Weapons & Equip The whips go against the principles of the summoner

Terru

Terrarian
First off, the whips are essentially a melee weapon with little range.. on the squishiest class in the game. Why..? For what purpose? You don't want to be close to the enemies when being squishy like that. The second thing is that the whips target enemies for your minions. First problem with that is that you have no range to target specific enemies, so you use it more for self defense. Second problem is that the whip sweeps from up to down, which means that whatever specific target you want dead will NOT be tagged, instead it'll have the first enemy that the whip sweeps through, since there can only be one target for it. Finally, why was the summoner, a magic orientated class, given a melee weapon that has less range than the yoyos? Why do they just reuse melee weapon prefixes which give them critical chance bonuses.. for a weapon class that literally cannot deal critical hits.

As for proposed solutions, I have atleast a few. If we're really gonna go with the whip idea, give them atleast near unlimited range and have them be more of a point and click sort of weapon, where you click a spot, the whip travels towards that spot you clicked, then cracks the whip at that specific spot. This already solves a lot of problems, one with the range, second to not be a self defense weapon and third to actually let you tag the enemies you truly want dead. Of course, all of this said, the minions still like to disregard the enemies you tag, which is more of a problem with the minion AI, but I digress.

Edit: I realised another thing about whips that makes their current state even more inexcusable, ties into the self defense part. I was doing the old one's army tier 2, with the ogres. I wanted the minions to focus on the ogre while I would go about killing other enemies.. except the whip tags those enemies that I'd try to kill, meaning they'd lose interest in the ogre. This means that the one thing that the summoner is usually able to do, which is prioritizing multiple targets at once, impossible to do with the whip in the equation.
 
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I agree with all your points. Whips feel like we're supposed to be beta testing them. Incomplete and just not up to snuff.

I feel that whips are of huge benefit to summoners. I also feel quite strongly that it was implemented with less thought and planning than the yoyo's. It has the potential to be absolutely mind blowingly fun, but pure summons playthroughs are a torturous slog, even before 1.4.

Maybe Re-Logic just doesn't like summoners?
 
I have an idea for whips maybe give them effects like cool whip has(creating snowflake that attacks enemies),with abillities to spawn like that it would make much more sense that they are summon weapons
 
First off, the whips are essentially a melee weapon with little range..

I agree with you on this one. Although I do love Journey's End I'd have to say that this part went horribly wrong. I tried the whip out right away only to soon find out that it's a great way to get yourself killed in Master Mode. Might be ok in easy mode.

As the OP stated, the summoner is not a melee class. It's like a ranged class but without a weapon. The best bet is to dodge, avoid, or just ignore altogether enemies. The reason for this is that their armor is the worst in the game. The concept of enemy targeting is a good one but it doesn't work as a melee weapon.

There already exists items in the game that should be tailored towards Summoners and would fit the playstyle. Examples would be the Bee Gun and Bat Scepter. You are "summoning", adding extra creatures into the world, only their damage is based off of magic instead of summoning.

Pre-1.4 I think you could redirect targeting just by attacking an enemy with a weapon so I wasn't sure how this is a new concept.



The concept of the Summoner is that you are a weak sissy-ninny and you Summon creatures to do the work for you. Instead of the whip I would have prefered a 0 dmg weapon that has great knockback. Keep the whip though. Only make it more like a Castlevania whip. I thought the Devs finally realized how much this game needed a Belmont whip and decided to put one in. I was not right.
 
There already exists items in the game that should be tailored towards Summoners and would fit the playstyle. Examples would be the Bee Gun and Bat Scepter. You are "summoning", adding extra creatures into the world, only their damage is based off of magic instead of summoning.

I love this idea, tiny summons that suicide themselves into enemies upon summoning, so you have to actively summon them. It is also not hard to implement since they are technically the same weapon, just deal summon damage instead.
 
I love this idea, tiny summons that suicide themselves into enemies upon summoning, so you have to actively summon them. It is also not hard to implement since they are technically the same weapon, just deal summon damage instead.
Althrough there'd need to be a difference between magic weapon that has homing projectiles and a saummon weapon with self-destroying minions. For instance, the latter could be defined by sticking around close to the Player if there's no targets left, and could be directed to attack specific enemies so they don't waste the initial (very strong) attack from followers on some weak monster while there's a boss around.
 
Being someone who enjoys the summoner class and prioritizes getting the bewitching table after killing skeletron and the spider armor as soon as I get to hard mode, I totally agree with this. Currently, the whips leave much to be desired.
 
As someone who only plays ranger, but tried Summoner when I got hornet staff and some bee armor pieces, and made the Jungle Whip, just to see what them whips are all about, never again. :p
In the time it took me playing Summoner to get QB down to 50%, QB is already dead if playing ranger with a demonite bow and fossil armor.
The idea is neat, somewhat understand what they were going for, like, fighting alongside your pets, but the whip is just kind of awkward to use.
QB is generally fine with the eye of cthulhu shield since you can charge into her when she's charging causing you to deal both shield and whip damage, and take no damage.
But I can't imagine killing more difficult bosses lul.

If I could decide, I would make a new type of bow for the summoner, being shortbows. They'd have the abilities whips do with the tagging and all that, but with longer range.
But... shortbows, so they do have shorter range (the arrows start dropping quicker) and lower damage than regular bows. Model wise they'd be smaller than other bows.

