TL;DR: Fireball deflection is a normal attack: hit the fireball with a sword, any item, or even your bare hand. The fireball is slow enough to see coming, and hitting it is easier than you think. Sending it into the Ghast takes practice. But a miss hurts a lot, so read Practice setup and Common mistakes before you try it. Killing a Ghast with its own fireball is one of the most satisfying moments in Minecraft.
Ghast fireballs are slower than they look.
Some players dodge or duck behind a block. Hitting the fireball back is the cool move, but only try it when you are ready for a miss.
How deflection works
When a Ghast fires at you, the fireball travels in a straight line, slowly, toward where you were standing when it launched. You have time to react, but not time to waste. If you have no armor, one direct hit can take up to about half of your 10 hearts on Easy and most of them on Normal, and on Hard it can defeat you in one hit. Fire from the blast can hurt you even more.
Attack the fireball with your sword, the same way you attack a mob (left-click on a computer). It flies off in the direction you are looking, so face the Ghast when you hit it. If it hits the Ghast, the Ghast dies, and it counts as your kill. The Ghast's loot drops where the Ghast was, so never chase it over lava. A Ghast drops a Ghast tear about half the time, not every time.
That is the whole mechanic.
The timing
Watch the Ghast. Just before it fires, it opens its eyes and mouth and makes a screeching sound. That is the wind-up. A Ghast that can see you fires about every 3 seconds, so be ready for the next one.
When you see the fireball leave the Ghast, turn to face it and attack it. You do not need to sprint. You just need to click when the fireball is close, and keep clicking until it flies away. If you miss, it hits you, so have a plan for a miss (see Common mistakes).
The sweet spot is when the fireball is within your reach. A sword reaches 3 blocks on most setups, so that means about 3 blocks away.
What to use
Any melee attack deflects. A sword is a fine choice, but it does not reach any farther than your bare hand. Both reach 3 blocks on most setups. Fists work too, and the fireball is just as easy to hit with them.
You don't need a charged bow shot. You don't need anything enchanted. A stone sword works.
Practice setup
Practice in a new test world, not your main world. If you die in Survival, you lose your items, fireballs can wreck nearby builds, and on Bedrock, using Creative mode or cheats turns off achievements in that world for good. When you make the test world, turn on cheats (the Allow Commands or Allow Cheats setting) so you can switch game modes.
Build a small room out of cobblestone with a 1-block window. Wood and dirt can be blown apart by fireballs, and the blasts start fires. Get a Ghast spawn egg in Creative mode and put a Ghast outside the window, at about the same height as you. Ghasts leave Creative players alone, so go into your room and then switch to Survival. Use Easy, wear armor, and start with full hearts. If things go wrong, set the difficulty to Peaceful and the Ghast vanishes. Let the fireball come through the window. Stand back. Time your attack.
The small window forces the fireball toward you. It removes the variables. With practice, you should start landing it.
Why this move is worth learning
One: a deflected fireball kills a Ghast in one hit, with no bow needed. Two: it's free, so no arrows are spent. Three: a Ghast drops a Ghast tear only about half the time, but in newer versions a Ghast killed by a fireball you hit back always drops the "Tears" music disc. Four: it is genuinely cool and your friends will ask how you did it. Five: it gives you a second way to beat Ghasts. A bow is still a good way to take one down from far away (two shots from a plain bow are enough), so bring one too.
Common mistakes
- Having no plan for a miss. A direct hit hurts a lot, and on Hard it can defeat a player with no armor in one hit. Wear armor, start with full hearts, and stay near a sturdy block like cobblestone that you can duck behind. A Ghast cannot shoot through blocks, but a fireball can blow weak ones apart. On Bedrock, a Ghast can fire the moment you step back out, so be ready.
- Swinging too early. On most setups you can only reach about 3 blocks, so a swing at a fireball 5 or 6 blocks away hits nothing. Click when it is close, and keep clicking.
- Hitting it into a wall right next to you. A deflected fireball still explodes when it hits a block, and the blast can hurt you if you are close. Face the Ghast or open air when you swing.
- Giving up too soon. The timing is learnable, and many players need quite a few tries. Heal back to full hearts between tries.
A closing thought
Most skills in Minecraft are passive — you build a thing, it works, or it doesn't. Fireball deflection is active. It requires timing and attention and you can feel yourself getting better at it.
That's rare. Most games don't give you something like this until much later.
Pair this with The Ghast Problem for the full Ghast-survival framework.
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