**REPORTED** Defense penetration weapons dealing more damage than they are supposed to.

J Bame

Terrarian
Steam or GOG
Steam
Single Player/Multiplayer
Single
Operating System
Windows 10
Terraria Version
1.4.2
Controls Used
Keyboard/Mouse
As you know some weapons can ignore a certain amount of enemy defense. The way this defense penetration works, it adds half the projectile's defense penetration as extra damage. So a Blade Staff (25 defense penetration) against an enemy with 25 defense will have its damage increased by 12 and then decreased by 12 as well, so it's like the enemy has no defense.

However this damage increase happens before other sources of defense penetration and debuffs... so if for example the enemy with 25 defense is affected by Ichor it will have its defense reduced to 10, but the Blade Staff will still consider it to have 25 defense. Therefore its damage will be increased by 12 and then decreased only by 5, so it's "ignoring" more defense than the enemy actually has.

Every weapon with defense penetration is affected by this, and in Blade Staff's case, it can make it pretty strong due to how much that weapon benefits from flat damage increases.
 
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Thanks for explaining this, the other report on the subject was somewhat confusing. This makes more sense, and I'm making a report for it.
 
Thanks for explaining this, the other report on the subject was somewhat confusing. This makes more sense, and I'm making a report for it.
I have some concerns about how this will be handled.

I believe the worst case scenario is that Re-logic simply "bugfixes" (in practice, nerfs) Blade Staff and move on without doing anything else. The problem is that Sanguine Staff is just as powerful as the Blade Staff is, and the only thing "bugfixing" the Blade Staff with no compensations or other nerfs would achieve is reducing the number of strong options for Summoners in Hardmode, as experienced players will simply switch to Sanguine Staff which is again around just as powerful as Blade Staff depending at which point in Hardmode. I believe there are two ways this can he properly handled:

1. "Bugfix" the Blade Staff, but bump its base damage from 6 to 9 or something to compensate. It will remain about as powerful without overshadowing or being overshadowed by Sanguine Staff (this is particularly important considering Summoner has by far the fewest amount of options).

2. "Bugfix" the Blade Staff, but also nerf Sanguine Staff's base damage (35 > 30 maybe?). Same outcome, except Summoner in Hardmode as as whole will be kind of weaker, which would actually be a fine adjustment considering it's arguably the strongest class in the game (yes, better than Ranger and Mage) after Tank Melee. Although, I personally believe Summoner deserves to be as strong as it is now considering it's relatively difficult to master, and it was the laughingstock of the game for years.

I hope Re-Logic will listen.
 
Blade Staff was not balanced around having this exploit in play. This showed up later, and just skewed things in favor of it even further.

That Ichor is allowing it to do as much as double its base damage was not part of the equation, and I do not see a counter-buff being added to compensate.

For what its worth, it is considered acceptable, if not ideal, that Sanguine Staff (being a difficult Blood Nautilus drop) overshadows Blade Staff. I do not see either a nerf to Sanguine Staff, or a raw damage boost for Blade Staff, in the cards here.
 
Blade Staff was not balanced around having this exploit in play. This showed up later, and just skewed things in favor of it even further.

That Ichor is allowing it to do as much as double its base damage was not part of the equation, and I do not see a counter-buff being added to compensate.

For what its worth, it is considered acceptable, if not ideal, that Sanguine Staff (being a difficult Blood Nautilus drop) overshadows Blade Staff. I do not see either a nerf to Sanguine Staff, or a raw damage boost for Blade Staff, in the cards here.
Consider that the Blade staff is a Queen Slime drop now, at only a 1/4-1/3 chance, vs 1/2-1/1 from a miniboss that can be nearly perfectly cheesed for Sanguine. Sanguine has been easier to obtain for quite some time, and has been kept in check by the better item.
 
Blade Staff was not balanced around having this exploit in play. This showed up later, and just skewed things in favor of it even further.

That Ichor is allowing it to do as much as double its base damage was not part of the equation, and I do not see a counter-buff being added to compensate.

For what its worth, it is considered acceptable, if not ideal, that Sanguine Staff (being a difficult Blood Nautilus drop) overshadows Blade Staff. I do not see either a nerf to Sanguine Staff, or a raw damage boost for Blade Staff, in the cards here.
I disagree. Sanguine staff is hardly harder to obtain than Blade Staff, hell you could say it's about the same difficulty to obtain it, if not easier. In practice, everything needed to obtain Sanguine Staff is a Bloody Tear, fishing equipment and a small wooden box. Summon (or wait for) Blood Moon, sit comfortably and safe in your wooden box and wait until you pull a Dreadnautilus and easily defeat it for that 100% drop rate (In Expert/Master mode). In comparison, the Blade Staff has an entire Hardmode boss fight gatekeeping it, and it's not as easy to cheese Queen Slime as it is to cheese Dreadnautilus. Not to mention, it's only a 33% chance (In Expert/Master) you actually get the Blade Staff Vs. 100% chance for Sanguine Staff. I want to stress that this is indeed how it plays out, nearly every experienced player cheeses Dreadnautilus with the wooden box, no one actually "fights" it normally. The objective conclusion here really is that Sanguine Staff, if anything, is easier to obtain than Blade Staff, not having an entire boss to deal with and the "cheese" being very easy to realize, build AND execute.

