1.4.4 Summoner Minion, Whip & Armor In-Depth Tier List

What you're referring as "using a sidearm" is in reality switching your class to Ranger. This is a thread focusing on Summoner and potential hybrid classes like Melee/Summoner and Mage/Summoner hybrid. Ranger has no sort of synergy with Summoner, if anything it's anti-synergy.
So, using Sunfury to abuse Sharpened is fine but using a Hellwing Bow because it has great DPS and range is not... I don't get it. SnapTap and Night's Edge are apparently too risky, Sunfury doesn't deal any damage itself and this is the one time where Mana is an issue for Magic weapons without Mage armors. In this case... why aren't you using a Ranged weapon, which has no weakness whatsoever? This is just an arbitrary restriction more than anything else.

In any case my point still stands, in a regular summoner run you won't have any "class" restrictions and you'll just use whatever works best, and the best minion for the Wall is the Imp by a small margin.

18 damage. I seem to be able to deal one more damage per hit, which is exactly what I expected.
Looks like I'm wrong about how defense rounding works.

That makes 39 total damage with STN, a 15% difference instead of 7%. That's a lot better, but not enough to make up for the fact that you yourself are no longer atatcking.

I really don't think 1 Armored Cavefish per minute on average is really a thing. At all. On Cavern with good fishing gears, maybe. But when you're in the underground Jungle primarily fishing for Summoning Potion, no. And besides, I don't need the Endurance potion if I'm playing defensive Bee armor strategy and already taking fewer damage from the lasers through Warding modifiers.

okay this is driving me insane how the :red: is this fish so rare to you

like seriously there is a guy in my server who literally uses Armored Cavefish all the time for Seafood Dinner because he prefers to save the Specular Fish for Return potions, what the heck is wrong with your luck?

Where? I skimmed through the video again and you did nothing but relentlessly focus on the bottom eye for the entire video.

In the Bee and Molten Frog tests you can see at the beginning of the fight that I fly up to target the top eye. The only time i didnt do it was with SnapTap because Whips make it impossible to focus on the top eye since it'd constantly retarget to either hungries or the other parts.
 
I really don't think 1 Armored Cavefish per minute on average is really a thing. At all. On Cavern with good fishing gears, maybe. But when you're in the underground Jungle primarily fishing for Summoning Potion, no. And besides, I don't need the Endurance potion if I'm playing defensive Bee armor strategy and already taking fewer damage from the lasers through Warding modifiers.
It took me a minute to get an Armored Cavefish plus two Specular Fish. I think it took me maybe 10-15 seconds to get my first Cavefish. Also, I wasn't using that good fishing equipment, just a Mechanic's Rod and Enchanted Nightcrawlers (both of which are pretty easy to get BTW). No Angler Earring, no High Test Fishing Line, no Angler Tackle Bag, no Angler armour, no Chum Buckets, no Fishing Potion, no Sonar Potion, nothing to boost my fishing power.

Also, there's no reason to not go fishing in a regular Cavern pond primarily for Armored Cavefish. If you consider one extra damage per hit an actual reason to choose a melee weapon with Sharpened over whips with Obsidian armour, then 10% reduced damage taken should be plenty in your eyes.
 
Getting the xeno staff really isn't that hard,martian probes are super common if you haven't done the event so you'll probably just run into one.
If you didn't get one the first time then you can go to the top corner of your world make a platform out of lihizard brick (jungle increases spawn rate), place a water candle, and stand in front of some walls to stop wyverns from spawning. You should have no issues finding probes with this. It takes way less preperation than trying to get something like a sanguine staff.
Xeno staff has this irritating problem specifically against EoL possibly due to its rather small range where it get stuck in return mode mid fight very often and doesn't attack at all. I found this an issue only against EoL though, against every other boss or event it is very reliable and will constantly hit ideal amounts of dps

(I haven't tested xeno against Moon Lord yet and he's another boss where you have to maintain range so it is possible that it would suffer from this issue against him as well)
 
I really think the guide needs info about how some minions scale differently when you summon more than one. Some minions get full dps when you summon a lot of them. (local immunity minions) Others perform well at one minion, but don't scale well beyond that. (static immunity minions)

You should definitely check to see if Optic Staff and Deadly Sphere Staff perform well as a single summon slot alongside other minions.

