In-depth Hardmode weapon tier list

It’s not an S tier weapon, but it sure as hell isn’t C either.

Paladin’s Hammer really needs autoswing to work, but when you have it it becomes great, like many other boomerangs.

The thing isn’t notable for its range, it’s notable for its speed and ability to smash clusters. With autoswing, get near the group of enemies spamming the hammer and hit them repeatedly with the hammer, with almost no chance of missing your shots. You get very high DPS due to its speed and base damage, and it’s one of few examples of a short range weapon that benefits from its high knockback: it lets you run through the crowds spamming the hammer and basically just play snowplow.

In DPS, it’s roughly the same as Terra Blade when you give it autoswing. I’d argue that with more piercing against tight clusters, and and its knockback and immediate accuracy making it highly spammy, but not having a blade or much range as Terra Blade, it’s around the same in ability for crowds. It’s worth noting that range matters way less for crowds than for bosses, especially the Martians or earlier phases of the Moons.
Considering that and how it can’t be used for bosses like Terra Blade, I’d put it in A- / B+. B- or C feels way too harsh.

Also Vampire Knives may get more DPS if you land every single knife, but that’s not realistic. Vampire Knives have a spread the size of Neptune, and you usually only hit once or twice per swing. There’s a reason Vampire Knives aren’t regarded for their DPS.
No-no I have a different experience.
Paladins Hammer does autoswing, as every decent melee gear at this point must have a glove accessory.
DPS: 1500 vs 2500 versus single-target ranged terra blade (no sword damage)
Against crowds – infinite piercing does not matter, when base dmg is 172 terra vs 90 hammer. To take advantage of the hammer you need to hit twice as many enemies at least.
Range is very important. Lets take OOA into consideration, where crowd control really matters. With terra you can stand near the crystal and spam

Vampire Knives always throw 4-5 knives in a very dense group, only 1-2 are far from them and missing. Not a huge issue,as average number of knives thrown is 4.94 (wiki info).
 
Last edited:
No-no I have a different experience.
Paladins Hammer does autoswing, as every decent melee gear at this point must have a glove accessory.
DPS: 1500 vs 2500 versus single-target ranged terra blade (no sword damage)

Vampire Knives always throw 4-5 knives in a very dense group, only 1-2 are far from them and missing. Not a huge issue,as average number of knives thrown is 4.94 (wiki info).
The value from the DPS meter can fluxuate. If you don’t explicitely hypermax Terra Blade using the highly specific melee speed range (most players won’t go out of their way to be that specific) and pretending you have no combat bonuses except autoswing, Paladin’s Hammer would land roughly 360 single target DPS and Terra Blade 369 (with most melee speed values, sword is thrown every second swing).

If Vampire Knives landed four times per swing, its DPS is higher than both, but again I’ve never found that realistic. The wide spread is completely varied, and although it does fire clusters you can’t guarantee they will actually follow your cursor. I also don’t recommend getting close enough to do this because the only time you’d do that is if you needed pierce more and Vampire Knives are meant to pull you up from almost dead.

Paladin Hammer’s ability to knock crowds around without the need to tend to it specifically aside from the melee accessories you should already have unlime Terra Blade with its melee speed is what makes it good. It can hit more enemies in a tight cluster and has the “snowplow” effect that I described earlier due to its knockback, but misses out on range and has no blade, making it roughly the same as Terra Blade vs. crowds and worse vs. bosses.

Paladin’s Hammer should also be compared to other C tier weapons - Magical Harp, Deadly Sphere, Blood Thorn. It’s very hard to argue it’s anywhere near that bad, and its specific niche but effectiveness in that niche lands it around A-/B+. Still quite a ways lower than Terra Blade and Vamp Knives as it should be, but doesn’t pretend the weapon is weak or useless either.
 
The value from the DPS meter can fluxuate. If you don’t explicitely hypermax Terra Blade using the highly specific melee speed range (most players won’t go out of their way to be that specific) and pretending you have no combat bonuses except autoswing, Paladin’s Hammer would land roughly 360 single target DPS and Terra Blade 369 (with most melee speed values, sword is thrown every second swing).

If Vampire Knives landed four times per swing, its DPS is higher than both, but again I’ve never found that realistic. The wide spread is completely varied, and although it does fire clusters you can’t guarantee they will actually follow your cursor. I also don’t recommend getting close enough to do this because the only time you’d do that is if you needed pierce more and Vampire Knives are meant to pull you up from almost dead.

