The Best & Worst Class In Each Progression Tier (With Explanations)

[Shyguymask]

*EXCLUDING PRE-BOSS, since gear isn't easily obtainable or high in quantity at that point in the game. Really, just use whatever you stumble upon until you flesh out into an actual build. Won't cover post-Moon Lord either since the game is over at that point.

Before I give my take, some info & criteria:

• Classes will be mainly compared against each other in term of relative DPS, ease of use, weapon availability and more.
• The performance & potential of each class will mostly be judged by their best items. Bad weapons like Pearlwood Sword and Pirate Staff by themselves don't necessarily drag down the overall viability of Melee and Summoner respectively for example, because both have drastically better alternatives in the same tier.
• This will take all skills levels into account, although more skewed towards beginner and "intermediate" players than pro players that show off with speedkills and such.
• No Hybrid builds. They are usually the best builds for damage, mostly with Hybrid Summoner, but for the sake of this thread I'll be limiting it to the classic four damage types.
• For the purpose of this thread, classes aren't 100% limited to only using items based on their damage type. As long as the build is clearly focusing on one damage type, secondary items like Betsy's Wrath, ichor bullets and minions (up to 3 slots) among other things are taken into account.
• This thread takes Expert/Master into account, but practically everything here will also apply to Classic mode. GFB and other unusual game modes like Hardcore mode are not taken into account.
• This assumes you are playing single player.

Now commence the yapping

---

PRE-EVIL BOSSES - This is still pretty vague and very open-ended with the four classes still not really fleshed out, so it's difficult to judge things. In this case, I will assume the player is taking their time preparing & upgrading their character, while doing activities like exploring the more dangerous biomes and doing events like Goblin Army and Blood Moon if not done yet. Of course, the main "goal" are Brain of Cthulhu and Eater of Worlds. However, I mostly play on Crimson and I admittedly don't have that much experience with Eater of Worlds, but what is effective against BoC should still basically be just as effective against EoW.

BEST - Summoner
Contrary to popular belief, Summoner can easily upgrade itself into one of if not the strongest early Pre-Hardmode build with a bit of effort. Flinx Staff is one of the best early game weapons, Flinx Coat is one of the best early game armor due to how much value it gives, Snapthorn is another one of the best early game weapons and furthermore, Vampire Frog is also about as strong as Flinx Staff if not stronger depending on the situation, but is significantly more difficult & RNG to obtain, especially for a new player. Snapthorn, besides dealing surprisingly high damage for a whip, has its 6 tag damage acting as a particularly big boost to minion DPS, to the point of being able to double the damage output of minions if not more when taking enemy defense into account. And since minions like Finch Staff and especially Vampire Frog excels at piercing through multiple targets, Summoner absolutely excels at shredding Goblin Army and the evil bosses alike. And piercing asides, Summoner can safely explore Underground Jungle and Underground Desert by summoning Flinx on top of enemies to easily get rid of them fast, even if they're on the other side of a wall. Finch + Flinx with Snapthorn is already enough to debate Summoner being the strongest at this point of the game, but if Vampire Frog is obtained then it is indisputable at that point. You can also whip stack with Leather Whip if you want to further maximize DPS. With such a build, a more experienced player can take on Skeletron early with no problem.

WORST - Mage
The real early game runt. Magic weapons are notoriously few in quantity in the first half of Pre-Hardmode, to the point it indeed makes Mage the worst build at this point in the game. A weapon like Diamond Staff is very much good, but it's a lower ceiling than meta options from other classes like Boomstick, Starfury, Blade of Grass, Snapthorn and so on. Wand of Sparking/Frosting are getting outdated at this point too. Thunder Zapper is good for single target DPS, but events & evil bosses warrant piercing, not to mention the blood moon minibosses can be tricky for Thunder Zapper to aim at. Gray Zapinator and Demon Scythe are very strong at this point, but are notoriously difficult to obtain this early. Crimson Cloud and especially Vilethorn are also viable options from what I've heard, but in general, Mage simply is lacking compared to the offering of the three other classes at this point.

------------

PRE-SKELETRON - Deerclops, Queen Bee and Skeletron are the main targets of this tier, as well as Underworld mobbing to a small extent.

BEST - Melee
Molten Armor has the highest amount of defense out of all Pre-Hardmode armor, and combined with the fact reforging accessories to Warding is plenty doable by now, you have yourself a build so tanky that it pretty much laughs at Deerclops, Queen Bee's stingers and Skeletron's hands. Even on Master Mode. Defense stacking is already a strong argument to call Melee the best in this tier, but its weapons certainly don't disappoint either. Volcano does the close-range playstyle justice, being able to easily obliterate Skeletron hands and Queen Bee's bee minions alike. If you have the courage (or is simply willing to use health as a "resource"), then you can do stuff like spamming Shield of Cthulhu dash against Queen Bee's charge and partially facetanking Skeletron's hands to really abuse Volcano and deal crazy DPS. If you don't want to fight at close-range, then you can use options like Hive-Five and Flamarang which are solid mid-range options. By making defeat as least likely to happen as possible, Melee is the most effective class to take on these bosses. But if for whatever reason you just want to deal as much damage as possible with offensive modifiers, Melee does have the tools to satisfy those needs.