Slime Staff, Flinx Staff, and Vampire Frog Staff don't scale well with a high minion count, but they are only viable early game when the minion cap is lower so you won't notice as much. They have the potential to perform slightly better when mixed with other minions.

Hornet staff is rated a bit low, but it does have an advantage of being the only pre-hardmode minion not using immunity frames, so you can use it alongside any piercing weapons in the game without losing dps. Pygmy and xeno both have this advantage as well, which might make them more useful for hybrid builds in some cases.

It is definitely worth mentioning that spider maxes single target dps at exactly 3 minions.

I think the Imp Staff is still bugged, but it can cause player attacks and other minions to miss. It wasn't fixed, but it doesn't block damage for as long as it used to.

If you use local immunity minions alongside piercing magic weapons you might notice that the minion damage has to sync up and deal damage in between ticks of magic piercing damage or melee strikes. This will in most cases negatively impact DPS, especially for minions with a high attack speed.

Summary:

No Immunity:


These minions don't block other weapons from dealing damage and ignore damage from all other weapons. They work great with melee weapons or spammy or long lasting piercing magic weapons. (Rainbow gun, Inferno fork, Crimson Rod, Numbus Rod, etc)
  • Hornet Staff
  • Pygmy Staff
  • Xeno Staff
Local Immunity:

These minions don't block other weapons from dealing damage but can be blocked by melee and piercing weapons. They can be used in large numbers with other minions, but melee weapons or spammy or long lasting piercing magic weapons will temporarily stop them from dealing damage. (Rainbow gun, Inferno fork, Crimson Rod, Nimbus Rod, etc)
  • Finch Staff
  • Blade Staff
  • Sanguine Staff
  • Pirate Staff
  • Raven Staff
  • Tempest Staff
  • Terraprisma
Local Immunity (With special scaling):

These give the full listed damage for the first minion slot, but use a damage scaling factor for slots after the first. Unlike summoning another minion, the added damage is not reduced by defense, so these minions may be useful for stacking damage to overcome very high defense enemies. Using many minion slots on these minions usually gives a poor return compared to summoning individual minions.
  • Stardust Dragon Staff
  • Desert Tiger Staff (+40% damage per slot after the first)
Static Immunity:

These minions don't block other weapons from dealing damage but will block additional minions beyond the first from dealing damage. They can also be blocked by melee and piercing weapons.
  • Slime Staff
  • Flinx Staff
  • Vampire Frog Staff
  • Spider Staff (3 immunity slots, one for each spider sprite)
  • Optic Staff
  • Deadly Sphere Staff
Global Immunity:

This minion blocks and are blocked by everything other than non-piercing projectiles when it comes to dealing damage. I suggest using a projectile weapon with non-piercing ammo with this minion.
  • Imp Staff

I don't know exactly how Stardust Cell Staff works, so I did not place it in any category.
 
Last edited:
So, using Sunfury to abuse Sharpened is fine but using a Hellwing Bow because it has great DPS and range is not... I don't get it.
Sunfury in this case is used to support and strengthen your minions mainly, it's synergy. Hellwing bow is used to just do more damage than Pure or Hybrid summoner by really just playing Ranger instead of something resembling Summoner at that point.

We both know that Ranger >>>> Summoner in the WoF fight. Say that not using a "Best" option for a particular fight is just setting yourself back, but I stand that this thread is about Summoner or at least have the minion/whips as a very significant focus in a loadout. Your argument is literally "Summoner isn't that bad for WoF, just temporarily switch your class to Ranger and you'll be fine."


In any case my point still stands,
My point about if Frogs are better for a defensive Bee Armor + Sharpened playstyle was literally never addressed let alone refuted. I will not be changing Frog's placement as long as this is not refuted.


okay this is driving me insane how the :red: is this fish so rare to you
I don't know man. I remember in a mage playthrough the line snapped at Crystal Serpent two times in a row. Guess I'm just unlucky?

In the Bee and Molten Frog tests you can see at the beginning of the fight that I fly up to target the top eye.
Interesting. In that case I will simply do some DPS tests with my defensive playstyle (why didn't I do this sooner?).

