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

If I want an alternative to Blade/Sanguine there's Raven Staff or Desert Tiger Staff, two other summons that are way better than Deadly Sphere Staff.
Then you have misunderstood the purpose of the Deadly Sphere Staff. The purpose of the Deadly Sphere Staff is not to summon a horde of them, but rather to deal instant 100 damage in a line towards the closest or marked enemy every resummon.
It also falls under the category of items used to kill mobs above your event grinder, which includes Optic Staff and Pirate Staff. No big deal if you don't get it, though.

The thing about Deadly Sphere Staff is that you don't really have to go out of your way to farm for what is essentially nonessential for the run. If you get a Solar Eclipse, it's a nice free Deadly Sphere staff. If you don't get one, no biggie. Just go straight for Cultist and Stardust Dragon. Pumpkin Moon is honestly overrated anyway (though you can skip Moon Lord to go farm a Pumpkin Moon with your swanky new Stardust Dragon staff if you don't feel comfortable with killing ML without Papyrus/Necromantic)

Side note: It's also the only summon staff that can be used against Enraged Fishron in a minecart cheese arena, so if that's how you roll you will need that staff.
 
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Then you have misunderstood the purpose of the Deadly Sphere Staff. The purpose of the Deadly Sphere Staff is not to summon a horde of them, but rather to deal instant 100 damage in a line towards the closest or marked enemy every resummon.
It also falls under the category of items used to kill mobs above your event grinder, which includes Optic Staff and Pirate Staff. No big deal if you don't get it, though.
Sounds extremely situational, to the point of being situations I've never ever ran into in my playthroughs.

Pumpkings move through walls, same for Martian Saucer's laser. And by the time you obtain Deadly Sphere Staff, Pirates are not an issue whatsoever.

I also don't see how re-summoning is an effective strategy. That's like, 200 DPS or something if you spam? You're supposed to be dealing quad digit DPS at that point.

Pumpkin Moon is honestly overrated anyway
I don't think Pumpkin Moon is overrated considering you get Raven Staff, Hexxed Branch, Spooky Wings, Dark Harvest, Spooky Armor and new accessories equivalent of a +1 minion & 10% summon damage boost assuming you have both Pygmy Necklace & Summoner Emblem and replace them.
 
same for Martian Saucer's laser
It's literally the only thing that goes through walls. If you can get Martian you can get Tabi and turn that laser into a joke.

I also don't see how re-summoning is an effective strategy. That's like, 200 DPS or something if you spam? You're supposed to be dealing quad digit DPS at that point.
Wyverns. Mainly Wyverns. Nobody has time to whip them.

I don't think Pumpkin Moon is overrated considering you get Raven Staff, Hexxed Branch, Spooky Wings, Dark Harvest, Spooky Armor and new accessories equivalent of a +1 minion & 10% summon damage boost assuming you have both Pygmy Necklace & Summoner Emblem and replace them.
You can do Pumpkin after Stardust Pillar and you probably should because Dragon makes the event much easier.
 
It's literally the only thing that goes through walls. If you can get Martian you can get Tabi and turn that laser into a joke.
That only further strengthen my point. Deadly Sphere Staff attacking behind walls and stuff has no real uses in practice.

Wyverns. Mainly Wyverns. Nobody has time to whip them.
Dark Harvest and Morning Star melt wyverns, and does it way faster than if you were to re-summon with Deadly Sphere Staff. In fact from what I saw the dark aura effect also works on multiple segments, Blade Staff with Dark Harvest kills wyverns extremely fast in particular.

If you don't have time to use whips then you have even less time to re-summon minions.
 
Dark Harvest and Morning Star melt wyverns, and does it way faster than if you were to re-summon with Deadly Sphere Staff. In fact from what I saw the dark aura effect also works on multiple segments, Blade Staff with Dark Harvest kills wyverns extremely fast in particular.
but now you have to actually move in the direction of the wyvern
with Deadly Sphere you can just walk in whatever your original direction was and then shred the wyvern off-screen
That only further strengthen my point. Deadly Sphere Staff attacking behind walls and stuff has no real uses in practice.
You do know that Martian Saucer's first phase has 2 more attacks with a huge spread and homing, right? Not to mention literally everything else about the invasion shooting millions of stuff

Laser is arguably the easiest attack to dodge
B-but what about Sanguine REEE
Someone hasn't played MMFTW
No, I will never place a wall down in an arena ever again.
 
but now you have to actually move in the direction of the wyvern
with Deadly Sphere you can just walk in whatever your original direction was and then shred the wyvern off-screen
You have to move in general to not get hit by the Wyvern. If anything you have to spend more time attacking the wyvern than your actual target if you just try to re-summon Deadly Sphere staff.


