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

[blancfaye7]

This ranking is wild. I'm surprised Tempest Staff isn't even F.

 

[MoultonLava]

Minor thing that might help bump Slime staff is that it is purchaseable from the Princess at the beginning of the game on Celebration MK10, which is great for summoners.

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

I didn't really try out Slime Staff in Celebration, but I did get it a few times in GFB... where it was bad. It was a lot of mental effort to remember when I could bring it out to slowly whittle down a demon eye in the wrong place, and that was the only situation where it wasn't easier and faster to just use blocks to get around enemies. Nowadays I use blocks for demon eyes too. Slime staff is the worst offender for knocking enemies into you in the entire game besides maybe vampire frog, and since it kills nothing unless it gets about a minute and some positioning luck, its main utility for me just seemed to be pissing off lava slimes and detonating explosive bunnies on me. In GFB in particular you also have the infinitely more appealing option of Pigronatas for an early Flintlock Pistol, but while that is what fully seals the coffin for it, I doubt I would use slime staff much even if it was a free day 1 tool, it would just make mimic kills a bit faster. In Celebration, I would still hold the 10 gold cost against it, that's a full pylon, or 1300 grenades, or 50 dynamite. There's a ton you can do with that money.

This does feel very focused on damage test results in general and I'd imagine in the interceding 4 years SGM coming around to view tanking as the easiest way to approach the game would shift values here a decent amount. Most notable is that Flinx Fur Coat gives 1 defense, while competing chest pieces give 5 or 6 defense and potential set bonuses. Not even gladiator or shadow armor here, but gold/platinum armor, fossil armor, jungle armor, armor sets where the piece is comparable to what you need for flinx armor anyways.

This one is admittedly very anecdotal, but I found myself surprised by how not amazing flinx snapthorn was against Skeletron and how workable spider staff was against Twins. I wouldn't say spider staff is easier against Twins than flinx snapthorn is against Skeletron, but it wasn't harder by much in my experience; I just needed to be cognizant of Spazmatism's second phase due to my lack of range, but spiders actually did very well with attaching between dashes due to Spazmatism's low speed then.

I also don't understand the Shield of Cthulhu mention. Why use it in hardmode? You have wings, and your competing accessories are better than ever. Shield of Cthulhu has clear use against a boss like Skeletron, where you want to stay airborne for long periods of time and circle around the boss, accelerating in different directions - but this is because of boots. Boots and magiluminescence do practically nothing in the air unless you support them with Shield of Cthulhu, so it's very useful in that fight. But once you get wings, you don't need Shield of Cthluhu to reach sprint speed while airborne, and since you have a normal shield on hand, you can just get out of bad situations by flying up anyway without worrying about knockback. Crystal Assassin armor + an open accessory is better than competing ranger sets at least, though.

 

[Shyguymask]

This does feel very focused on damage test results in general and I'd imagine in the interceding 4 years SGM coming around to view tanking as the easiest way to approach the game would shift values here a decent amount. Most notable is that Flinx Fur Coat gives 1 defense, while competing chest pieces give 5 or 6 defense and potential set bonuses. Not even gladiator or shadow armor here, but gold/platinum armor, fossil armor, jungle armor, armor sets where the piece is comparable to what you need for flinx armor anyways.

If the tier list was actually biased for damage tests or otherwise max DPS, then Blade Staff would drop down to A, Forbidden Armor would rise to A, Tiki armor would drop to A and so on.

The thing with defense is that the gap in defense from Summoner armor to Mage/Ranger armor doesn't really matter much. Having more (or lacking) Max HP, health regen, i-frames and so on makes a bigger difference to survivability. If I was playing Summoner and had to pick between Cross Necklace or +30 defense with no drawbacks/conditions, I'd pick Cross Necklace every time. Mostly with Melee armor, mainly w/ Warding, does Defense start being a huge contribution to survivability. Not to mention that having more minions is better for crowd control in general.