(30+ minutes later)

So here's what I found. I played with Bee armor + Sharpened only holding a Melee weapon and not using it at all, played defensively only relying on minions. Ex. Stuff buff active, Menacing on accessories. No whips used except for clearing Hungries at the start without targeting WoF directly.

While trying to exclude Hungries from DPS results as much as possible, here's what the DPS Meter told me, approximately:

Full Imp: 190-250 (Can dip as low as under 180 if all attacks at the same time with i-frames in mind)

Full Frog: 200-290 (Can dip under 200 if most/all frogs are stacked on top of each other)

Frog + 2-3 Flinx: 200-300 (Slightly more consistent?)

3 Imp + 3 Frog: 300+ (Seemingly consistent)


Conclusion: Full Imp is lackluster as it gets slightly lower DPS, but another thing is that its aggro range is lower and AI shenanigans happened much more often while testing imps than Frogs or Flinx. In general WoF tests with Full Imp felt longer.

However, in the end, we are both half-right as mixing Imp & Frog leads to the best results that also seem consistent. I don't know how minion i-frames fully work, but despite Mail's comment about Imp Staff, it seem to fare much better when mixed with another minion as the Imps themselves don't run into i-frames as much, and the frogs aren't as likely to be stacked on top of each other either. Imps can attack the top eye consistently, while the frogs can attack the mouth & bottom eye consistently.




With this in mind, I will be rising Imp Staff from A- to A.

They can be used in large numbers with other minions, but melee weapons or spammy or long lasting piercing magic weapons will temporarily stop them from dealing damage.

Is this really true for Blade Staff? From my experience, Blade Staff can deal damage just fine even while swinging Fetid Baghnakhs. I can see Blade Staff's damage numbers (16~) while attacking Retinazer with Fetid Baghnakhs when looking close.


Hornet staff is rated a bit low, but it does have an advantage of being the only pre-hardmode minion not using immunity frames, so you can use it alongside any piercing weapons in the game without losing dps.
I took this into account, but its slow projectile speed just kills it honestly. If the stingers were as fast as Imp's fireballs, it would actually be really good against Skeletron, the best minion for it in theory.


You should definitely check to see if Optic Staff and Deadly Sphere Staff perform well as a single summon slot alongside other minions.
Deadly Sphere Staff will be ranked slightly higher as from what I saw it seem to barely contribute additional DPS in a Sanguine Staff setup.

Optic Staff is pretty much hopeless. For Blade Staff, It's too dumb to be used Underground alongside it, and Blade Staff setups are best used with Full Warding, hurting Optic's damage output significantly. With whips, one cannot even be confident that one pair one twins will pull higher damage than one dagger attacking 5-6 times a second consistently for 30-40 damage a hit. With Sanguine Staff, Optic has lower base damage, so that's pretty much an immediate no considering Firecracker.
 
Last edited:
Xeno staff has this irritating problem specifically against EoL possibly due to its rather small range where it get stuck in return mode mid fight very often and doesn't attack at all. I found this an issue only against EoL though, against every other boss or event it is very reliable and will constantly hit ideal amounts of dps
I haven't had any issues with xeno in the EOL fight. Now on occasion they would teleport offscreen when she dashed and go into reutrn mode but they quickly caught back up and continued attacking. However this didn't prevent them from being the best pre lunar minion in my testing.
 
I haven't had any issues with xeno in the EOL fight. Now on occasion they would teleport offscreen when she dashed and go into reutrn mode but they quickly caught back up and continued attacking. However this didn't prevent them from being the best pre lunar minion in my testing.
I am fully aware Xeno Staff is better than Sanguine/Blade for daytime EoL, but the occasional AI stupidity makes them lose out on DPS and to an extent closes the gap in overall damage output. If its AI was perfectly consistent like Blade/Sanguine, it would be ranked higher when I eventually get to it (I really need to stop replying to this thread for now and go back to my video lmao)
 