And also, this goes for both whips and the imaginary bow that I'm so gonna mod in once tmod is updated, but every weapon I would suggest give a new skill to every summon.
Like say, a shortbow dropped by the Queen Bee would give, if using Hornet Staff, the bee's the ability to basically grab on to the targeted enemy causing them to get one poison stack for every Hornet summoned, as well as the damage they do normally like once a second for 3 seconds, poison get applied at the end, but they release if targeting is lost (you stop hitting/shooting), meaning no poison stacks. Their normal attacks don't apply poison until the stacked poison debuff is gone from the target.
As an example, if one hornet normally does 1 poison damage per tick, with this skill, and 5 hornets summoned, you will do 5 damage per tick instead.

Basically, whips would stay, though maybe a buff here and there. But shortbows would be a more ranged alternative.
 
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Althrough there'd need to be a difference between magic weapon that has homing projectiles and a saummon weapon with self-destroying minions. For instance, the latter could be defined by sticking around close to the Player if there's no targets left, and could be directed to attack specific enemies so they don't waste the initial (very strong) attack from followers on some weak monster while there's a boss around.

I referenced those items because by the time you get them there are far better items for a Mage. Also because you just change the dmg from Magic to Summon and now the Summoner just got upgraded.

Get the Bee Gun with the Bee Armor and the Bat Deal with the.....bat era.
 
I agree. Didn't Cenx say summoners were getting some love this update? I don't see it. We have no Pre-Boss summoner armor, 5 pre hardmode summoner weapons, 2 of which are rare drops, and 1 that's completely useless. Then we have the terraprisma, A weapon you can get by fighting the empress of light when she's enraged. Except it's the hardest to get with the summoner class. Summoner is still the weakest class, and whips only add insult to injury. They aren't practical for fighting.
 
I agree. Didn't Cenx say summoners were getting some love this update? I don't see it. We have no Pre-Boss summoner armor, 5 pre hardmode summoner weapons, 2 of which are rare drops, and 1 that's completely useless. Then we have the terraprisma, A weapon you can get by fighting the empress of light when she's enraged. Except it's the hardest to get with the summoner class. Summoner is still the weakest class, and whips only add insult to injury. They aren't practical for fighting.
Yeah... I saw one idea for starting summoner class armor and items I liked, which was to have living wood armor and a living wood sapling minion, all made at a living wood loom with wood.
 
Whips are absolutely horrible.

They are bad as a weapon since they don't do that much damage. They are bad as self-defense since they have very weak knockback. They are bad as crowd control due to diminishing effects when hitting several targets. They demand you being in close melee range on class with weakest defense. Their tag mechanics can't be used in practice.

I find spear being way better weapon for a summoner than a whip. At least, a spear can push an enemy away. But generally, you'll want a ranged or magic weapon.
 
How about a banner that gives more control to the user while also boosting the stats of minions. The banner will allow the player to:
●Tag multiple enemies by clicking on them.
▪When multiple enemies are tagged, minion swarms will divide split up to attack the targeted enemies
▪You will only be able to tag a total of enemies equal to your current amount of summoned minions (So if you currently have 3 imps, you can only tag a max number of 3 enemies) going over the limit will remove the oldest tag
●Tagging enemies increases minion aggro range
▪Self explanatory but it's something I'm surprised they didn't fix
●boost minion stats by holding out the banner
▪Different banners can have different effects like increased speed, damage, crit chance, or inflicting status effects on enemies.
▪This could have players put up different banners for different situations, like a defense banner that will reduce incoming damage , but also reduce damage and aggro range for stressful situations.

Whips always felt like they got in the way when trying to take out tougher enemies in a crowd. They did however come in handy to push enemies back. So perhaps also giving the banner a weak, low range, but high knockback swing attack.

(The whole banner idea is from the thorium mod, but wasn't really fleshed out and overshadowed by ranged summoning staffs)
 
The simplest solution might be to buff the defense on summoner armor to reflect the new meta. With the introduction of whips, summoners would now be a mid-range class. They wouldn't be as tanky as melee, of course, but since they'd want to be a bit closer to the enemy they'd be able to take more hits than a ranged or magic class.

Increasing the knockback on whips would also help in keeping enemies at bay. Perhaps adding an accessory that gives you a chance at negating a hit at the cost of despawning a minion and forcing you to re-summon it.
 
The simplest solution might be to buff the defense on summoner armor to reflect the new meta. With the introduction of whips, summoners would now be a mid-range class. They wouldn't be as tanky as melee, of course, but since they'd want to be a bit closer to the enemy they'd be able to take more hits than a ranged or magic class.

Increasing the knockback on whips would also help in keeping enemies at bay. Perhaps adding an accessory that gives you a chance at negating a hit at the cost of despawning a minion and forcing you to re-summon it.

I like this idea the best, but perhaps an increase on whip range as well. As it is, in almost every stage of the game all other classes have more direct damage range than summoner. If the class is changed to go into pure close range for direct damage, then that feels like it's taking away from the melee class.

Perhaps instead, they add more sentry/minion compatibility? Or at least make it more viable for boss fights and what-not. I feel like adding in the ability to summon sentries either with limited or no mobility might help, as well as allowing tag to increase agro range for minions
 
I disagree. Whips give summoners a way to force their summons to target specific enemies. Which is helpful during events.

edit: And when you look at some of the other class weapons. They don't fit the class either.
Meles get several including boomerangs are melee. (not to mention the northpole).
Mages get guns that consume mana instead of ammo. But this is cause having hundreds of different ammo in the inventory is utter nonsense.

When it comes down to it. Ranger is the only class where every weapon the get fits them. They get, bows, repeaters, guns, launchers, etc.
 
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When comes down to it. You want to take down the bosses first. Minions always target the nearest enemies unless you specificy otherwise with a whip.
 
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