You do know that Martian Saucer's first phase has 2 more attacks with a huge spread and homing, right? Not to mention literally everything else about the invasion shooting millions of stuff
Second phase is the main threat, and Blade Staff with Dark Harvest can actually burn through it pretty fast.


Someone hasn't played MMFTW
No, I will never place a wall down in an arena ever again.
???
 
but now you have to do Pumpkin Moon before Martian Madness.
If I'm skipping Pumpkin Moon then I'm going straight to Stardust pillar no questions asked.


You mean fall or run in a straight line?
If Wyvern comes a little closer switching to Blade + Dark Harvest would be pretty good ngl
I think it's more than clear at this point that there is no strong arguments in favor of Deadly sphere staff, and that it won't move in the tier list currently.
 
Sounds extremely situational, to the point of being situations I've never ever ran into in my playthroughs.

Pumpkings move through walls, same for Martian Saucer's laser. And by the time you obtain Deadly Sphere Staff, Pirates are not an issue whatsoever.

I also don't see how re-summoning is an effective strategy. That's like, 200 DPS or something if you spam? You're supposed to be dealing quad digit DPS at that point.


I don't think Pumpkin Moon is overrated considering you get Raven Staff, Hexxed Branch, Spooky Wings, Dark Harvest, Spooky Armor and new accessories equivalent of a +1 minion & 10% summon damage boost assuming you have both Pygmy Necklace & Summoner Emblem and replace them.
This situation, where i get a free Deadly Sphere staff while farming for other events/items (terraria reeaallly likes chaining events together huh) has happened twice so far, so I used it in one playthrough for crowd control during events (Blade started to lag here, and getting out and whipping was too risky) and kill off Cultist for a free upgrade to Stardust later on. C+ seems pretty fair. Its really just a situation of 'oh huh, this seems neat' and then its fine enough till Cultist. I was pleasantly surprised with them tbh. Fairly situational (You have Blade, not Sanguine and have to farm a bunch without having to whip all the time and can't be bothered to farm for a new minion any further) but it does the job.

Tried going for Desert Tiger in 1.4.0.5 Summoner, made an AFK farm and stayed for 2 hours with no luck, then made a full stack of Slime Crowns and farmed King Slime till i got one (still have the leftover stack). Went to use it on Golem annd...targeted everything OUTSIDE the temple altar, followed by me dying and going 'nope'. Now granted, I did see there were some AI changes in 1.4.1, but the Tiger has left a real bad first impression on me. Not interested in doing another Summoner run to see how it fares in a standard playthrough, atleast not for a long while (master ftw summoner really takes a toll huh). Haven't seen much footage of the new Tiger online either, just some mumblings about better AI here and there. Would definitely be interested in seeing a video on it from you (I do follow both your channels, good stuff!)

Pumpkin Moon isn't overrated, its just tedious, since most of the high priority Summoner drops come with Mourning Wood (Spooky Armor/Necro Scroll), except you can't go through many of them in a single night without a significant boost in DPS because Pumpking-only waves start spawning (curse you wave 7!). Definitely much easier to skip around with Stardust Dragon and reach like W14 with minimal effort. I tried grinding for the Necro Scroll around Plantera/Golem in one run, and it took me about 20 Moons before one dropped. Gets real annoying when you have multiple bosses ready to telefrag you at your spawn. I even got the Xeno staff before I got the Scroll. An experience I would not try again. Going for Raven Staff (Outclassed by Dragon) or Dark Harvest (Useful but not entirely necessary for a more passive ML fight) would be even more tedious without Stardust Dragon, something I did do in my most recent Summoner FTW Run, and would definitely recommend for late-game build optimisation. I've literally only play Master mode though, maybe its significantly easier on Expert.
 
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so I used it in one playthrough for crowd control during events (Blade started to lag here, and getting out and whipping was too risky)
I don't think you'd rather deal depressing and unplayable damage output with Deadly Sphere Staff than shred crowds of enemies with Morning Star and achieve solid DPS against minibosses with Blade Staff.

and kill off Cultist
Deadly Sphere Staff is one of the worst minions possible for the job. Blade and Sanguine are blatantly better against Cultist, there's no debate here.
 
Deadly Sphere Staff is one of the worst minions possible for the job. Blade and Sanguine are blatantly better against Cultist, there's no debate here.
Blade isn't that good at Cultist because of its immunity to Ichor, so if you aren't good at whip stacking I think Sanguine is better. If you don't have Sanguine you could get Desert Tiger with very little effort which performs far better than Deadly Sphere.
 