Cool_Whip.png
Cool Whip: B+ (Confidence: 3/5): Despite being the worst whip alongside Leather whip, It's still underrated and has a few uses. Mainly, acting as a temporary substitute for Durendal for Blade Staff Pre-Mech. Both Spinal Tap and Snapthorn have low base damage and aren't remotely efficient for DPS in Hardmode. The Cool Whip has the highest base damage & range of all Pre-Mech whips, and combined with Frostburn + Snowflake minions, it gives you something to deal extra damage with after you've already set up Spinal Tap & Snapthorn tag damage. Not to mention it has enough range to be able to hit Spazmatism's first phase unlike Spinal Tap and Snapthorn. Another use it has is if you are grinding for Firecracker from Wall of Flesh, this whip can help shred WoF with Obsidian Armor especially. But at the end of the day, as I said, it's still just a substitute for until you get either Durendal or Firecracker depending on your setup. B+ is appropriate for it.
Wouldn't you just be better off using a weapon from a different class in this case? It has better dps than pre hardmode whips but for hardmode weapon standards its dps is very poor.
You could even use a melee weapon to take advantage of sharpened.

Also wouldn't firecracker still be better with blades? Blade damage is like 6 + 7 from spinal tap tag is 13, multiply that by 1.75 = 22. Add that to firecracker's 40 damage and you effectively get 62 damage per firecracker swing vs cool whip's 50.
 
I haven't had any issues with xeno in the EOL fight. Now on occasion they would teleport offscreen when she dashed and go into reutrn mode but they quickly caught back up and continued attacking. However this didn't prevent them from being the best pre lunar minion in my testing.
I just retested and ime it does have issues with range and not having omni-directional firing (it can only attack enemy if it is above them, apparently). This coupled with EoL relative long range and having to be below her sometimes results in UFOs not being able to fire at all.
For a summon with reliability as its big selling point, I don't think these two constraints are great.
 
Wouldn't you just be better off using a weapon from a different class in this case? It has better dps than pre hardmode whips but for hardmode weapon standards its dps is very poor.
You could even use a melee weapon to take advantage of sharpened.
Firecracker takes Summon Tag into account as if the tag is added to the minion's base damage, despite whip tag being debuffs... That's really strange, but you learn something everyday I guess.

I went and tested this against Twins. What I can see is that they perform roughly the same despite Firecracker being able to deal around 70 damage per explosion when whip stacking. Both peak at 1500~ DPS against Retinazer spinning while standing still, but if I had to say it, I'd say that Firecracker might do a negligible amount more overall damage than Cool Whip, and that's assuming SnapTap Tag damage has 90-100% uptime. Cool Whip remains relevant DPS-wise with its moderately higher base damage and snowflake minion contributing DPS, and remains a good option to support Blade Staff Pre-mech, especially against Destroyer where Tag damage is pretty much irrelevant.

Using three whips (Firecracker/Spinal/Snap): Necessary to make Firecracker around on par with Cool Whip in this scenario

Using only 1-2 whips (Cool/Spinal or Snap): Seems to favors Cool Whip considerably DPS-wise

Warding on accessories: Seems to be a tad bit better for when using Firecracker, as the explosion damage in the case of Blade Staff relies on Summon Tag damage for obvious reason.

Menacing on accessories: Seems to make Cool Whip deal more overall DPS than Firecracker(?)

Overall I'd stick with Cool Whip. Slightly higher range, snowflake can deal a slight amount of damage if your are missing or not attacking at times, and I assume it's better for Destroyer since Tag damage is irrelevant there. Also, a lot of the damage you receive for most of the Twins fight is from Spazmatism's cursed inferno debuff, which can't be reduced with defense.

As for weapons from other classes, Dart Pistol/Rifle could be a viable option since you need to stick closer to the boss anyway. Daedalus kinda has a small delay before it starts raining down the damage, it doesn't get going "right away". Melee weapons like Shadowflame Knife, I doubt they deal as much or equal damage as Cool Whip in a Summoner setup. Mage weapons however, you can do that with Forbidden Armor just fine.
 
As for weapons from other classes, Dart Pistol/Rifle could be a viable option since you need to stick closer to the boss anyway. Daedalus kinda has a small delay before it starts raining down the damage, it doesn't get going "right away". Melee weapons like Shadowflame Knife, I doubt they deal as much or equal damage as Cool Whip in a Summoner setup. Mage weapons however, you can do that with Forbidden Armor just fine.
Cool whip has like 100 base dps, compare that to shadowflame knife's 190 base dps. Like even with spider armor + summoner emblem + jungle's wraith that's 172dps for cool whip. Basically any other damage boost you could give to the cool whip could also be used for the shadowflame knife. I really don't see that snowflake being as powereful as sharpened.