You say that Blade Staff was not balanced around having said "Exploit" in play. The issue I take with that is that Sanguine Staff ALSO heavily benefits from an "Exploit" I name Whip Stacking. I don't think Sanguine Staff was balanced around having Whip Stacking. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the effects granted by whips (Summon tag and Melee speed) can be stacked by micromanaging multiple whips. For example, you can strike with Durendal for the +35% melee speed then switch to Firecracker to significantly increase the amount of times Firecracker can apply its "explosion" effect, very significantly increasing DPS with the Sanguine Staff. Yes, Blade Staff is the prime example of how a weapon can benefit from Whip stacking, but the point I'm making here is that if we're going to call out Blade Staff for benefitting too much from an exploit, then the same applies to Sanguine Staff, hell this applies to Summoner weapons as a whole (By the way, if you have the Sharpening station buff active, selecting a Melee weapon in your hotbar will actually grant the 12 armor penetration to minions. This makes Flinx Staff immensely more powerful against enemies with high defense and bosses). Hell, even Melee weapons massively benefit from said exploit. Thanks to Dark Harvest + Durendal, Terra Blade can swing about as fast as 1.3 Fetid and kill Expert Golem in under 10, if not 5 seconds.

Out of every "exploit" in mind, Blade Staff's 25 armor penetration bug is the smallest and least noticeable of them. Saying "Exploit" as a reason to indirectly nerf, improperly adjust the Blade Staff is poor reasoning. So many weapons in general including Sanguine Staff benefits from major "exploits" now, not just the Blade staff. None of these weapons were balanced around the "Exploits" given by whips alone. So what to take from this? Should we remove Whip Stacking as well? No! Whip Stacking is like Wavedashing in Super Smash Bros Melee, it's a technique with a lot of depth that adds to the gameplay experience for experienced players willing to learn it. Blade Staff and Sanguine Staff SHOULD be about as powerful as each other, the entire point of "Balance" in video games including Terraria is to have options be about as powerful as eachother. Nerfing the Blade Staff with no compensations or other nerfs will hurt the game as a whole, worsening the balance of the game. And the justification by Re-logic for it is disappointing at best. Contrary to what has been claimed, Sanguine Staff is if anything easier to obtain than Blade Staff, and even though the statement is "Blade Staff was not balanced around exploit", this can be said for not only Sanguine Staff, not only Summoner weapons as a whole, but weapons from another class (Melee specifically) as well.
 
To me this comes across as "We didn't intend for this to happen, so it is bad," which was also the case with Frog items stacking with Amphibian Boots. I don't see the need to remove this, honestly. Not everything that is unintentional is a mistake. As ShyguyMask referenced, Wavedashing was an advanced movement technique in Super Smash Bros Melee, and I think it can be attributed to the reason the competitive scene is still alive today. I doubt 10% of the game's movement tech was actually intentional from the developers, and yet an OVERWHELMING amount of melee players say that they play the game because it's fast and flashy, courtesy of said movement options. When the developers removed most of those movement options in Brawl,the game's competitive scene heavily suffered as a result.

If that's not a good enough example for you, there's one right at home in Terraria: Hoiks. These contraptions broadened the scope of the game and opened up many, MANY different aspects of the game for players to enjoy. I highly, HIGHLY doubt the wiring community would be as far as it is today without hoiks.

I also don't think Ichor boosting the damage of raw damage of Blades is an issue anyway. Why is it bad that Blade is powerful, even if it's a bug that makes it so? It comes from a hardmode boss and requires a good bit of setup to use efficiently, and I really don't see a problem with mechanical skill and forethought increasing one's performance in a game.
 
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To me this comes across as "We didn't intend for this to happen, so it is bad," which was also the case with Frog items stacking with Amphibian Boots. I don't see the need to remove this, honestly. Not everything that is unintentional is a mistake. As ShyguyMask referenced, Wavedashing was an advanced movement technique in Super Smash Bros Melee, and I think it can be attributed to the reason the competitive scene is still alive today. I doubt 10% of the game's movement tech was actually intentional from the developers, and yet an OVERWHELMING amount of melee players say that they play the game because it's fast and flashy, courtesy of said movement options. When the developers removed most of those movement options in Brawl,the game's competitive scene heavily suffered as a result.

If that's not a good enough example for you, there's one right at home in Terraria: Hoiks. These contraptions broadened the scope of the game and opened up many, MANY different aspects of the game for players to enjoy. I highly, HIGHLY doubt the wiring community would be as far as it is today without hoiks.

My issue with this isn't one of game balance or "fun", but rather one of consistency with other items in the game, and certain combos being unintuitive to the average player. All other sources of defense penetration in this game don't go below 0, so why is it, that when combined with defense penetration items, they can? Hell, the Tooltip of the Blade Staff "ignores enemy defense" already implies that it will not add more damage than what the enemy reduces with its defense.

The same thing comes up with Amphibian Boots and Frog Legs stacking. You can easily test in-game and see that Frog Gear and its components don't stack with each other... so why are Amphibian Boots the exception?

When the reason for both of these inconsistencies to exist doesn't go beyond "Terraria code sucks" it's easy to see why they are fixed. These inconsistencies may sound like small things, but they can add up into an unintuitive game experience, where a player has to constantly check the wiki or ask around in Forums/Discord servers to find out which combinations of items will work and which ones don't, instead of being able to figure it out naturally just by paying attention to the game's mechanics.

Note: I am not saying here that Frog Legs shouldn't stack, or that defense penetration items shouldn't go below 0, but rather that all these things should be consistent with each other. If effects that penetrate or reduce enemy defense dont go below 0, then items that ignore defense also shouldn't (especially when they aren't even supposed to).