Paladin Hammer’s ability to knock crowds around without the need to tend to it specifically aside from the melee accessories you should already have unlime Terra Blade with its melee speed is what makes it good. It can hit more enemies in a tight cluster and has the “snowplow” effect that I described earlier due to its knockback, but misses out on range and has no blade, making it roughly the same as Terra Blade vs. crowds and worse vs. bosses.

Paladin’s Hammer should also be compared to other C tier weapons - Magical Harp, Deadly Sphere, Blood Thorn. It’s very hard to argue it’s anywhere near that bad, and its specific niche but effectiveness in that niche lands it around A-/B+. Still quite a ways lower than Terra Blade and Vamp Knives as it should be, but doesn’t pretend the weapon is weak or useless either.
Yes, I deliberately maxed out Terra and Paladins Hammer. Pretty much didn't think about low-offense builds. Then its right. Vampire knives would suffer from that in theory, due to low base dmg and damage loss with range

I'll go ant retest that with turtle (beetle defensive) set and mech glove only, all warding

**Update: 1.4.2 is out! HV bullets are not as effective vs large targets. Affects the Tactical Shotgun the most
 
Last edited:
I don't think phasesabers actually deserve highest availability rating. 50 crystal shards is just enormous investment compared to crystal storm and chik.
Moreover, after taking into account power of other weapons crafted with crystal shards and relative shards scarcity at the beginning of Hardmode phasesabers end up with much higher opportunity cost than ore swords have.
 
Got some results with the defensive build
(Beetle shell, only the celestial shell gives some damage bonuses, all remaining accessories are defensive and warding)
(Frost Moon, Pumpkin moon, OOA T3)

Post-plantera damage results are:
Terra blade > Scourge > Seedler > Paladins Hammer/ Flower Pow (tied overall) > Vampire Knives

–Everything is right. The Paladins Hammer indeed creates some sort of clusers of enemies and then smashes them. For Defensive users, A tier, for offensive B+
–The Flower Pow also attracts all mobs with drop attack, then you can also smash them with thrown attack. Drop attack also better vs Mourning woods/ Everscreams.
However, it is problematic to use vs flying bosses, unlike Paladins Hammer. Can use terrain advantages easily vs regular mobs. I think the mark is reversed, for defensive builds it is B, for offensive A-.
–Vampire Knives still do their main function, but ichor + sharpened is a "must", rather than recommenadion. S+, ok.
– I am impressed by the Scourge. Dps is now insignificantly better than Seedler's, but you can attack from extremely long distances (great synergy with defensive build!). The Seedler does the same only with direct hits. Anywhere underground it repels and debuffs any mobs, being more accurate than Seedler (Seedler is great too, but not to this degree) . I may argue that it is very close to Vampire Knives in terms of usefulness. The highet possible S. Not S+, you can miss and lose a chunk of dps in open spaces
**Paladins Hammer and Flower Pow are better than Seedler / SotC during OOA, but it is predictable.

Late Pre-lunar results are:
Flying Dragon/ Sky dragons fury / Terra blade (tie) > Influx Waver/ North Pole > Possessed hatchet

Terra blade has more range, but in defensive build Flying Dragon takes the slight lead in terms of dps (no intentional terra beam speed increase).
Dragon still outclasses Influx Waver. A+/S- recommded, really
Sky dragons fury is amazing, against clusters. Can deal more DPS than everything in the Pumpkin Moon
As for lunar events, hands down the Sky Dragons fury wins. Then comes Flying Dragon, the 3rd is Terra.
Influx combines all disadvantages: hard to aim, like terra, less damage than Flying Dragon.

So, a lot of words here, but the result is that the tier list here is correct (except Betsy weapons) and reflects approximate results for def/off builds, and I underestimated the Paladins Hammer. Hell no to C+/B-
 
Defensive builds? Here's the thing beetle armor has pretty trash melee stats, what if you just ignore them and use non melee weapons? How do they compare?
Have no info recently
But I remember back in 1.3 release, expert mode Moon Lord was too hard for me and I used Beetle Shell + Ranged accessories + Vortex Beater/Chlorophyte
It worked, so the idea is relevant.
+ we now have more good summons to play with (up to 3 slots)
This is only when you need 45% DR, however
Otherwise, Tavernkeeps mixed sets are better
 
I believe Flying Knife's strengths are enough to bump it to B tier, maybe even B+.