Also wouldn't a non summon weapon just be better for destroyer? If tag damage is irrelevant why are you using whips.

Edit: As for ranged I don't think you need a fricken daedleus to be compettive with cool whip, I'd imagine even a Clockwork assault rifle with crystal bullets would do better than the cool whip. If not Onyx blaster has a very similar recipe to cool whip and probably handily outclasses it.
 
Last edited:
and I assume it's better for Destroyer since Tag damage is irrelevant there.

This would be a great time for another one of those 'A ton of weapons tested against...' posts, but for the Destroyer. He's a popular boss to kill and there have been a lot of arguments over time on what works best on him. It would be a way to help settle this argument and would be genuinely useful to boot.
 
Cool whip has like 100 base dps, compare that to shadowflame knife's 190 base dps. Like even with spider armor + summoner emblem + jungle's wraith that's 172dps for cool whip. Basically any other damage boost you could give to the cool whip could also be used for the shadowflame knife. I really don't see that snowflake being as powereful as sharpened.

Also wouldn't a non summon weapon just be better for destroyer? If tag damage is irrelevant why are you using whips.

Edit: As for ranged I don't think you need a fricken daedleus to be compettive with cool whip, I'd imagine even a Clockwork assault rifle with crystal bullets would do better than the cool whip. If not Onyx blaster has a very similar recipe to cool whip and probably handily outclasses it.
I don't see it. Cool Whip comes close to 100 base damage if not over that depending on how much % bonuses you have. And with Snapthorn, you'll easily be hitting more than two times per second. Combined with frostburn and the snowflake minion, we're looking at way past 200 DPS. This checks out with my estimation of Cool Whip adding around 200 or more DPS to Blade Staff when used after SnapTap. Either way, if we're going to use a Melee weapon, then we switch to Melee Titanium armor in which Cool Whip is irrelevant in anyway.

That said, the more we talk about "side arms" and such, it feels like the concept of "Classes" as a whole is starting to blur. At this point, what's preventing any class/loadout with an offensive playstyle from equipping Pygmy Necklace, Blade Staff, A method of inflicting Ichor and whips? What's preventing a Ranger player from occasionally stopping firing with his gun or bow, and stacking 2-3 free for free additional damage? Wait, why stop here? Why not go for Spider armor for +3 minion slots, that will give an overall bigger damage increase than a Ranger armor, right? Wait, is this even a "Ranger" loadout anymore!?

We need to be careful with this. Stuff like holding a melee weapon for Sharpened for minions, or using the Golden Shower to inflict Ichor for Blade Staff in the early 1.4 days. We should stop there. Unless you are making a dedicated hybrid strategy, that is, but the way you're suggesting "sidearms" leans toward Mixed or even Ranger itself Instead of Summoner or a proper hybrid class involving Summoner. And besides, many people value playing "Pure" classes. And even if Dart Pistol/Rifle did in fact outdamage Cool Whip in a Summoner loadout, Dart Pistol/Rifle needs additional grinding if you've already obtained Berserker's Glove. Plus that will be a lot of Ichor needed considering you've already spent a bunch on Ichor Flasks. Cool Whip is still better against dense amount of enemies and with Obsidian armor, most likely shreds WoF faster as well (Remember, Dart Pistol/Rifle are getting no ranged bonuses here).

Also, Firecracker with Sanguine Staff can kill Expert Destroyer in under a minute if you play aggressively.
 
That said, the more we talk about "side arms" and such, it feels like the concept of "Classes" as a whole is starting to blur. At this point, what's preventing any class/loadout with an offensive playstyle from equipping Pygmy Necklace, Blade Staff, A method of inflicting Ichor and whips? What's preventing a Ranger player from occasionally stopping firing with his gun or bow, and stacking 2-3 free for free additional damage? Wait, why stop here? Why not go for Spider armor for +3 minion slots, that will give an overall bigger damage increase than a Ranger armor, right? Wait, is this even a "Ranger" loadout anymore!?
And this right here is exactly why I think locking yourself to one class is lame.
 
This would be a great time for another one of those 'A ton of weapons tested against...' posts, but for the Destroyer. He's a popular boss to kill and there have been a lot of arguments over time on what works best on him. It would be a way to help settle this argument and would be genuinely useful to boot.
I don't enjoy that fight, and I wouldn't want to do it 50 times. Maybye I could do twins.