Also, comparing this to hoiks or wavedashing in Melee doesn't make any sense to me. Those two may also have been bugs, but as you both have described the amount of depth that they can add goes far, far beyond "my weapon is dealing more damage"

The issue I take with that is that Sanguine Staff ALSO heavily benefits from an "Exploit" I name Whip Stacking. I don't think Sanguine Staff was balanced around having Whip Stacking. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the effects granted by whips (Summon tag and Melee speed) can be stacked by micromanaging multiple whips. For example, you can strike with Durendal for the +35% melee speed then switch to Firecracker to significantly increase the amount of times Firecracker can apply its "explosion" effect, very significantly increasing DPS with the Sanguine Staff.
What about this is an exploit? You noticed that the Firecracker can deal more damage-per-hit than the Durendal, and you saw that the latter's buff is actually a global melee speed buff, so you decided to use both together to have higher DPS than you would with either weapon alone.

This is a combo that you found out about by paying attention to how your weapons work. This isn't caused by some bug or oversight, and there is nothing in the game or in the code that suggests this combo shouldn't be possible. This type of thing isn't even new, the idea of using one weapon to boost another goes all the way back to 1.2 with people swapping to the Golden Shower to apply Ichor to enemies.

About the balance concern of whether the Blade Staff should be better than the Sanguine Staff or not, It is true that killing Dreadnautilus is easier than killing Queen Slime if you dont care about a fair fight and just want to cheese the boss, but this doesn't mean that the Blades should be stronger, because the Blade Staff isn't Queen Slime's only drop. She also drops a unique armor, unique grappling hook and one of the best mounts in the game, if not the best. If Dreadnautilus' only drop is directly outclassed by one of Queen Slime's many, is there any reason to kill Dreadnautilus at all? That's my take.
 
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My issue with this isn't one of game balance or "fun", but rather one of consistency with other items in the game, and certain combos being unintuitive to the average player. All other sources of defense penetration in this game don't go below 0, so why is it, that when combined with defense penetration items, they can? Hell, the Tooltip of the Blade Staff "ignores enemy defense" already implies that it will not add more damage than what the enemy reduces with its defense.

The same thing comes up with Amphibian Boots and Frog Legs stacking. You can easily test in-game and see that Frog Gear and its components don't stack with each other... so why are Amphibian Boots the exception?
The solution is simple honestly. Adjust (not nerf) the Blade Staff, fix the armor penetration bug but raise its base damage to 9 to compensate, it will be around still as good as before.

As for Frog Leg stacking, the solution is also simple. Let us stack as many Frog Leg accessories as we want. What exactly of giving players options and letting them be a jump speed monster at the cost of lacking damage & defensive accessories? Same for Celestial Shell/Stone stacking, let us be a meaty tank at the cost of possibly fewer movement accessories depending on setups. There's already stacking Worm Scarf, Brain of Confusion and Frozen Shield to maximize survivability which is just as good if not better, so it's not like celestial stacking was anywhere near overpowered. I agree that things should be consistent, so Re-logic should do this "[x] is a feature" thing more often.

When the reason for both of these inconsistencies to exist doesn't go beyond "Terraria code sucks" it's easy to see why they are fixed. These inconsistencies may sound like small things, but they can add up into an unintuitive game experience, where a player has to constantly check the wiki or ask around in Forums/Discord servers to find out which combinations of items will work and which ones don't, instead of being able to figure it out naturally just by paying attention to the game's mechanics.
And the thing is that it's actually harmful to "fix" bugs in some cases, especially in this context. Fixing Amphibian Boots stacking hurt the game because it removes options that weren't overpowered in the first place. "Fixing" Blade Staff with no other changes to compensate would hurt Summoner balance. I guaranteed you that if Nintendo were to hypothetically make updates for Super Smash Bros Melee and "fix" Wavedashing, the backlash would be one of the biggest in gaming history. And for very good reasons.

Also, comparing this to hoiks or wavedashing in Melee doesn't make any sense to me. Those two may also have been bugs, but as you both have described the amount of depth that they can add goes far, far beyond "my weapon is dealing more damage"
Whip Stacking has so much more depth than you're making it out to be. It's not just "my weapon is dealing more damage". Whip Stacking is difficult in the first place and you have to practice it, you have to find out yourself how many whips you can handle micromanaging yourself and if it's taking your focus away from dodging bosses, you have to use the right combination of whips for the right weapon which differentiates A LOT depending on the weapon & progression point. Let's assume Pre-Plantera. Blade Staff wants Durendal/Spinal Tap/Snapthorn. Sanguine Staff wants Firecracker/Durendal, you could consider Snapthorn but it makes you wonder, does the small bit of extra melee speed from Snapthorn make up the loss of DPS I get from stopping attacking with the Firecracker for even just one or two explosions? And finally for Melee weapons, they want Durendal/Snapthorn. All of these setups are different from one another. It gets even more difficult with Obsidian Armor, because you wonder if going for Melee Speed, Summon Tag or On-hit effects from Cool Whip and Firecracker is the best option to maximize damage. You also have Base damage to consider, and the answer varies depending on which minion you're using for backup DPS.

What about this is an exploit? You noticed that the Firecracker can deal more damage-per-hit than the Durendal, and you saw that the latter's buff is actually a global melee speed buff, so you decided to use both together to have higher DPS than you would with either weapon alone.
I really don't think Blade Staff blatantly outclassing Pre-Plantera & Pre-Golem summons was intended (It would still be the case if it was nerfed with the bugfix).
I really don't think Blade Staff eventually outshining Sanguine Staff through sheer Summon Tag Damage alone was intended, when Sanguine Staff was pretty much intended to "overshadow" the Blade Staff.
I really don't think Terra Blade killing Golem in 5-7 seconds was intended.
I really don't think Obsidian Armor dealing 3000~ DPS to Empress of Light was intended.

