half second. Like most Nether mobs, they are immune to fire and lava.

Data values
Blazes have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the mob.

Trivia

 * Blazes are one of the only mobs that can see the player through walls, the other being zombies, spiders, and slimes.
 * When throwing a potion of invisibility on a blaze, the smoke will stay visible.
 * According to Jeb, blazes look the way they do because all mobs in Minecraft are cuboid-shape, so to make them flame-like and magical, he created them as a core surrounded by rotating rods, and he gave them eyes so they had personality.
 * Despite not having visible feet, blazes are still capable of making footstep sounds.