The thing about Flying Knife is that it covers Melee's primary weaknesses. Melee usually has to approach underground mobs to kill them, and in Pirate invasions Melee struggles to actually go out and slice enemies with all the projectile spam around. Flying Knife completely solve these issues, better than Yoyos do since Flying Knife has infinite range, piercing and lifespan. With Flying Knife you can easily hide in a spot and pick off underground enemies, Ice golems on the surface while grinding for Frost Armor & wings and especially pirates with how they line up in a line. Flying Knife is NOT a good Boss weapon, but it's pretty excellent in every other aspect of the gameplay. If anything that matters a lot because Pre-mech is one of the most grindy-heavy parts of the game. All of the C-tier weapons are weapons I've pretty much never used, but I found myself using Flying Knife and having it be a lifesaver on multiple playthroughs. Speaking objectively and in conclusion, Flying Knife offers more to Melee players than the C-tier weapons in the list, and it should rise to around B tier. Again, It covers Melee's weaknesses greatly, better than Yoyos do, with its one big drawback being its bad DPS for mech bosses.
 
After using the flying knife on a few playthroughs it has quickly become one of my favorite weapons in the game. I don't really care about 'covering melee weaknesses' but this is one of the few melee weapons that will make me consider switching my class when I get it.

'Flying knife' is kind of misleading because 90% of the time you'll want to have the knife rolling along the ground or the sides of caves, very rarely will you have your cursor sitting on the enemy you want to hit. You have much more control over the knife this way. It takes a bit of practice but when you get good at it you'll be rolling the knife along surfaces then abruptly stopping inside an enemy's hitbox dealing constant damage. It performs much better against clumps of enemies than yoyos do since yoyos tend to bounce off the first enemy, this will instead slide into all their hitboxes.
Oh yeah and you can do all of this while also remaining in complete safety.

Flying knife is one of the best weapons to use in caves since there are walls to roll off of absolutely everywhere.
It also does well against the pirates (but not parrots) and it even handled t2 OOA fairly well (well everything except ogre I used a megashark on that).
it's also great for queen slime's first phase, since she is grounded the flying knife has no issues staying inside her hitbox, and I don't have to worry about getting close to her minions.
The flying knife can also do decently well against th destroyer, although you should probably use something else to deal with the probes.

It's main weakness is flying enemies, it can can some small pests if it absolutely has to but it is not recommended for flying bosses such as the twins destroyer or queen slime's second phase.

There's also a trick you can do where you can use flying knife and a yoyo at the same time with a feral claw type accesory, but I haven't found it very useful since the weapons are controlled in completely different ways.
 
It is also good for obtaining the Drippler Crippler. Kills worm enemies really fast if you drag it through the whole body. (not vs Destroyer, probes are pain to kill)

Speaking of the Destroyer, the Fetid Baghkakhcs(?) are > Bladetongue.
Dao of Pow is OK if you don't bother with blood moon fishing.

In farming arenas (I almost always farm corruption/crimson/desert keys pre-mech) the Flying Knife is the best melee weapon to kill trapped enemies in lava and dart pits, tied with the Dart Pistol/Crystal darts if you are above the pit, and the Daedalus if you are below
Only the Sergeant United Shield can do something like this, but still harder to use. Yoyos are short a bit, and deal 25% less damage when no direct sight of the enemy.

Its synergy with orichalcum armor bonus is kind of nice, but can't say exactly how well in terms of dps it is vs frost armor
The latter should be still better

In general, as with the Flower Pow (exc. vs mobs, not designed for bosses) A- is a sweet spot.

*edit, like always: it belongs more to B tier. In open spaces tends to miss some enemies and nor as effective vs scattered crowds.

By the way, I retested Stynger vs Nail gun, again. Why do I write again about that – inconsistescy of results. This time, average of 5 tries PM/FM showed that the Stynger is better, not by much
So, when I claimed that Nail Gun> Stynger, I was probably wrong, it is a tie actually
 
Last edited:
It is also good for obtaining the Drippler Crippler. Kills worm enemies really fast if you drag it through the whole body. (not vs Destroyer, probes are pain to kill)
It also disintigrates those big desert worms if they dig into it.