All of this is possible only because of Whip Stacking. It's not genuine to compare this to something as simple as Golden Shower which is obviously intended as a "support" weapon whose only trait is inflicting a debuff. If Whip Stacking was "intended" and not an oversight, then either they were extremely incompetent while balancing and testing this feature, or they really wanted Summoner & Melee to dominate the game from now on.

but this doesn't mean that the Blades should be stronger, because the Blade Staff isn't Queen Slime's only drop. She also drops a unique armor, unique grappling hook and one of the best mounts in the game, if not the best. If Dreadnautilus' only drop is directly outclassed by one of Queen Slime's many, is there any reason to kill Dreadnautilus at all? That's my take.
Individual items shouldn't be weaker simply because a boss drops a relatively large quantity of said useful items. Likewise, an item shouldn't be made stronger just because it's the only item dropped by a certain enemy. And realistically, besides maybe the hook, Blade Staff is the only reason a Summoner is going to kill Queen Slime. Precise movement from wings & dashing is pretty much needed to make Whip Stacking easier, which makes the mount arguably impractical. Crystal Assassin Armor offers no minion slots + the 15% crit chance is useless. And Volatile Gelatine? Summoners already have many minions to automatically kill enemies, making it redundant. Additionally, with the exception of a certain Melee build, Blade Staff is arguably ineffective as a support for non-summoners, mainly for boss damage.

When it comes to which is better, for Pure summoners who take advantage of Whip stacking strictly, Blade Staff is worse for Mech bosses, on par or slightly better for Plantera, and then it just outshines Sanguine Staff onward assuming you stick with Summoner Hallowed armor (which imo > Spooky). But taking account non-Summoners and the skill floor of Whip Stacking in the first place, in the grand scheme of things, they are around on par with each other, and that's a good thing. Re-logic would be making another mistake by damaging this delicate balance carelessly.
 
As for Frog Leg stacking, the solution is also simple. Let us stack as many Frog Leg accessories as we want. What exactly of giving players options and letting them be a jump speed monster at the cost of lacking damage & defensive accessories?

Only going to respond to this one more time, but wanted to point out that this was not ever going to happen. Quint-stacked Frog Legs allowed a player with just Rocket Boots and no wings to jump higher than most wings. It also allowed a user with Angel Wings to fly higher than Solar Wings.

We specifically limited this multiplicative effect, and the only reason Amphibian Boots was not included because it was called Amphibian Boots rather than Frog-(Something) and so it was missed in the process. This is no special wavedashing accidental technique that dramatically enhanced the game, it was a simple oversight on one out of a set of 5 that was remedied.
 
As for Frog Leg stacking, the solution is also simple. Let us stack as many Frog Leg accessories as we want.
Support this. Stacking the two Frog Legs was fun, and really stacking more than two would be more of a novelty than a useful thing.

My point there was that I was perfectly fine with Frog Legs being able to stack, but not if only one of them can.
Whip Stacking has so much more depth than you're making it out to be. It's not just "my weapon is dealing more damage". Whip Stacking is difficult in the first place and you have to practice it, you have to find out yourself how many whips you can handle micromanaging yourself and if it's taking your focus away from dodging bosses, you have to use the right combination of whips for the right weapon which differentiates A LOT depending on the weapon & progression point. Let's assume Pre-Plantera. Blade Staff wants Durendal/Spinal Tap/Snapthorn. Sanguine Staff wants Firecracker/Durendal, you could consider Snapthorn but it makes you wonder, does the small bit of extra melee speed from Snapthorn make up the loss of DPS I get from stopping attacking with the Firecracker for even just one or two explosions? And finally for Melee weapons, they want Durendal/Snapthorn. All of these setups are different from one another. It gets even more difficult with Obsidian Armor, because you wonder if going for Melee Speed, Summon Tag or On-hit effects from Cool Whip and Firecracker is the best option to maximize damage. You also have Base damage to consider, and the answer varies depending on which minion you're using for backup DPS.
You misunderstood my point there. What I described as "my weapon is dealing more damage" was this bug, which is as simple as what I've described, and the fact that you say it could be replaced with a simple base damage buff to the Blade Staff proves you agree with me. I hadn't even brought up Whip Stacking in the part you quoted.

Of course, there are a lot of things you can do with Whips given how many of those there are, I'm not going to disagree with that.

I really don't think Blade Staff blatantly outclassing Pre-Plantera & Pre-Golem summons was intended (It would still be the case if it was nerfed with the bugfix).
I really don't think Blade Staff eventually outshining Sanguine Staff through sheer Summon Tag Damage alone was intended, when Sanguine Staff was pretty much intended to "overshadow" the Blade Staff.
I really don't think Terra Blade killing Golem in 5-7 seconds was intended.
I really don't think Obsidian Armor dealing 3000~ DPS to Empress of Light was intended.

If Whip Stacking was "intended" and not an oversight, then either they were extremely incompetent while balancing and testing this feature, or they really wanted Summoner & Melee to dominate the game from now on.