WORST - Mage
It was a toss-up between Mage or Summoner. I went with Mage as the worst here, because Summoner with Obsidian Armor has a pretty easy & safe time hitting the bosses in this tier thanks to the range boost, and the powerful Vampire Frog should be plenty doable to obtain at this point. Back to Mage, the issue of having few options remains to a lesser extent. Demon Scythe is very obtainable at this point, and it's easily its best option against mid Pre-Hardmode bosses. However, while Demon Scythe is great, it's not perfect and has a number of flaws that prevents it from dominating its competition. Mana potions cannot sustain the weapon without falling into the "mana sinkhole" & stacking Mana Sickness, unless you temporarily stop attacking at times, and not attacking means you are dealing 0 dps. Demon Scythe is also simply difficult to aim, which is mainly relevant when Skeletron is in the skull-shooting mode and when Queen Bee is moving around in general. Demon Scythe can facetank Skeletron's hands in the first phase to kill them quickly, but without a lot of defense this is pretty risky and arguably not really worth trading a lot of HP for. Deerclops is very easy to hit consistently, which makes Demon Scythe a particularly excellent option against it, however not only is Deerclops by far the least important boss out of the three, but Summoner can arguably abuse Deerclops better than Demon Scythe can thanks to grounded minions + optionally sentries.

Other weapons like Bee's Knees and summon minion mixing w/ Snapthorn matches if not beat Demon Scythe while also being easier to use. As for other Magic options in this tier, Diamond Staff and Thunder Zapper are viable but not particularly meta, the bar is set high for the purpose of this thread. Weather Pain is useful for some extra DPS, but this still doesn't close the gap between Mage and the other classes. Gray Zapinator is good but still hard to obtain. Space Gun is bad. Bee Gun is pretty good for homing, but once the hands are gone the single target DPS isn't really valuable. You can switch to a dedicated single target weapon, but so can other classes, for example Melee can alternate between Volcano and Hive Five to be effective at both close-range and mid-range. Simply put, Mage offers the least, again.

------------

PRE-WALL OF FLESH - Mobbing is now again a significantly important aspect with the Dungeon and Underworld, and then of course there's fighting the Wall of Flesh.

BEST - Melee
Just like in the prior tier, you can simply stack Warding + Molten Armor and laugh at WoF's laser spam. You can either take on the boss at close-range with Night's Edge, arguably the best Post-Skeletron weapon in general, or stay back and safely chip it down with Starfury's stars or whatever (this is where going Hybrid/classless would be really warranted, but again, we're not taking that into account here). Night's Edge kills Wall of Flesh particularly quickly despite being used by a build that excels at staying alive. They say you can't have everything, but Melee comes closest to that thanks to its ridiculous sum of DPS & survivability. The only significant drawback to Melee in this case is that that projectiles from Demons will deal fairly high damage even to your tank build, and combined with Melee not excelling at far-range combat right now, this makes Demons kind of annoying to deal with while other classes have homing weapons and such to deal with them from afar in a timely manner.

WORST - Summoner
The mobbing is good, although most minions aren't reliable for targeting Demons from the edge of the screen. The real problem is that Wall of Flesh is an ugly boss to fight as Summoner. You have two choices: 1. Fight at close-range with Obsidian Armor, and leave yourself vulnerable to laser spam & hungry contact damage 2. Stick back with Bee Armor and whittle down WoF with minions relatively slowly. There exists strategies to make minions exploit WoF's multiple weak points to maximize DPS to the point of being genuinely good, however you cannot expect the average player to perform this, and if someone wants to play optimally then they'll switch to the other classes. This is just as bad matchup for Summoner rather than the weapons themselves being weak.

------------

PRE-MECHANICAL BOSSES - A very big tier with a lot of everything when it comes to combat. Despite the vast amount of new content, some classes eat better than the others...

BEST - Ranger
A few of the best weapons in the whole game (for their progression point) are found here: Daedalus Stormbow and the Dart Pistol/Rifle. And there are still outright great alternatives like Onyx Blaster. Daedalus in particular is infamous for being extremely powerful and not only the premiere mech boss killer overall, but also probably the uncontested best pre-mech Duke Fishron weapon. Dart Pistol/Rifle are some of the most versatile weapons in the game, being able to easily kill mobs and melt Destroyer alike while also being above average options against Twins and Skeletron Prime. Tank Melee is still really effective and the "easiest" way to beat the mech bosses, but Ranger's selection is so amazing that it just feels the most straightforward and effective class to play in this tier, plus the Pre-Mech Duke potential.