I don't see it. Cool Whip comes close to 100 base damage if not over that depending on how much % bonuses you have. And with Snapthorn, you'll easily be hitting more than two times per second. Combined with frostburn and the snowflake minion, we're looking at way past 200 DPS. This checks out with my estimation of Cool Whip adding around 200 or more DPS to Blade Staff when used after SnapTap. Either way, if we're going to use a Melee weapon, then we switch to Melee Titanium armor in which Cool Whip is irrelevant in anyway.
Legendary cool whip has 58 base damage.
With Spider armor + summoner emblem + 6 menacing accesories + wrath + exquisitly stuffed that's 87% summon damage bringing to 108 damage.
Legendary cool whip has a use time of 27
With jungle's fury + ale + exquisitly stuffed + feral claw that's 52% melee speed. This lower's the use time to 17.
So in total that's 381 dps + 8dps from frostburn + whatever that snowflake does

Now shadowflame knife (we still have spider armor and summoner emblem equiped)
Demonic shadowflame knife does 44 base damage.
With 6 menacing accesories + ale + wrath + exquisitly stuffed + warrior emblem (replaces feral claw) that's 69% melee damage. That's ups the knife's damage to 74.
This weapon can crit, with ale + rage + exquisitly stuffed, that brings the crit chance to 25%.
The knife has a use time of 12, this is not effected by melee speed.
With all that the knife does 462.5dps + 15dps from shadowflame + whatever sharpened does.
 
Last edited:
Is this really true for Blade Staff? From my experience, Blade Staff can deal damage just fine even while swinging Fetid Baghnakhs. I can see Blade Staff's damage numbers (16~) while attacking Retinazer with Fetid Baghnakhs when looking close.
Fetid Baghnakhs are the best possible melee weapon for not interfering with minion damage. You want as slow an attack speed as possible to see the effects of melee I-Frame interference. Attacks speed boosting accessories also make the problem less noticeable.

Reforge a "The Breaker" demonite hammer with a sluggish modifier. Go on journey mode, max out the difficulty slider, turn on invincibility. (For the worthy could also give the enemy even more HP for testing.) Stand on top of a high health enemy or boss and keep swinging at it and summon each type of minion one at a time to see how the melee weapon attacks interfere with each minion's damage. If you do this please let me know how Stardust Cell Staff performs because I have not tested it properly.

Some notable slow weapons that may have this problem: Wooden Hammer, Cactus sword, Blade of grass, Fiery Greatsword, Chlorophyte Warhammer. Whips, Flails, and many other longer range melee weapons don't have this problem because they are projectile weapons with the melee damage type and don't use the melee weapon damage dealing algorithm.

The length of immunity frames from melee weapons scales with attack speed. The slowest weapons give I-Frames about 3 times as long as the typical piercing weapon or minion.

The game engine processes projectiles before melee, so on the frame that global immunity wears off, there is one frame where local immunity can deal damage before it gets blocked by global immunity again. If your local immunity minions are sitting on top of an enemy along with a global immunity projectile or melee, they will all have to get their damage in on that on the same frame, just before the global immunity damage hits and they can't damage the enemy again. You should see pulses of damage numbers overlapping 6 times per second for most piercing magic weapons. Slow melee weapons would see numbers about 2 times per second.

Minions that don't stay on top of the enemy are more likely to miss damage due to global immunity. Imp staff and Optic Staff can completely miss damage because they don't stay on top of their targets waiting for global immunity to wear off.

The default I-Frame for magic weapons is 10, summons that have immunity set to something other than 10 have reduced DPS when the enemy is covered in piercing magic projectiles, because I-Frames are rounded up to the nearest multiple of 10.
Spider Staff 15 -> 20
Slime Staff 12 -> 20
Pirate Staff 18 -> 20
Stardust Dragon Staff 7 -> 10
Finch Staff 15 -> 20
Optic Staff 15 -> 20
These numbers might be slightly off because I exported them from an older version of the game.

You should notice a measurable reduction in these minions' damage when attacking a target being hit by Crimson Rod or Nimbus Rod.
 
Last edited:
I don't enjoy that fight, and I wouldn't want to do it 50 times. Maybye I could do twins.