We are talking about the same devs that:
  • Created 1.3 Stormbow and didn't give it any sort of nerf until 1.4.1.
  • Decided to give insane regen bonuses to Valhalla Knight Chestplate and Squire's Helm.
  • Buffed the two hardmode Dart Guns, despite most people thinking they were already insanely strong (and, unlike what the changelog says, this buff WAS NOT reverted in 1.4 lmao)
  • Nerfed Chik yet buffed every other yoyo around it.
  • Made Obisidian Armor viable up to and including the endgame.
  • Released Whips in an underpowered and buggy state (how did they even miss them losing range from speed bonuses?)
  • Nerfed Beekeeper to the ground because it was a decent sword.
  • And whatever other dumb change I could've missed.
So if you are accusing the devs of not playtesting everything properly, making questionable balancing decisions, and not accounting for every possible combination of tags... you are most likely right about that, lol. Not to mention, the fact that the mechanic can be overpowered in some scenarios doesn't prove that it was not intentional. We are going to need dev confirmation at this point.

Also, you talk a lot about Blades (and to an extent Sanguine) benefitting massively from stacking multiple tags, but what about other minions? Can all minions get incredibly strong from multiple tags, or is it just a select few? If not, doesn't that prove that those minions are the problem?

Individual items shouldn't be weaker simply because a boss drops a relatively large quantity of said useful items. Likewise, an item shouldn't be made stronger just because it's the only item dropped by a certain enemy. And realistically, besides maybe the hook, Blade Staff is the only reason a Summoner is going to kill Queen Slime. Precise movement from wings & dashing is pretty much needed to make Whip Stacking easier, which makes the mount arguably impractical. Crystal Assassin Armor offers no minion slots + the 15% crit chance is useless. And Volatile Gelatine? Summoners already have many minions to automatically kill enemies, making it redundant. Additionally, with the exception of a certain Melee build, Blade Staff is arguably ineffective as a support for non-summoners, mainly for boss damage.

When it comes to which is better, for Pure summoners who take advantage of Whip stacking strictly, Blade Staff is worse for Mech bosses, on par or slightly better for Plantera, and then it just outshines Sanguine Staff onward assuming you stick with Summoner Hallowed armor (which imo > Spooky). But taking account non-Summoners and the skill floor of Whip Stacking in the first place, in the grand scheme of things, they are around on par with each other, and that's a good thing. Re-logic would be making another mistake by damaging this delicate balance carelessly.

Fair points here, I don't have anything to object to.
 
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Only going to respond to this one more time, but wanted to point out that this was not ever going to happen. Quint-stacked Frog Legs allowed a player with just Rocket Boots and no wings to jump higher than most wings. It also allowed a user with Angel Wings to fly higher than Solar Wings.
The problem with this is that the player with angel wings needs to invest 5 slots into Frog Items, taking away from other areas such as damage, survivability, etc. Your argument also misses the fact that these items can still be worn with Solar Wings, Making Solar Wings still the better choice at the point where you are able to obtain them. Also this exact kind of things happen with weapons and defensive accessories as well. With a damage loadout you are able to make a weapon from an earlier tier deal more DPS than one from a later tier that doesn't have any damage boosts at all. Do you plan to remove the ability to stack damage accessories as well? What about defensive accessories allowing an earlier armor to surpass the defense of a later armor set without the same defensive setup? Will that be gone as well? By the logic you have presented, these two scenarios are just as problematic as being able to stack multiple Frog Items.


This is no special wavedashing accidental technique that dramatically enhanced the game, it was a simple oversight on one out of a set of 5 that was remedied.
Oversight or not, you are wrong about this. Frog Stacking made Balloon loadouts viable even at Moon Lord, but regardless of whether you think it's balanced or not, it opens up more options that the player is allowed to use, given they are willing to invest in that option. To SHOW you how much this can enhance the game for someone, I do not want to play this game anymore now that you have removed this feature. It made the game immensely enjoyable for me, and now that it's gone my enjoyment of the game is much lower, similar to the Melee players I had spoke of earlier not liking later entries in the series for their changes to the movement system. Subjective as that is, Frog Stacking made the game much more enjoyable to me, similar to how the unintentional movement mechanics in Melee made so many people enjoy the game.
 
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Quint-stacked Frog Legs allowed a player with just Rocket Boots and no wings to jump higher than most wings. It also allowed a user with Angel Wings to fly higher than Solar Wings.
I don't see the issue with this. Right off the bat you're sacrificing three or four accessory slots that could have gone to additional damage, survivability, knockback resistance and more.

Against Mech bosses, jumping to Space layer in one second won't help you actually damage Mech bosses. You need to get in close and actually try to kill them before the time limit. And since you're lacking damage & defense accessories too, stacking Frog Leg gears would actually be a not so good idea in practice. Running away from Mech bosses will not make you progress through the game, it's getting in close and engaging them with your weapons that will actually make you progress through the game.

And against Plantera? If you have a particularly large arena it's trivial no matter what, but in a smaller arena no amount of Frog leg accessories will prevent you from being trapped if you position yourself poorly. Against Golem it's even worst, since you're moving horizontally for the vast majority of the fight rather than vertically. Frog Leg stacking is actually a bad option against Golem. Lunatic Cultist? Running away will simply summon the Phantasmal Dragon, and from my experience you tend to move horizontally more than vertically against Cultist. Duke Fishron? You can easily outrun him, but watch out, if you hit the ceiling of the world carelessly he might enrage and shred you to pieces. Empress of Light? You can dodge her projectiles, but watch out, if you're flying up too fast at the wrong moment she'll appear right on top of you, especially lethal during Daytime. Moon Lord? You can more easily dodge his attacks on reaction, but watch out, don't go too fast with Moon-Lord offscreen, you won't see him charging the Deathray + he can teleport to where you are anyway. And even then I would generally prefer going for accessories like Frozen Shield and Brain of Confusion.