WORST - Summoner
Summoner doesn't actually start out as badly in Hardmode as people say. Minion mixing with tag damage is a good way of grinding spiders, especially if you go get an Ichor Flask beforehand. Better than that is Abigail with Firecracker, Abigail gets a direct buff in Hardmode and she has great synergy with Firecracker, to the point she actually annihilates individual mobs with ease, even if they have high defense. In fact, getting Blade Staff is not too difficult with Abigail, as she's particularly effective at spawnkilling Queen Slime's minions. Then, Cool Whip with Blade Staff is an excellent setup to trivialize most mobs and also performs nicely against Pirate Invasion. Sanguine Staff is a superb minion for taking on the mech bosses, but is notoriously difficult to obtain. Blade Staff is good against mech bosses with the exception of Destroyer, but needs whip stacking to bring its performance from good to great. And... that's it. Because of how few options Summoner has here, players who don't follow this "guideline" I just summarized will basically find themselves struggling, which is where the complaints about pre-mech Summoner comes from.

The issue is that all the other classes have many more options & alternatives, especially from the perspective of a new player who isn't sure what to do or what to get. Every class has multiple good options in this tier, but Summoner's options can be considered the least good out of them all. Yes, Blade Staff is an amazing weapon when taking its longevity & contribution throughout Hardmode in general, but we are judging performance based on individual tiers here. It was a toss-up between Mage and Summoner being the worst here, and Mage ends up being arguably better thanks to Life Drain being a stupidly good weapon in pre-mech, as well as the extremely high amount of value that class gets from doing pre-mech Duke, if an experienced player manages to overcome the challenge.

------------

PRE-PLANTERA - A relatively small jump in power. Which classes ends up being best & worst here comes down to which gets the biggest or smallest upgrades from killing the mech bosses.

BEST - Melee
Besides Hallowed Armor, Turtle Armor is also a great tank option. Couple that with Warding and you have pretty much no reason to die to Underground Jungle enemies, and with the right setup, you'll be able to straight up facetank Plantera rather easily even on Master mode. Even if you don't go tank, True Excalibur will pretty much keep phase 2 Plantera's vines away from you, letting you easily keep attacking Plantera herself for a quick & easy kill. If you struggles with the phase 2 vines, you'll love True Excalibur. Just make sure to equip at least two Melee Speed + Damage accessories (Mechanical Gauntlet, Fire Gauntlet, Moon Stone) to bring out its potential. True Night's Edge can kill Plantera even faster if playing hyper aggressively, but you should just stick to True Excalibur for the consistency and safety. I suppose most Melee weapons aren't that convenient for killing Underground Jungle enemies, but again, if you're wearing Turtle Armor you have little reason to worry about anything.

WORST - Summoner
Summoner doesn't get much out of this tier. Hallowed armor is great, although in Summoner's case the damage increases actually take a decline compared to Spider armor. Durendal is good but nothing special. Optic Staff is marginally stronger than Blade/Sanguine against Plantera. You can get Moon Stone too with a bit of luck. And... that's it. Summoner does not get a Chlorophyte armor variant, nor its own Avenger Emblem upgrade. This results in Summoner having relatively lacking offense, as shown by it having by far the slowest killtimes against Plantera when comparing the best options of each class. Other classes also have their own advantages that widens the gap, such as Mage having Rainbow Rod to easily kill Underground Jungle mobs and Melee's True Excalibur making Plantera phase 2 somewhat of a joke as said before.

------------

PRE-GOLEM - The game opens up again with numerous new challenges & items available. Post-Plantera dungeon mobbing, Moon events, Solar eclipse and Golem itself are the main things to judge.

BEST - Melee
If you thought Melee was doing good before, that is nothing compared to now. Saying this right now, two of the top 3 best weapons in the entire game are found here: Terra Blade and Vampire Knives. Terra Blade is so ridiculously strong that other weapons who are known for making their competition look like a joke, are themselves made to look like jokes by Terra Blade. You have the weapon with one of the highest raw power in the tier that is also one of the easiest weapons in the game to use at the same time, in virtually all situations. Then with some luck or farming, you can pair that with Vampire Knives to make yourself practically immortal. You have the choice of either making yourself immortal with Vampire Knives + tank, or prioritizing offense to make Terra Blade's already impressive power practically impossible to compare to, without being hard to execute or making yourself remotely close to a glass cannon. Pre-Golem Melee is probably the most dominant build in the entire game, even when not played to 100% of its potential.

