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

[Dapling]

calamity: am i a joke to you?

yes.
(in all seriousness, if we start taking mods into consideration for post moon lord content that opens up a massive nasty can of arbitrary distinctions)

 

[Meowlegend]

The only relevant thing post-moonlord could be building, stardust armor is good at that because of the stardust guardian.

Post Moonlord isnt just about building. You can do more stuff you enjoy with full freedom, like glitch hunting or using and testing different weapons

I would actually argue that it's terrible for building, as the Guardian is massive and always behind you and can really get in the way. Spooky or Old One's Army sets with a Lunar Portal or two is more than enough to get the job done without being a downright detriment to your goal.

Honestly this is why I hate the Stardust Guardian, I think Stardust armor sucks compared to other luminite armors. Solar and Nebula is the best without a doubt

 

[Crimtane Shovel... TWO!!!]

Post Moonlord isnt just about building. You can do more stuff you enjoy with full freedom, like glitch hunting or using and testing different weapons

Note the use of the word "relevant"

 

[Flint🪓]

Note the use of the word "relevant"

Id´say speedkills are relevant too, but right now I would summarize the speedkill situation in 1.4.4 with this:

I don´t say it´s bad but I feel it´s like this, though, watching people melt bosses with op weapons never gets old.

 

[J Bame]

Id´say speedkills are relevant too, but right now I would summarize the speedkill situation in 1.4.4 with this:

View attachment 470992

I don´t say it´s bad but I feel it´s like this, though, watching people melt bosses with op weapons never gets old.

Killtime tests are done to get reliable comparisons of weapons, you can get their DPS in practice and take notes of any drawbacks they may have, something you cant do against dummies or by just calculating the DPS

Speedkills are mostly to find out what the best setup is at any stage by pushing DPS to the max (though their meaning starts dilluting when people turn to facetanking with sentries)

This is all to get data on viability. Doing either of these things with Post Moon Lord gear is a waste of time. These weapons barely have a sense of balance.

 

[Meowlegend]

This is all to get data on viability. Doing either of these things with Post Moon Lord gear is a waste of time. These weapons barely have a sense of balance.

They aren't meant to be balanced since they are supposed to be the most overpowered things ever. That is why you don't get surprised when Zenith kills the DEoL before entering the second phase, lol.

 

[Shyguymask]

yes.
(in all seriousness, if we start taking mods into consideration for post moon lord content that opens up a massive nasty can of arbitrary distinctions)

For fun, if the list took Calamity into account, these would be the most dramatic shifts in my list (For those that never played Cal, some weapons like Raven Staff are buffed a lot while some other stuff (cough cough whips) are nerfed):

Abigail, Flinx, Finch, Slime, Spider and Optic to D tier (I know D tier is not on my list but Calamity is just THAT unfit for much of the unbuffed vanilla minions lol)

Blade Staff to B tier (Even though it got directly buffed, flat damage from whips is gone)

Deadly Sphere somehow stays in A+ despite getting no changes

Raven Staff to S tier

Every whip before Dark Harvest drops to C or B tier

Kaleidoscope to S tier

Forbidden Armor to A+ or borderline S tier

Stardust Armor from unranked to A tier

 

[randomuser425]

For fun, if the list took Calamity into account, these would be the most dramatic shifts in my list (For those that never played Cal, some weapons like Raven Staff are buffed a lot while some other stuff (cough cough whips) are nerfed):

Abigail, Flinx, Finch, Slime, Spider and Optic to D tier (I know D tier is not on my list but Calamity is just THAT unfit for much of the unbuffed vanilla minions lol)

Blade Staff to B tier (Even though it got directly buffed, flat damage from whips is gone)

Deadly Sphere somehow stays in A+ despite getting no changes

Raven Staff to S tier

Every whip before Dark Harvest drops to C or B tier

Kaleidoscope to S tier

Forbidden Armor to A+ or borderline S tier

Stardust Armor from unranked to A tier

If optic and flinx are D I shudder to think of what Pirate is like

 

[Flint🪓]

Every whip before Dark Harvest drops to C or B tier

I have not played calamity in… 1 year and a half? Before 1.4.4 even dropped I renember whips begin pretty good. Are they that bad now?