I think you are overestimating the viability of a hypothetical "Frog Leg Stacking" strategy, especially for lower-skilled players. It wouldn't be anywhere near overpowered, if anything only people "good" at the game would actually be able to make proper use of Frog Leg stacking.

Also, you talk a lot about Blades (and to an extent Sanguine) benefitting massively from stacking multiple tags, but what about other minions? Can all minions get incredibly strong from multiple tags, or is it just a select few? If not, doesn't that prove that those minions are the problem?

Whip Stacking isn't nearly as effective in Pre-hardmode, the reason is not mainly the minion themselves, but the lack of whips in the first place. A small summarize, starting Pre-boss:

Combining Leather Whip + Snapthorn will only give a small advantage over Snapthorn alone, because those are the only two whips available Pre-boss. But it nevertheless lets Flinx Staff and Vampire Frog Staff deal double-digit damage consistently, a significant boost for DPS.

The addition of Spinal Tap later on WOULD have been a significant boost, but the problem is that Pre-hardmode minions run into i-frame issues to the point they can't really attack very rapidly to seriously benefit from Summon Tag at that point. Except Hornet Staff, in its case its issue is that its projectiles are slow and they miss often. Flinx, Frogs and especially Imps have serious i-frame issues once you start to have more minions out at once. Nevertheless, Snapthorn + Spinal Tap with Obsidian Armor is viable for the 25% melee speed boost alone.

In Pre-mech, Obsidian Armor can go wild with Snapthorn, Cool Whip and Firecracker to maximize damage output. I believe you get the summon tag, plus the melee speed, plus the snowflake minion, Frostburn and the Explosion effect all at once, combined it should be pretty good damage. Never really properly tested this and how good it is on practice, but it SHOULD be much stronger than simply spamming one whip. Otherwise, Whip Stacking doesn't find too much use outside of Blade Staff, the culprit is not the minions themselves but lack of Summon Tag & Melee Speed whips in the first place.

Post-1 Mech onward is when Whip Stacking comes into full force for the entire rest of the game. Durendal gives a large boost to Firecracker which can give a big boost to Spider Staff and Optic Staff who hit decently fast, procing the explosion often and the base damage being low enough so that the Summon Tag from Durendal (+Snapthorn) is somewhat significant. Although both of these options are still weaker than Sanguine, but you get my point. Writing this, I've just realized that Whip Stacking actually improves the balance of Summon weapons too. Summon Tag damage is "fixed" and the two weapons I brought up (I'm not 100% sure, could be wrong) attack a bit more rapidly than Sanguine Staff even with i-frames in mind. It brings otherwise "Bad" weapons into "Useable alternative" or even "somewhat decent" territories for Plantera. Oh, and if you wish to bring Fetid back to its 1.3 glory, Durendal + Snapthorn can get pretty close to that.

Anyway, other weapons like Desert Tiger and Dragon benefit heavily from Melee speed boosts to make Firecracker apply the explosion as often as possible to maximize DPS. Xeno Staff attacks rapidly and Kaleidoscope alone gives it a significant boost, so maybe try it with Durendal instead of (or maybe even as a third whip coupled with) Dark Harvest. Don't forget about Post-Plantera Obsidian Armor either.

What I'm saying is, Whip Stacking is indeed useful for most of the game and most minions, and whenever it looks like Whip Stacking isn't strong, it's because of the lack of whips, not the minions benefitting less from them. If Re-logic did something as simple as introducing a "Stardust Whip" with let's say 15 Summon Tag damage and nothing else, then Stardust Dragon would suddenly find itself competing if not possibly even overshadowed by Xeno Staff, Stardust Cell Staff and even Blade Staff. It's that delicate.
 
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[lots of examples of Whip Stacking being abused.]

What I'm saying is, Whip Stacking is indeed useful for most of the game and most minions, and whenever it looks like Whip Stacking isn't strong, it's because of the lack of whips, not the minions benefitting less from them. If Re-logic did something as simple as introducing a "Stardust Whip" with let's say 15 Summon Tag damage and nothing else, then Stardust Dragon would suddenly find itself competing if not possibly even overshadowed by Xeno Staff, Stardust Cell Staff and even Blade Staff. It's that delicate.
You brought up a lot of examples of Whip Stacking being strong, but none of those seem to actually be overpowered, which is what I was asking for.

And I don't really agree with the idea that more whips would make Whip Stacking broken, because that technique has a lot of limitations: Tag damage buffs all get reset when you hit a new enemy, so the technique is almost impossible to use against crowds and tricky to maintain against bosses with multiple segments; and realistically you will not be able to stack more than three whip tags at one time, either due to their limited duration, losing DPS due to constantly swapping to weaker whips or just human limitations. And of course, whips themselves have downsides; most importantly their limited range and poor base single target damage.

Let's talk more about your example of a hypothetical Stardust Whip with 15 tag damage: I would not stop using the Stardust Dragon in favor of stacking tags with Cells. The Dragon has better Crowd control and not relying primarily on Tag damage buffs gives me the flexibility to use whatever weapon I want instead of having to micromanage between whips with limited range.

Of course, we are dealing with hypotheticals here so I could be wrong, but I still believe that the issue is Blade Staff being able to receive damage increases that range from 400% to 600% from whips alone, while you have to try really hard to double any other minion's base damage.