WORST - Ranger
Ranger really got the short end of the stick here. Shroomite Armor is easily the worst of the Post-Plantera class armor sets (including Beetle armor from Golem), to the point it is better to mix armor pieces to get higher stats (Armor mixing is good in general but here it's especially warranted since Shroomite is not very good). As for weapons, you have... one of the worst biome chest weapons? Other gimmicky weapons that deal decent at best DPS? A lackluster shotgun? Well, you can get really good stuff like Stake Launcher from Pumpkin Moon and Snowman Cannon from Frost Moon, however the other classes get just as much if not even more out of these tough events. You cannot compete with Terra Blade, Morning Star + Deadly Spheres, Desert Tiger + Firecracker, Spectre Armor and so on.

------------

PRE-CULTIST - You COULD "skip" this tier and rush the Lunatic Cultist while ignoring the other content, however I will judge the classes here on the assumption that the player will participate in the content. Martian Madness, Moon events (if not done yet), Old One's Army tier 3 and Duke Fishron & Empress of Light (if not done yet).

BEST - Mage
It's finally time for Mage to shine. Right off the bat, Spectre Armor offers the Spectre Hood, basically turning every magic weapon into Vampire Knives, giving you a massive boost to survivability. And you can easily alternate it with Spectre Mask to add several hundreds of DPS through its set bonus alone. And the weapons, oh boy the weapons. Duke Fishron is plenty doable to beat at this point, and Bubble Gun is immediately the highest DPS in the entire tier, to the point it is actively used to farm events faster through killing minibosses with its tremendously high DPS that beats even Beetle Might-boosted Terra Blade. And there's no need to worry about how Mage handles groups of regular enemies, because Mage also has one of the best answers to mobs in the entire game: Razorblade Typhoon. In essence, Post-Golem mage truly wields the Yin-Yang: Mastery of both single target DPS & grouped piercing through Duke's drops, and mastery of both raw power & survivability through Spectre armor. This is without mentioning all the viable alternative items Mage has in this tier like Razorpine, Nightglow, Blizzard Staff, Dark Artist's Leggings for the +25% magic crit chance boost and more. Sure, Melee is still practically immortal and can also go crazy offensively, however as I just said Mage has the overall best offense while also being arguably the most versatile, in a tier where DPS is actively warranted & being nearly immortal by itself isn't enough to beat challenges like Old One's Army tier 3 and Daytime Empress. All in all, be careful of who you call ugly weak in Middle school Pre-Hardmode.

WORST - Ranger
Every class in this tier very much fares well, but Ranger still faces intense competition against the other classes. Scope stacking, Tsunami, Eventide and Aerial Bane are some of your best options, but the other classes have even better stuff. I already went over Mage, but Summoner gets the super powerful Xeno Staff + Kaleidoscope combo & can easily obtain those items through the still-strong Morning Star or Desert Tiger setups. Melee has Beetle Armor with Terra Blade and Vampire Knives. Ranger can't beat those things still. It's not the highest DPS, the highest survivability nor the most versatile.

------------

PRE-MOON LORD - Handling the Lunar Pillar mobs is important, but faring well against Moon Lord himself is more important than anything else.

BEST - Melee
Just go Beetle Shell + Warding. You will pretty much not die unless you keep making major mistakes, and Daybreak is a strong far-range option that isn't dependent on damage or melee speed boosts to be effective. Those two things + Stardust Dragon is the easiest and most consistent build to get past the spammy mess that is Moon Lord. And Moon Lord asides, you won't have a lot of trouble handling the pillar mobs through weapons like Terra Blade, Flying Dragon and (if attacking through walls) Solar Eruption.

WORST - Summoner
Similar problem as against Wall of Flesh, Moon Lord is a somewhat poor matchup for Summoner. Terraprisma has relatively limited aggro range, while Stardust Dragon is unreliable & inconsistent if trying to play aggressively with whips. Melee can just go tank, Mage has homing options as well as Bubble Gun to play aggressively in some moments, Ranger has Phantasm for general high DPS at distance as well as Vortex Beater + Chlorophyte bullets for an easy homing alternative at the cost of DPS. A pretty good option is going defensive with Valhalla Breastplate while keeping your distance as the Stardust Dragon wears down Moon Lord, but Melee is significantly better if you want to play safe & defensive.

---

And that's the end of the thread. Let me know your thoughts in the replies. Only thing I want to point out is that Ranger is a bit better than this thread suggests, because pretty much every time it is not mentioned as the best or the worst in a tier, it is #2 best in said tier.

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

There are three notable assumptions here that aren't quite mentioned: the assumption of crimson is mentioned for pre-evil but is relevant through much of the guide, player resources have very loose limits while the assumed barrier here is instead player skill, and this is single player.