I don't think you'd rather deal depressing and unplayable damage output with Deadly Sphere Staff than shred crowds of enemies with Morning Star and achieve solid DPS against minibosses with Blade Staff.
How to instantly tell if someone doesn't play on MMFTW
 
Blade isn't that good at Cultist because of its immunity to Ichor, so if you aren't good at whip stacking I think Sanguine is better. If you don't have Sanguine you could get Desert Tiger with very little effort which performs far better than Deadly Sphere.
>Desert Key
>Very little effort
😆
I don't think you'd rather deal depressing and unplayable damage output with Deadly Sphere Staff than shred crowds of enemies with Morning Star and achieve solid DPS against minibosses with Blade Staff.
Spheres being stronger alone means i can simply relax for a bit and hide or run away and let them handle the events for a bit. Classic Summoner strats. Zero risk to go out and get bodied.
Deadly Sphere Staff is one of the worst minions possible for the job. Blade and Sanguine are blatantly better against Cultist, there's no debate here.
Blade is definitely not the best against Cultist due to Ichor immunity. Sanguine's probably better yes, but like I said, if you don't have Sanguine, Sphere does a pretty decent job as a stop-gap measure between it and Stardust staves, hence my preference for C+ for the minion. If a Solar Eclipse drops this, you can just be lazy and finish off the final fights with it, speeding though Golem or Cultist. And yes, in an ideal run, you would be running both Blade and Sanguine together, to shore up the other's weaknesses.
 
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How to instantly tell if someone doesn't play on MMFTW
Hi there @Vikilum once again I must ask you to keep to the topic of the thread. The purpose here is not to talk about, or spot, who plays on the For the Worthy seed on master mode. Shyguy, the thread creator, has mentioned before, the list is for expert/master, not the specialized FTW seed. So can we let it go please?
 
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So i was watching Shyguymask's video on the Finch staff and was rather intrigued by the use of Snapthorn, since Snapthorn alone can take out BoC handily. I initially assumed that its use probably distorted the conclusions the video tries to make, and went to test the Finches with the Leather Whip alone.

Turns out not only are the Finches more than capable of doing so, you can beat BoC without Flinx gear or any tinkers at all. You can jump from ore armors straight to Obsidian/Imps, speedrunning early-game summoner so to speak. You'd need boots of any kind, a double jump of any kind, 2 gravitation potions (or any other way to reach Sky Islands) and a bit of farming in the Jungle for a Summoning potion/Feral Claws as well as the Finch Staff. By the time you're done, the Zoologist and by extension, the Leather Whip should be available. And I think its possible to beat it without autoswing/necklace too. On Master,since that's the only mode I play.

Used a Grappling Hook (yes that one) for the Hook and never went below 200 HP and never bothered healing during the fight.

Make BoC your first boss today! The experience was even easier than running pure Snapthorn too.
 
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So i was watching Shyguymask's video on the Finch staff and was rather intrigued by the use of Snapthorn, since Snapthorn alone can take out BoC handily. I initially assumed that its use probably distorted the conclusions the video tries to make, and went to test the Finches with the Leather Whip alone.

Turns out not only are the Finches more than capable of doing so, you can beat BoC without Flinx gear or any tinkers at all. You can jump from ore armors straight to Obsidian/Imps, speedrunning early-game summoner so to speak. You'd need boots of any kind, a double jump of any kind, 2 gravitation potions (or any other way to reach Sky Islands) and a bit of farming in the Jungle for a Summoning potion/Feral Claws. And I think its possible to beat it without autoswing/necklace too.

Used a Grappling Hook (yes that one) for the Hook and never went below 200 HP and never bothered healing during the fight.

Make BoC your first boss today! The experience was even easier than running pure Snapthorn too.
From my experience it is even possible to defeat the Destroyer with Finch + Durendal + Spinal Tap (Shark tooth/Stinger necklaces, spider armor)
However, in this case I assume that Durendal deals the most damage
 
you can beat BoC without Flinx gear or any tinkers at all.

You'd need boots of any kind, a double jump of any kind, 2 gravitation potions (or any other way to reach Sky Islands) and a bit of farming in the Jungle for a Summoning potion/Feral Claws as well as the Finch Staff.
Honestly this sounds like about as much grind as just getting Flinxy Boy, so it's not much of a progression skip really.
 
Updated the tier list again after a long time!

A lot of time has passed as well as numerous TRAEcord discussions happening since I joined it. The "meta" has shaken up somewhat and so did my opinion in some aspects of Summoner as a whole. I made a number of changes to various descriptions to better reflect my perspective today, mainly to Stardust Cell Staff, Kaleidoscope and Morning Star. Speaking of Morning Star, it dropped from A tier all the way down to B- tier. Time has greatly worsened my view on it, since its performance against minibosses & Empress of Light disappoints and is heavily outclassed by Firecracker & weapons from other classes for this important role. Stardust Cell Staff also dropped a sub-tier and is now behind Dragon as a result of Moon Lord builds favoring hybrid over whips overall.

I may update the list again when the Labor of Love update and its numerous balance changes release, because Whips in particular will get a lot of changes.
 
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