Note: I've never tried stacking Whip Melee Speed buffs and swords, so I can't comment about that, I'll just point out that Melee speed has diminishing returns in DPS, so I don't really see it becoming too insane either if more of those are added.
 
The Frog Leg stacking is a lot like the Old One’s Army accessories stacking - they’re limited so you don’t stack up insane benefits with them, but they seem to be forgetting that adding more and more has an increasingly high opportunity cost. If someone’s gonna wear four Old One’s Army accessories and go running around with nine sentries, let them. They literally have to sacrifice more than half of their accessories for that.

Although, I will play devil’s advocate and I can see why stacking frog legs would concerning to the devs if you only ran with two or three of them. By five, your character is probably uncontrollable and the only thing you’d accomplish is despawning bosses or being completely unable to land your hits, but with 2-3 you have just enough mobility to compete with endgame wing+insignia combos, and depending on who you ask, that may easily compete with and possibly outbeat offensive or defensive effects. I personally don’t think this is an issue though - being able to capitalize in mobility is just as valid as capitalizing into defense or offense, and again using 2-3 frog legs is a sacrifice of 2-3 accessory slots.

As for whip stacking, I’m going to offer my own two cents and say I found it a hell of a lot harder in practice than on paper. 3-4 hotbar slots is a lot to manage while *also* focusing on aiming and dodging, as well as maintaining all those different whips in the tags’ very short duration of four seconds. It’s still definitely too strong when adding whip speed to Firecracker or stacking Blades, but I don’t feel like it’s an issue with the vast majority of minions or like it’s an issue when paired with melee weapons.
 
You brought up a lot of examples of Whip Stacking being strong, but none of those seem to actually be overpowered, which is what I was asking for.

And I don't really agree with the idea that more whips would make Whip Stacking broken, because that technique has a lot of limitations: Tag damage buffs all get reset when you hit a new enemy, so the technique is almost impossible to use against crowds and tricky to maintain against bosses with multiple segments; and realistically you will not be able to stack more than three whip tags at one time, either due to their limited duration, losing DPS due to constantly swapping to weaker whips or just human limitations. And of course, whips themselves have downsides; most importantly their limited range and poor base single target damage.

Let's talk more about your example of a hypothetical Stardust Whip with 15 tag damage: I would not stop using the Stardust Dragon in favor of stacking tags with Cells. The Dragon has better Crowd control and not relying primarily on Tag damage buffs gives me the flexibility to use whatever weapon I want instead of having to micromanage between whips with limited range.

Of course, we are dealing with hypotheticals here so I could be wrong, but I still believe that the issue is Blade Staff being able to receive damage increases that range from 400% to 600% from whips alone, while you have to try really hard to double any other minion's base damage.

Note: I've never tried stacking Whip Melee Speed buffs and swords, so I can't comment about that, I'll just point out that Melee speed has diminishing returns in DPS, so I don't really see it becoming too insane either if more of those are added.
You're only now asking for "Overpowered" examples though. But to answer, Terra Blade is the one case where Whip stacking actually shatters the game in half for a while. No, really, 5~ second Expert Golem is disgusting.

I'm 99% sure what you said isn't true at all, Tag damage puts a debuff on enemies and it works on multiple enemies without issues.


Morning Star and especially Kaleidoscope actually have very good single-target damage. Remember, 2500~ single target DPS with Obsidian Armor not including additional minions.

I don't see how Stardust Dragon has better crowd control at all, not only is the AI dumb, but since it's alone it will only target one enemy at a time. Cells simply have better crowd controls, they are designed for handling groups of enemies as opposed to Stardust Dragon. And realistically, any weapons you'd use alongside Dragon would be far inferior than spamming Firecracker, each explosion possibly up to quad digit damage or close. But Cells still have dumb single-target damage on their own, ho ho.
 
You're only now asking for "Overpowered" examples though. But to answer, Terra Blade is the one case where Whip stacking actually shatters the game in half for a while. No, really, 5~ second Expert Golem is disgusting.
Nope, my question was "Can all minions get incredibly strong from multiple tags, or is it just a select few?". Guess my wording wasn't clear enough, apologize for that. Also, that video really does raise concerns about the melee speed tags, especially if that strategy is as strong against more than the grounded boss Golem.

I'm 99% sure what you said isn't true at all, Tag damage puts a debuff on enemies and it works on multiple enemies without issues.

Yup, you are right. Just tested this against Medusa Statues. I saw that Firecracker was purely single target and assumed all whips worked the same.

Morning Star and especially Kaleidoscope actually have very good single-target damage. Remember, 2500~ single target DPS with Obsidian Armor not including additional minions.

I don't see how Stardust Dragon has better crowd control at all, not only is the AI dumb, but since it's alone it will only target one enemy at a time. Cells simply have better crowd controls, they are designed for handling groups of enemies as opposed to Stardust Dragon. And realistically, any weapons you'd use alongside Dragon would be far inferior than spamming Firecracker, each explosion possibly up to quad digit damage or close. But Cells still have dumb single-target damage on their own, ho ho.

I'll take your word for this, you've clearly tested more than I have.

I dont have much more to add to this discussion and we've really derailed from the main topic, so I think i'll concede here, I'll need to test more before refuting any of your claims :)
 
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Only going to respond to this one more time, but wanted to point out that this was not ever going to happen. Quint-stacked Frog Legs allowed a player with just Rocket Boots and no wings to jump higher than most wings. It also allowed a user with Angel Wings to fly higher than Solar Wings.