 

[Shyguymask]

I have not played calamity in… 1 year and a half? Before 1.4.4 even dropped I renember whips begin pretty good. Are they that bad now?

They are changed in Calamity to inflict "multiplicative" tag damage. Snapthorn for example is 1.04x minion damage, and even if we assume that it rounds up, that's equivalent to a single point of additional damage for earlier pre-hm minions which is laughably bad. It makes more sense in Hardmode, but you also have other stuff like Dark Harvest seemingly acting like its 1.4.3 self (dark energy not hitting the tagged target) and of course Firecracker being nerfed because it's supposedly "overpowered" and was ""viable in Post-Moon Lord"" which is frankly extremely ignorant but I won't dive deep into that here. The one exception is Kaleidoscope, 1.12x mult tag is on par or worse on-tier but it scales so much better in Post-ML coupled with its crit tag being intact.

Even now when some devs say they intent on bringing back flat tag damage at some point, they also say they are going to nerf whips like Snapthorn (it's op because they said so and don't need to provide evidence) and also bizarrely remove crit whip tags from Morning Star & Kaleidoscope (they are op because they said so and don't need to provide evidence, ignore the fact they are basically the same as mult tags).

 

[Meowlegend]

They are changed in Calamity to inflict "multiplicative" tag damage. Snapthorn for example is 1.04x minion damage, and even if we assume that it rounds up, that's equivalent to a single point of additional damage for earlier pre-hm minions which is laughably bad. It makes more sense in Hardmode, but you also have other stuff like Dark Harvest seemingly acting like its 1.4.3 self (dark energy not hitting the tagged target) and of course Firecracker being nerfed because it's supposedly "overpowered" and was ""viable in Post-Moon Lord"" which is frankly extremely ignorant but I won't dive deep into that here. The one exception is Kaleidoscope, 1.12x mult tag is on par or worse on-tier but it scales so much better in Post-ML.

Even now when devs say they intent on bringing back flat tag damage at some point, they also say they are going to nerf whips like Snapthorn (it's op because they said so and don't need to provide evidence), and also bizarrely remove crit whip tags from Morning Star & Kaleidoscope (they are op because they said so and don't need to provide evidence, ignore the fact they are basically the same as mult tags).

These changes are just... Insane to hear. They did vanilla stuff dirty.

 

[Flint🪓]

They are changed in Calamity to inflict "multiplicative" tag damage. Snapthorn for example is 1.04x minion damage, and even if we assume that it rounds up, that's equivalent to a single point of additional damage for earlier pre-hm minions which is laughably bad.

I knew about multiplicative tag long ago but when I played calamity that long ago I renember snapthorn begin pretty good, either im trippin or I played calamity 1.4.3 so early that they didn’t change whips yet.

But the main thing, since (if I renember correctly) most pre-hardmode minions have low damage but high attack rate (flinx, frog, wulfrum drone) multiplicative tag would barely affect them, so the thing is… wouldn’t a weapon from another class be better than whips, even with the penalty they have?

Firecracker being nerfed because it's supposedly "overpowered" and was ""viable in Post-Moon Lord"" which is frankly extremely ignorant but I won't dive deep into that here.

Bro, what the , look how they massacred my boy.

The one exception is Kaleidoscope, 1.12x mult tag is on par or worse on-tier but it scales so much better in Post-ML coupled with its crit tag being intact.

Hey thats nice.

Even now when some devs say they intent on bringing back flat tag damage at some point,

Thats nice too.

they also say they are going to nerf whips like Snapthorn (it's op because they said so and don't need to provide evidence) and also bizarrely remove crit whip tags from Morning Star & Kaleidoscope (they are op because they said so and don't need to provide evidence, ignore the fact they are basically the same as mult tags).

With this, why even bother with whips on post-moonlord. calamity minions begin good on it’s own and whips making them op should have been fixed by changing the minions, I can wait all they want if needed for that but nerfing whips to fix this issue is like patching a broken arm with a band aid.

 

[Shyguymask]

wouldn’t a weapon from another class be better than whips, even with the penalty they have?