This one is admittedly very anecdotal, but I found myself surprised by how not amazing flinx snapthorn was against Skeletron and how workable spider staff was against Twins. I wouldn't say spider staff is easier against Twins than flinx snapthorn is against Skeletron, but it wasn't harder by much in my experience; I just needed to be cognizant of Spazmatism's second phase due to my lack of range, but spiders actually did very well with attaching between dashes due to Spazmatism's low speed then.

Unless you meant only Flinx as the minion, Flinx mixed with other minions performs very well against Skeletron. Not the #1 fastest or even easiest Skeletron setup, but still very much competent with Flinx being a significant contributor.

Spider Staff just mostly doesn't work well against Twins since Spider Staff's higher raw DPS is greatly undermined if not invalidated by the fact it won't be hitting the twins really consistently. Maybe there's a world where three spiders mixed with Sanguine Staff has slightly higher overall damage output if you play more aggressively, but I don't think this is really something worth mentioning or taking into account in this case.

I also don't understand the Shield of Cthulhu mention. Why use it in hardmode? [...]

Instant acceleration, which besides being generally useful for dodging attacks and escaping bad positions, also lets you max out Unicorn mount's speed instantly. Particularly useful for making dodging phase 2 Spazmatism easier. It has its flaws, but not for the reasons other people say.

---

In other news, I decided to drop Finch Staff from A to A- because looking back on it, I found myself overhyping it a bit considering much of what I talked about didn't really end up being something I took advantage of at all (Rushing shimmer for Finch, and also its piercing on evil bosses, even Flinx + Snapthorn is good and fast enough to the point considering using Finch instead isn't very important or massively impactful). I also changed the description a bit.

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

Unless you meant only Flinx as the minion, Flinx mixed with other minions performs very well against Skeletron. Not the #1 fastest or even easiest Skeletron setup, but still very much competent with Flinx being a significant contributor.

Spider Staff just mostly doesn't work well against Twins since Spider Staff's higher raw DPS is greatly undermined if not invalidated by the fact it won't be hitting the twins really consistently. Maybe there's a world where three spiders mixed with Sanguine Staff has slightly higher overall damage output if you play more aggressively, but I don't think this is really something worth mentioning or taking into account in this case.

So, I mentioned this was anecdotal evidence, as this wasn't based on kill time testing. This was just an experience I had in a hardcore summoner run, I wound up getting through both bosses first try but I was surprised how late in the night Skeletron got and how reasonable it was to handle Twins positioning. This perception is definitely influenced by what I heard about both weapons going in, and for that matter this was a run with no prehardmode blood moon. So, a more optimized build definitely could have gotten a better time on Skeletron... though then, this also would have been enough time for a Boomstick or Blade of Grass with this level of gear. Mage, uh, tries... Then with Twins, phase 1 felt pretty dependent on whips, but phase 2 Spazmatism was easy to keep near the ground for spiders to reach and would only drop spiders when dashing, giving them good damage uptime on the hardest and most difficult to damage part of the fight. Would I prefer Blade Staff or Sanguine Staff there? Yeah.

Yeah, enemy bouncing from Shield of Cthulhu is pretty awful and a big reason why I wouldn't use it against Plantera especially, but generally I feel that normal hardmode acceleration is plenty, and that a Charm of Myths or Flesh Knuckles in that slot helps more. I do also use a shield, though, which means bad situations only last for a hit or so. I do tend to entirely skimp on arenas so I can't really use this, but hooks also work for horizontal acceleration. Instant unicorn dashes are probably the biggest case where I would work with dashes, and that is very nice, but I also don't always bother with getting a utility mount either.

The big disconnect I'm having is just that at this point I tend to heavily prize what's easy to get and good enough over what gives high damage but is annoying to get. This is a value thing, and with master's generally high difficulty there's a better argument to be made for focusing on shorter, safer boss fights above everything else. But at the same time, master also makes some parts of prep work more difficult. Queen Bee herself is more threatening, enemies take longer to kill, jungling is more threatening. How much weight does this have in terms of where to draw the line in terms of prep work vs boss work? Depends on viewpoint/argument.