Its synergy with orichalcum armor bonus is kind of nice, but can't say exactly how well in terms of dps it is vs frost armor
The latter should be still better
Orichalcum doesn't synergise very well with it, they flying knife attacks fast enough to hog all the iframes preventing the petals from hitting the enemy that created the petal, and orichalcum petals are too innacurrate to cause colaterial damage to other enemeis.


In general, as with the Flower Pow (exc. vs mobs, not designed for bosses) A- is a sweet spot.

*edit, like always: it belongs more to B tier. In open spaces tends to miss some enemies and nor as effective vs scattered crowds.
I find the flying knife to be a lot more useful than the chain guilittenes, they have around the same dps against ground enemies, but as much as flying knife struggles with spread out enemies chain guiltenes can only attack 1 enemy at a time. It's also worth mentioning that from my expeirence pirates tend to clump up at 1 point.
Chain guilitenes can handle flying enemies better but the range is too short to be used on the twins or prime, it can handle phase 2 queen slime though which is nice since the knife can handle phase 1. In caves there's no competition even flying cave enemies like ichor stickers and corrupters tend to be close to walls the knife can take advantage of, the only cave enemies that I'd use chain guiltenes on over flying knife are biome mimics.
 
I'd like to make a case for rising Fetid Baghnakhs to A tier and rising Dark Harvest to S tier.


^ This is my April Fools video but it's also a Melee/Summoner hybrid showcase in disguise. I'm bringing it up because it shows Fetid and to a lesser extent (screentime-wise) Dark Harvest dominating Hardmode (9:50 onward).

Starting with Fetid, its synergy with Titanium Armor is fantastic, Titanium Armor nearly doubles its DPS. And even with the 1.4 nerf in mind, Snapthorn + Durendal nevertheless gives it a significant swing speed buff, which in turn leads to even more Titanium shards being generated, leading to even higher DPS. Coupled with the Blade staff in a tank-y build, you can facetank from Mech bosses to Plantera (& Golem too if you haven't replace Fetid with Terra Blade by then) in Master mode.

As for Dark Harvest, we already know what it does, but I don't think just middle of A tier justifies it. Durendal is A+ when it and Dark Harvest are used for basically the same purpose, except Dark Harvest has significantly longer range. And once Kaleidoscope is obtained, Durendal's range start to become a problem, and Kaleidoscope alone gives a bunch of Summon Tag damage anyway. And Firecracker is S even though it's not as versatile as Dark Harvest. Firecracker only benefits Summoner that are using weapons that aren't Blade Staff, while Dark Harvest is a must have both both Summoner AND Melee. In short, Dark Harvest is about as if not more useful than Durendal overall, while having significantly more versatility than Firecracker.
 
Last edited:
I'd like to make a case for rising Fetid Baghnakhs to A tier and rising Dark Harvest to S tier.


^ This is my April Fools video but it's also a Melee/Summoner hybrid showcase in disguise. I'm bringing it up because it shows Fetid and to a lesser extent (screentime-wise) Dark Harvest dominating Hardmode (9:50 onward).

Starting with Fetid, its synergy with Titanium Armor is fantastic, Titanium Armor nearly doubles its DPS. And even with the 1.4 nerf in mind, Snapthorn + Durendal nevertheless gives it a significant swing speed buff, which in turn leads to even more Titanium shards being generated, leading to even higher DPS. Coupled with the Blade staff in a tank-y build, you can facetank from Mech bosses to Plantera (& Golem too if you haven't replace Fetid with Terra Blade by then) in Master mode.

As for Dark Harvest, we already know what it does, but I don't think just middle of A tier justifies it. Durendal is A+ when it and Dark Harvest are used for basically the same purpose, except Dark Harvest has significantly longer range. And once Kaleidoscope is obtained, Durendal's range start to become a problem, and Kaleidoscope alone gives a bunch of Summon Tag damage anyway. And Firecracker is S even though it's not as versatile as Dark Harvest. Firecracker only benefits Summoner that are using weapons that aren't Blade Staff, while Dark Harvest is a must have both both Summoner AND Melee. In short, Dark Harvest is about as if not more useful than Durendal overall, while having significantly more versatility than Firecracker.
Great job! Watced it, as well as blade vs sangune staves video.
I thought I was the only who played Terra + Dark harvest + *best minion avaliable/vampire knives *
Scourge + desert tiger are also great foe general mobbing

Agree with S for dark harvest
And vote for S- for the Kaleidoscope, as it acts like "jack of all trades" – decent with literally every minion, even with Desert Tiger (can be stacked with the Firecracker, to deal ~3000 crits sometimes), + even more DPS by itself if boosted by Dark Harvest

The firecracker is good as it is or in S-, because of how long it serves you
Early-HM with Obsidian armor/Spiders
Mid-HM with Sanguine
Late HM with Tiger/Kaleidoscope
Endgame, for fun with Dragon/Kaleidoscope/Dark Harvest
 
Last edited:
I recently tested a ton of weapons against empress of light.