The crimson assumption favors melee and hurts ranger, mainly, though it also does benefit summoner a bit. BoC vs EoW, summons are amazing at stunlocking BoC phase 2, but Snapthorn's damage dropoff with pierce and the limited size of minions makes the class a bit worse at dealing with the Eater. Meanwhile, ranger is alright against Brain, but if you're willing to use a bed or worm food to make a flat ground arena, Sandgun is the bar none best weapon against the Eater, reducing the fight into a game of slowly walking away from the boss as your DPS lies in the thousands. Grenade and Sandgun also reign as kings of the Goblin Army, with the prior especially being an easily obtainable 2 minute kill if you make a pit. Even summoner using the same tool can't reach the same heights here.

Corruption also means no Vampire Knives, which knocks melee all the way from the best post-Plantera class to the best post-Plantera class. Yeah, no budging Terra Blade. Shadow armor is a major bonus for ranger Skeletron, though, it's a far better armor set than crimson armor, trading 0.1 HP/s or so for better damage and a Magiluminescence on steroids. Ranger gets to use Shadow armor here more easily than mage or summoner, which have to give up mana support or in summoner's case any non-defense stat. And well, -6 defense compared to melee hurts a bit, but from my perspective, that's instead an extra gold cost spent reforging to armored/warding instead of guarding/armored/warding. The extra defense does help, but you still don't facetank spin, ranger gets very competent defense here as well as better mobility, and Molten Fury is a generically incredible option against Skeletron that doesn't require fighting Queen Bee. If you don't fight Queen Bee for a Hive Five, less experienced melee players can struggle to thread the needle with using Volcano or similar against the skull, to the point that I'm actually surprised you would put melee above ranger at all for this stage.

As for Demon Scythe, how is it easier for mage to get Demon Scythe for Skeletron as opposed to pre-evil? Mage's new weapons at this stage are Space Gun, and that's a comprehensive list unless you throw Space Gun against Queen Bee or Deerclops for weapons that are barely better anyways. This point is more of a nitpick, but mage looking for Demon Scythe is basically forced to use other class weapons or suffer from a painful grind to get the thing. If mage is turning to another class, again ranger provides Grenades as a great option that can pump out a Scythe every few minutes once you carve out the farm. Carving out a farm at all, though, is admittedly a more experienced player thing, so I wouldn't really put this in Scythe's favor. Speaking of experienced player things, though, Crimson Rod preserves its damage value from the moment it's placed for its entire duration! Using loadouts, you can use a tank loadout primary but with a damage loadout to place Crimson Rod, and it does a ton of damage in this case. It really shreds Deerclops, but if you can control Skeletron effectively it shreds him too. What's the best class to pair with Crimson Rod? Melee's Sharpening Station. So still not mage.

The last thing corruption vs crimson does is make Flesh Knuckles and Fetid Baghnakhs a pain to get. Without those, melee loses a ton of power up through Plantera, and the mechs can be very annoying if you don't get lucky with a Blood Moon for a Bananarang or Drippler Crippler. True Excalibur is still an amazing Plantera weapon, though on this count I'd like to mention that ranger doesn't need to grind for 2 Titan Gloves, get a 1/20 Solar Eclipse, farm Tortoises, kill the Wall multiple times, or farm mech souls for great output here.

Multiplayer. Night's Edge is a great tool for the few players that can get it, up until you reach about 6 or 7 players in the world. At this point it rapidly becomes a benchwarmer, as hungry become practically immune to knockback and melee players have to facetank hungry to have functional damage output from anything not named Starfury. If Starfury isn't an option, multiplayer melee becomes worse than even summoner at this point. Single player? Yeah, Night's Edge does dominate the Wall hard. It is hard to balance this, and I get that most people don't play large multiplayer worlds most of the time, but multiplayer Wall is a dramatically different experience.

Multiplayer generally benefits summoner, though summoner still hates Wall. Melee benefits from small multiplayer if it can set up a tank build, but can potentially suffer from limited Muramasas. Mage dreads multiplayer due to all of their good options taking effort to get and none of them really scaling well unless you just use Grenades for farming. Multiplayer also nerfs Spectre Hood, surprisingly - sure, if you have a tank, the tank is now immortal, but that was already the case. If you don't have a tank, the total damage players are taking is just multiplied by the number of players present, and Hood can't keep up unless a bunch of players use it. Heavy damage builds are also way easier to get away with when dying doesn't matter. Ranger, on the other hand, scales incredibly well in multiplayer, especially in premech. Repeaters and Crystal Serpent are the only strong mech weapons that you can get without fighting a single Hardmode enemy, and repeaters are way faster to get. Legitimately, I would put repeaters above Onyx Blaster given Unholy Arrow pierce, better fire rate for mobbing, and them being trivial to get and not requiring you to go out of your way at all. Shroomite is also much stronger in multiplayer with a tank on hand, because now it's a lot easier to set up and use stealth, whereas in single player it's only useful for moon events, OOA, Empress phase 1, Cultist, pillars, and Piranha Gun cheese.