That's indeed the case, a while ago on my second channel I did a video dedicated to DPS testing Calamity Summoner at a couple of points in the game. In Pre-Hardmode it was clear that Hybrid out-DPS pure/whip Summoner in spite of the minion penalty, though Post-Plantera onwards it becomes better to minmax pure Summoner especially after obtaining Kaleidoscope.

 

[Meowlegend]

Bro, what the , look how they massacred my boy

I can say the same for the Insignia.

Infinite flight "turns the entire game into a joke, its so absolutely broken" unfortunately (because devs said so).

 

[Flint🪓]

I can say the same for the Insignia.

Infinite flight "turns the entire game into a joke, its so absolutely broken" unfortunately (because devs said so).

I renember obtaining it and begin so sad that they literally removed what made the accesory special, infinite flight would allow to fight exomechs without a world-size arena.

That's indeed the case, a while ago on my second channel I did a video dedicated to DPS testing Calamity Summoner at a couple of points in the game. In Pre-Hardmode it was clear that Hybrid out-DPS pure/whip Summoner in spite of the minion penalty, though Post-Plantera onwards it becomes better to minmax pure Summoner especially after obtaining Kaleidoscope.

Not too surprised about this since in vanilla hybrid build are stronger than a pure class one (or atleast for summoner) the weird thing is that even they added a penalty for that and yet hybrid still outclasses pure summoner.

 

[Shyguymask]

Another update. Golem and Lunatic Cultist are the two Hardmode bosses I practically never tested nor took into significant consideration for the list, until now. With that in mind, Tempest Staff has been underestimated a bit and recently it has been hyped up as being pretty strong, as evidence by the fact it blows all other minions out of the water (pun intended) against Golem for one. In fact, if you're rushing to Cultist while somewhat undergeared, its performance against Cultist is comparable if not higher than Xeno Staff (Enemy defense shenanigans).

Tempest Staff B+ to A- (Description rewritten)

Raven Staff A to A- (its performance outside of EoL minimaxing is not thaaat good, in fact it's around equal to Deadly Sphere Staff against Golem).

 

[RandomDuckNerd]

Another update. Golem and Lunatic Cultist are the two Hardmode bosses I practically never tested nor took into significant consideration for the list, until now. With that in mind, Tempest Staff has been underestimated a bit and recently it has been hyped up as being pretty strong, as evidence by the fact it blows all other minions out of the water (pun intended) against Golem for one. In fact, if you're rushing to Cultist while somewhat undergeared, its performance against Cultist is comparable if not higher than Xeno Staff (Enemy defense shenanigans).

Tempest Staff B+ to A- (Description rewritten)

more like tem-best staff

 

[ImpureComedi]

It has been smashed by nerfs both direct and indirect to the point It's no longer worth using in Hardmode

obsidian is superior to spider when using sanguine, tested and I'm getting around 1.30 and 1.26 sec against the twins with spider and obsidian respectively

do note that my tests may not accurately reflect normal gameplay because i was using garden gnomes and luck potions

 

[Timey-Whimy]

no sentries?

 

[Shyguymask]

obsidian is superior to spider when using sanguine, tested and I'm getting around 1.30 and 1.26 sec against the twins with spider and obsidian respectively

do note that my tests may not accurately reflect normal gameplay because i was using garden gnomes and luck potions

(zoomed in from 1:26 to 1:33)

They are about equal on Twins (tested with solo Firecracker), but Spider Armor is more versatile including being more suitable for beginner players who want to play more defensively despite Obsidian Armor's higher whip range benefit.

If you play aggressively like I did to an extent, Spider Armor can pull slightly higher overall damage output. If you stick to mid-range to minimize the chance of being sniped by phase 1 Retinazer, Obsidian Armor is better. If you play defensively and keep your distance away from both bosses, Spider Armor is better.

When it comes to individual phases of the fight, you could say Obsidian Armor is better in the beginning of the fight, Spider is better against phase 2 Spazmatism, Obsidian is better against lone phase 1 Retinazer and Spider is better against phase 2 Retinazer.

Twins asides, Obsidian Armor also has a setup on Plantera that can squeeze out a bit higher DPS, but this is not worth sacrificing Holy Protection + hybrid potential for.