Based on this data I'm sugggesting some tier changes.

Daedleus stormbow S-, yeah it can't be used underground but this thing had the best performance out of all the pre plantera weapons I tested.

Influx waiver B, this was the worst martian weapon in all the tests, and I really don't see this weapon's appeal in CC. The projectiles get thier damage split so with linear piercing its subpar, and you need to manually aim its slow projectile at the first enemy to deal with scattered crowds, so I'd rather just use chloro bullets for those. How is this better than something like a chain gun?

Electrosphere launcher A+, this thing actually functions well as a bossing weapon, it slightly out performed the razorpine, and it did much better than the influx waiver.

Laser Machine Gun performed much better than expected, haven't used this outside these tests so I'm not really sure about its overall usefullness.

Stake launcher S, Ok... why did a crowd control pumpkin moon weapon beat a frost moon weapon focused on single target dps? Like I'm the kind of player that likes to stay fairly close to Empress so I'm probably getting better performance with the razorpine than the average player and stake launcher still beat it.
It also did much better than the bat scepter which you gave S.
 
Last edited:
This is a really good list that I've used as reference for a while now, and I agree with almost everything here. However I've recently been doing some testing with the two Moon Lord sentry staffs, and I think both of them might need some adjustment.

Specifically, I think the Rainbow Crystal Staff is better than you gave it credit for, while the Lunar Portal Staff is actually much worse. For starters I'm not sure why they both have the same accuracy rating, since the Rainbow Crystal is MUCH more accurate than the Lunar Portal now; due to the slow sweep of its beam, the Lunar Portal has difficulty hitting any boss faster than Golem (read: every boss except Golem), and even during invasions it can only hit the slowest-moving targets. Per some advice I've seen I positioned it lower to the ground during invasions so its beam can pierce through crowds horizontally, but it still had a tendency to chase after flying targets and completely whiff instead of actually doing anything useful. Meanwhile the Rainbow Crystal Staff creates so many explosions and the delay on its attacks is so small now that it rarely misses anything but the fastest bosses. Sure, it won't beat the Empress on its own, not very quickly anyway, but it absolutely decimates invasions. With a decent summoner setup, it can even defend the Eternia Crystal by itself all the way until the last few waves.

As if that weren't enough, even when it does actually hit things, the Lunar Portal only gets about half the DPS of the Rainbow Crystal. That's right, half. In theory, it should be able to hit things quickly enough that the rapid piercing hits make up for its lower damage, but in practice it only hits each target once or twice per sweep unless it's a really big target like Golem. Its sweep is in a weird spot where it's too slow to hit most moving targets, but it's fast enough that it passes through most targets before it can hit them more than once. Add to this the fact that its lower damage means it's far more heavily penalized by defense, and it's just not really good at anything. For the record, as I've been implying throughout this post, the target it performs best against is Golem, and even then the Rainbow Crystal gets twice as much DPS. Against most other targets, the difference is even bigger.

I'm not even convinced the Lunar Portal is better than pre-Lunar sentries like the Ballistas. Tbh I'd put it in D rank, maybe D+ because it's not worse than jousting lances, but it's pretty bad. Meanwhile I think the Rainbow Crystal should be at least A- because as mentioned, it absolutely shreds invasions and gives a lot of return for the minimal effort you have to invest.
 
Last edited:
1.4.2.2 has been released, and applied 1.4.1 nerfs for dart weapons
Has anyone tested them, are nerfs significant? Have no time to do it myself
 
The Dart Guns were never broken, the ammo is.

Ichor Darts have absolutely insane Damage per Shot, and Crystal Darts are the second most braindead spammable projecitle in the game just behind the Razorblade Typhoon. Cursed Darts can also shred Destroyer and have very good Single Target damage.

The buff didn't really change anything, it was just completely unnecessary
 
Back
Top Bottom