Legendary cool whip has 58 base damage.
With Spider armor + summoner emblem + 6 menacing accesories + wrath + exquisitly stuffed that's 87% summon damage bringing to 108 damage.
Legendary cool whip has a use time of 27
With jungle's fury + ale + exquisitly stuffed + feral claw that's 52% melee speed. This lower's the use time to 17.
So in total that's 381 dps + 8dps from frostburn + whatever that snowflake does

Now shadowflame knife (we still have spider armor and summoner emblem equiped)
Demonic shadowflame knife does 44 base damage.
With 6 menacing accesories + ale + wrath + exquisitly stuffed + warrior emblem (replaces feral claw) that's 69% melee damage. That's ups the knife's damage to 74.
This weapon can crit, with ale + rage + exquisitly stuffed, that brings the crit chance to 25%.
The knife has a use time of 12, this is not effected by melee speed.
With all that the knife does 462.5dps + 15dps from shadowflame + whatever sharpened does.
I tested in-game and this checks out. But there are two big problems with Shadowflame knife you aren't taking into account. First and mainly, you will not land every shot with Shadowflame Knife in an actual playthrough where you are busy dodging attacks, not even close. Shadowflame knife is a small projectile that moves at medium speed, Cool Whip is a whip that overs a wide area and is easier to hit moving targets with (It can even reach Spazmatism during its 1st phase cursed flame spam). Secondly, with non-whip weapons like Shadowflame Knife, you cannot switch to your whips while still having the mouse button held down. This adds an extra layer of annoyance. Not to mention you have to go out of your way to get Shadowflame Knife from Goblin Summoner, meanwhile not only are Blizzards somewhat common unless you're unlucky, but Cool Whip is essentially a 100% drop rate from Ice Golem (Frost Core). You might even get wings from it as well.

So not only is Shadowflame Knife only around on par (against Twins at least) and annoying to use in a Whip setup, but it's worse at shredding crowds, doesn't give you a chance to obtain wings if you go try to get it, and I'm certain it's worse against Destroyer as well. I also prefer saving my time rather than fishing for Rage potions as a Summoner. I also don't see why I'd switch out autoswing on whips for Warrior Emblem? Even if you meant another accessory, if I DON'T use Shadowflame Knife, I can use another accessory instead of Warrior Emblem. I'll stick to Cool Whip.
 
Not to mention you have to go out of your way to get Shadowflame Knife from Goblin Summoner, meanwhile not only are Blizzards somewhat common unless you're unlucky, but Cool Whip is essentially a 100% drop rate from Ice Golem (Frost Core). You might even get wings from it as well.

So not only is Shadowflame Knife only around on par (against Twins at least) and annoying to use in a Whip setup, but it's worse at shredding crowds, doesn't give you a chance to obtain wings if you go try to get it, and I'm certain it's worse against Destroyer as well. I also prefer saving my time rather than fishing for Rage potions as a Summoner.
What is up with your luck. You are seemingly incapable of catching common fish like Armored Cavefish and Hemopiranhas, but you get Blizzards often? Also Goblin Scouts are pretty common so spawning in a Goblin Army isn’t that time-consuming.

Personally I’d rather get Fairy Wings than Frozen Wings because it uses materials from a very common enemy rather than a somewhat rare drop from an enemy that only spawns during specific weather. Plus if I’m fighting Queen Slime for the Blade Staff I should get a lot of Pixie Dust while building the arena.
 
What is up with your luck. You are seemingly incapable of catching common fish like Armored Cavefish and Hemopiranhas, but you get Blizzards often? Also Goblin Scouts are pretty common so spawning in a Goblin Army isn’t that time-consuming.

Personally I’d rather get Fairy Wings than Frozen Wings because it uses materials from a very common enemy rather than a somewhat rare drop from an enemy that only spawns during specific weather. Plus if I’m fighting Queen Slime for the Blade Staff I should get a lot of Pixie Dust while building the arena.
Personally goblin scouts don't spawn very often as I have to dedicate quite a bit of time even with Battle Potion + Water Candle.

My Queen Slime "arena" consists of a Sky Rail only. Phase 1 is perfectly manageable, phase 2 you just want to cheese with a basic Sky Rail.
 
Back
Top Bottom