Also, I would not consider biome keys easy to get at all. You are more likely to randomly stumble across them than alternate biome mimics for instance, but I very very rarely get a random biome key drop I care about. When actively farming for one, the only worse grinds (that aren't total memes like Hardmode Bone Pickaxe or Unlucky Yarn) are Rod of Discord and getting all 3 Flesh Knuckles in a corruption world, and that latter one has much less variance. Even with a theoretically optimized farm, 48 ticks per spawn because this was FTW, a teleporter setup to reliably send enemies into the death chamber in 5 ticks, I had to afk for over 3 hours of optimized farming to not get a biome key and just give up and take another option. I've done the entirety of Plantera through Moon Lord in less time than that.

 

[J Bame]

BEST - Melee
Molten Armor has the highest amount of defense out of all Pre-Hardmode armor, and combined with the fact reforging accessories to Warding is plenty doable by now, you have yourself a build so tanky that it pretty much laughs at Deerclops, Queen Bee's stingers and Skeletron's hands. Even on Master Mode. Defense stacking is already a strong argument to call Melee the best in this tier, but its weapons certainly don't disappoint either. Volcano does the close-range playstyle justice, being able to easily obliterate Skeletron hands and Queen Bee's bee minions alike. If you have the courage (or is simply willing to use health as a "resource"), then you can do stuff like spamming Shield of Cthulhu dash against Queen Bee's charge and partially facetanking Skeletron's hands to really abuse Volcano and deal crazy DPS. If you don't want to fight at close-range, then you can use options like Hive-Five and Flamarang which are solid mid-range options. By making defeat as least likely to happen as possible, Melee is the most effective class to take on these bosses. But if for whatever reason you just want to deal as much damage as possible with offensive modifiers, Melee does have the tools to satisfy those needs.

Molten armor, and hellstone as a whole is being considered Post evil boss and not post skeletron, because that's when this stuff becomes available, and Hell's difficulty is too undertuned to gatekeep Hellstone. No problem here.

But if we decide to ban hellstone until post skeletron just for the sake of discussion, Melee actually becomes the worst. Your best bossing weapon is Thorn Chakram and your True Melee weapons become acceptable at best. Hive Five is very good, but i'm not exactly sure what Melee weapon you are going to kill Queen Bee with. Thorn Chakram? Phaseblade? Does Starfury even hit?

Because of how few options Summoner has here, players who don't follow this "guideline" I just summarized will basically find themselves struggling, which is where the complaints about pre-mech Summoner comes from.

The issue is that all the other classes have many more options & alternatives, especially from the perspective of a new player who isn't sure what to do or what to get. Every class has multiple good options in this tier, but Summoner's options can be considered the least good out of them all. Yes, Blade Staff is an amazing weapon when taking its longevity & contribution throughout Hardmode in general, but we are judging performance based on individual tiers here. It was a toss-up between Mage and Summoner being the worst here, and Mage ends up being arguably better thanks to Life Drain being a stupidly good weapon in pre-mech, as well as the extremely high amount of value that class gets from doing pre-mech Duke, if an experienced player manages to overcome the challenge.

It doesnt make sense to shrug off Sanguine and Blade because you may not know "the guideline" for Summoner, yet Life Drain is one of the most underrated weapons in the game and Mage gets the point over summoner because of it. Aren't players equally likely to not know Life Drain is that good?

Mage has no weapon that can be considered above average against the mechs (other than Destroyer). Sanguine and Blade are two of the best mech weapons even when used normally. Summoner basically gets a free pass for early hm grinding thanks to Spider Cave, yet you'll have a hard time getting a good CC magic weapon at the start of hardmode. Only Cursed Flames book is good, and while it is very good... guess which weapon is mutually exclusive to Life Drain?

sorry but Mage takes another L here. Premech Duke is actually a challenge instead of a grind like Demon Scythe, or unintentionally easy like Hellstone post evil boss, RBT doesnt have a lot of weight here.

BEST - Melee
Besides Hallowed Armor, Turtle Armor is also a great tank option. Couple that with Warding and you have pretty much no reason to die to Underground Jungle enemies, and with the right setup, you'll be able to straight up facetank Plantera rather easily even on Master mode. Even if you don't go tank, True Excalibur will pretty much keep phase 2 Plantera's vines away from you, letting you easily keep attacking Plantera herself for a quick & easy kill. If you struggles with the phase 2 vines, you'll love True Excalibur. Just make sure to equip at least two Melee Speed + Damage accessories (Mechanical Gauntlet, Fire Gauntlet, Moon Stone) to bring out its potential. True Night's Edge can kill Plantera even faster if playing hyper aggressively, but you should just stick to True Excalibur for the consistency and safety. I suppose most Melee weapons aren't that convenient for killing Underground Jungle enemies, but again, if you're wearing Turtle Armor you have little reason to worry about anything.