We specifically limited this multiplicative effect, and the only reason Amphibian Boots was not included because it was called Amphibian Boots rather than Frog-(Something) and so it was missed in the process. This is no special wavedashing accidental technique that dramatically enhanced the game, it was a simple oversight on one out of a set of 5 that was remedied.
what's the issue with being able to jump as high as solar wings if my damage output, defense, (if using rocket boots, midair mobility and fall immunity too), and accuracy are now terrible? Not to mention i now run at high risk of successfully despawning whatever it is i try to fight (or if underground, just in a worse situation than if regular wings were used). This isn't nerfing something that's a bit too strong for its own good, this is just deleting something fun for absolutely no good reason.

at the very least let them stack with diminishing returns so that they remain an option, even if they have lower viability than alternatives.
 
Copied message from In-depth tier list, for some information:

17 damage listed, ichor only, 10 enemy def: 17 + 5 - 0 = 22 damage

17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Kaleidoscope, 1000 enemy def: 17 + 12.5 - 472.5 + 20 tag = 1
17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Kaleidoscope, 200 enemy def: 17 + 12.5 - 72,5 + 20 tag= 1
17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Kaleidoscope, 100 enemy def: 17 + 12.5 - 22,5 + 20 tag= 27
17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Kaleidoscope, 75 enemy def: 17 + 12.5 - 10 + 20 = 39.5
17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Kaleidoscope, 70 enemy def: 17 + 12.5 - 7.5 + 20 = 42
17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Kaleidoscope, 10 enemy def: 17 + 5 - 0 + 20 = 42

17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Spinal Tap,100 enemy def: 17 + 12,5 - 22,5 + 7 = 14
17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Spinal Tap, 75 enemy def: 17 + 12.5 - 10 + 7 = 26.5
17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Spinal Tap, 70 enemy def: 17 + 12.5 - 7.5 + 7 = 29
17 damage, Ichor, Betsy, Spinal Tap, 10 enemy def: 17 + 5 - 0 + 7 = 29

Seems that 42 dmg with kaleidoscope and 29 with the spinal tap is max for 17 listed
It is effectively capped at +22 damage (ichor and betsy, all def reduction avaliable). If the targets defence is 70 or less.


Real tests:
Blade staff.gif



**Edit:
Shyguymask said: "Out of every "exploit" in mind, Blade Staff's 25 armor penetration bug is the smallest and least noticeable of them. Saying "Exploit" as a reason to indirectly nerf, improperly adjust the Blade Staff is poor reasoning. So many weapons in general including Sanguine Staff benefits from major "exploits" now, not just the Blade staff. None of these weapons were balanced around the "Exploits" given by whips alone. So what to take from this? Should we remove Whip Stacking as well? No! Whip Stacking is like Wavedashing in Super Smash Bros Melee, it's a technique with a lot of depth that adds to the gameplay experience for experienced players willing to learn it. Blade Staff and Sanguine Staff SHOULD be about as powerful as each other, the entire point of "Balance" in video games including Terraria is to have options be about as powerful as eachother. Nerfing the Blade Staff with no compensations or other nerfs will hurt the game as a whole, worsening the balance of the game. And the justification by Re-logic for it is disappointing at best. Contrary to what has been claimed, Sanguine Staff is if anything easier to obtain than Blade Staff, and even though the statement is "Blade Staff was not balanced around exploit" , this can be said for not only Sanguine Staff, not only Summoner weapons as a whole, but weapons from another class (Melee specifically) as well."

And I completely agree. Focusing on exploits is not he best decision, it ruins regular balance. (which still has a number of questions as of 1.4.2)
So, my point is:

90% of players, who have bought Terraria, complete it, enjoy it. They don't even know about whip stacking etc. Like summons, some melee weapons etc. Only remaining 10%, on their 5th to 10th playthrough know about whip stacking or how to owerpower some weapons with that.

Let's imagine different weapons:
"Blade Staff was not balanced around exploit" = base damage reduced from 6 to 2, now recieves only a half of tag damage bonuses.

"Terra Blade was not balanced around exploit" = let's nerf it to oblivion. Use time increased from 14 to 28, damage decreased from 115 to 80. Cool sword. S+ tier sword.

" *every sword dependant on melee speed* was not balanced around exploit" = we introduce that every sword now gains only 10% melee speed bonus. And nothing to compensate that too.

As whip-stacking is also skill-dependant, we can say "Terraprisma was not balanced around exploit". Because there are skilled players who kill daytime EoL after Plantera of around Golem. (assuming it is designed to be at least on par with Stardust items and obtained using lunar items (to be compensated in difficulty and be about on par with ML))
**A secret weapon gets its nerf, damage decreased from 90 to 45**.

Now, 90% of players complete Terraria and question themselves, why all swords are so bad? Terra blade? The most disappointing game-iconic weapon ever. Why do all melee speed increasing accessories even exist with their 1/10 of efficiency? Why do two, (the same progression tier) summon weapons exist, but one is so underpowered? Why I tortured myself to obtain a secret weapon if it is twice as weak as the Dragon ,which I already have?
10% of fan players are confused too, because theit knowledge of the game is unappreciated.

+ There is also the Horsemans Blade. The weapon that relies on "tricks" to be viable at all. With decent statue mechanism it kills ML in 10 sec.
I'm genuinely interested how this weapon would correlate with this statement.

So I dont know if someone agrees, but it is even better to leave it as it is, because skill-dependant, almost unknown in general, feature does not hurt overall impression for the vast majority. Or yes, every "bugfix" (technically Blade Staff nerf/ no more whip stacking = weaker summon class) should be compensated.
 
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