it's amazing how all that is needed to change the perception of True melee is to make a true melee weapon that is actually good

WORST - Summoner
Summoner doesn't get much out of this tier. Hallowed armor is great, although in Summoner's case the damage increases actually take a decline compared to Spider armor. Durendal is good but nothing special. Optic Staff is marginally stronger than Blade/Sanguine against Plantera. You can get Moon Stone too with a bit of luck. And... that's it. Summoner does not get a Chlorophyte armor variant, nor its Avenger Emblem upgrade. This results in Summoner having relatively lacking offense, as shown by it having by far the slowest killtimes against Plantera when comparing the best option of each class. Other classes also have their own advantages that widens the gap, such as Mage having Rainbow Rod to easily kill Underground Jungle mobs and Melee's True Excalibur making Plantera phase 2 somewhat of a joke as said before.

yeah uh, Summoner really does need something with Chlorophyte.

BEST - Mage
It's finally time for Mage to shine. Right off the bat, Spectre Armor offers the Spectre Hood, basically turning every magic weapon into Vampire Knives, giving you a massive boost to survivability. And you can easily alternate it with Spectre Mask to add several hundreds of DPS through its set bonus alone. And the weapons, oh boy the weapons. Duke Fishron is plenty doable to beat at this point, and Bubble Gun is immediately the highest DPS in the entire tier, to the point it is actively used to farm events faster through killing minibosses with its tremendously high DPS that makes beats even Beetle Might-boosted Terra Blade. And there's no need to worry about how Mage handles groups of regular enemies, because Mage also has one of the best answers to mobs in the entire game: Razorblade Typhoon. In essence, Post-Golem mage truly wields the Yin-Yang: Mastery of both single target DPS & grouped piercing through Duke's drops, and mastery of both raw power & survivability through Spectre armor. This is without mentioning all the viable alternative items Mage has in this tier like Razorpine, Nightglow, Blizzard Staff, Dark Artist's Leggings for the +25% magic crit chance boost and more. Sure, Melee is still practically immortal and can also go crazy offensively, however as I just said Mage has the overall best offense while also being arguably the most versatile, in a tier where DPS is actively warranted & being nearly immortal by itself isn't enough to beat challenges like Old One's Army tier 3 and Daytime Empress. All in all, be careful of who you call ugly weak in Middle school Pre-Hardmode.

if you count Vampire knives for Melee, then you also count Spectre Hood for Mage. turns out spectre hood turns every magic weapon into vampire knives, isn't that neat.

WORST - Summoner
Similar problem as against Wall of Flesh, Moon Lord is a somewhat poor matchup for Summoner. Terraprisma has relatively limited aggro range, while Stardust Dragon is unreliable & inconsistent if trying to play aggressively with whips. Melee can just go tank, Mage has homing options as well as Bubble Gun to play aggressively in some moments, Ranger has Phantasm for general high DPS at distance as well as Vortex Beater + Chlorophyte bullets for an easy homing alternative at the cost of DPS. A pretty good option is going defensive with Valhalla Breastplate while keeping your distance as the Stardust Dragon wears down Moon Lord, but Melee is significantly better if you want to play safe & defensive.

You can blame this on the lack of a Stardust whip, but the truth is that a stardust whip will have to be specifically designed for the ML fight to be good. You just cannot use a weapon with the range limit of a Whip against the Core Phase, i think Summoner is just doomed here.

Honorable mention to the fact that if you simply accept 100% Pure Summoner is unviable here, the Stardust Dragon makes the moon lord fight twice as easy just because it exists. Use Stardust Dragon with Daybreak or Phantasm and you are good to go.

 

[Shyguymask]

It doesnt make sense to shrug off Sanguine and Blade because you may not know "the guideline" for Summoner, yet Life Drain is one of the most underrated weapons in the game and Mage gets the point over summoner because of it. Aren't players equally likely to not know Life Drain is that good?

What I was trying to say back there is that even new players playing Mage can stumble upon random viable weapons like Crystal Serpent and Sky Fracture among others, which is convenient compared to Summoner having very limited options you need to go out of your way to obtain. It's not a major point by itself, but all in all Mage simply has a lot more options and flexibility than Summoner has in this tier.

Mage has no weapon that can be considered above average against the mechs (other than Destroyer). Sanguine and Blade are two of the best mech weapons even when used normally. Summoner basically gets a free pass for early hm grinding thanks to Spider Cave, yet you'll have a hard time getting a good CC magic weapon at the start of hardmode. Only Cursed Flames book is good, and while it is very good... guess which weapon is mutually exclusive to Life Drain?

While Sanguine and to a lesser extent Blade are better than most Mage weapons, Sanguine Staff is notoriously difficult to obtain to the point a lot of players either don't even try it or they give up on it, and while Blade is certainly good, its actual boss damage is just "good". When it comes to boss-specific performance, Blade is bad against Destroyer and Twins can be tricky to hit with whips (especially if they're shorter than Cool Whip). Even against Skeletron Prime, he has a tendency to wander off-screen which will de-aggro Blade.

Neither Summoner or Mage is great in Pre-mech and it makes sense to consider Mage the worst of the two, but for me, skill/knowledge ceiling arguably benefits Mage more here due to Life Drain and also the possibility of doing Pre-Mech Duke to get insane rewards for it (while Summoner doesn't get nearly as much). I'd say a newbie player in pre-mech who doesn't follow guides would have an easier time with Mage, while an intermediate player with moderate skill & knowledge would have a better time with Summoner, and then an advanced player going for the best options and possibly Pre-mech Duke would have Mage being more useful again.

Also, remember that Cursed Flames can be obtained in a Crimson World by simply making an artificial Corruption biome and then farming some Cursed flames.

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

I'd actually say summoner has the worst early hardmode grinding unless you happen to nail the 1/4 Firecracker and have leftover Abigail. If you have that, sure, you skipped work to get a weapon, but it's the only class where in general you have to fight hardmode enemies with prehardmode tools both for a weapon and for armor. Ranger can knock out 2/3rds of mech prep without fighting a single enemy, melee and mage get good armor and melee gets holdover weapons before they face any combat. Spiders are an easy enemy to farm, but having to farm enemies to get any entry into hardmode is a problem unique to that class. Or I guess you could grind for Firecracker, repeating summoner's worst matchup over and over again.

On a side note, I'm sad that Golden Shower doesn't just do more damage. It's a pretty good analogue to repeaters, amazing projectile speed, pierce, and speed for generically great aiming and mobbing. But, compared to repeaters you have to actually farm enemies a bit to get it, and it does worse damage to the mechs. With Aqua Scepter coming up to just 3 points of damage shy of the thing, I would like to see Golden Shower just put out better numbers.

 

[Shyguymask]

There are three notable assumptions here that aren't quite mentioned: the assumption of crimson is mentioned for pre-evil but is relevant through much of the guide, player resources have very loose limits while the assumed barrier here is instead player skill, and this is single player.

I should've mentioned that this assumes Single player, I will edit the OP with that.

Grenade and Sandgun also reign as kings of the Goblin Army, with the prior especially being an easily obtainable 2 minute kill if you make a pit. Even summoner using the same tool can't reach the same heights here.

I don't agree. Snapthorn with a decent minion setup is well over 100 DPS single target, and everything in that setup pierces infinitely, including Snapthorn being able to easily interrupt groups of archer and mage goblins. Grenade have low range and hurt you at close-range, while Sandgun as far as I'm concerned has lower single target DPS, is significantly expensive to obtain (that money could have gone to pylons and reforges) and messes up the terrain around your house which is super annoying. A more subtle advantage in addition, is that Sandgun can't use its piercing as much when shooting enemies from above, while Snapthorn has a wider hitbox & minions will move left and right.

Shadow armor is a major bonus for ranger Skeletron, though, it's a far better armor set than crimson armor, trading 0.1 HP/s or so for better damage and a Magiluminescence on steroids. Ranger gets to use Shadow armor here more easily than mage or summoner, which have to give up mana support or in summoner's case any non-defense stat. And well, -6 defense compared to melee hurts a bit, but from my perspective, that's instead an extra gold cost spent reforging to armored/warding instead of guarding/armored/warding. The extra defense does help, but you still don't facetank spin, ranger gets very competent defense here as well as better mobility, and Molten Fury is a generically incredible option against Skeletron that doesn't require fighting Queen Bee. If you don't fight Queen Bee for a Hive Five, less experienced melee players can struggle to thread the needle with using Volcano or similar against the skull, to the point that I'm actually surprised you would put melee above ranger at all for this stage.

Warding Shadow Armor with Bee's Knees is a pretty good argument to consider Ranger the best for Pre-Skeletron, actually. I guess it comes down to how much you value Volcano, especially since it is obtainable before Queen Bee.

As for Demon Scythe, how is it easier for mage to get Demon Scythe for Skeletron as opposed to pre-evil?

You simply have more resources like Imp Staff as support minions, as well as other stuff the longer you are in a playthrough like more money for reforges and more herbs for potions.

The last thing corruption vs crimson does is make Flesh Knuckles and Fetid Baghnakhs a pain to get. Without those, melee loses a ton of power up through Plantera, and the mechs can be very annoying if you don't get lucky with a Blood Moon for a Bananarang or Drippler Crippler. True Excalibur is still an amazing Plantera weapon, though on this count I'd like to mention that ranger doesn't need to grind for 2 Titan Gloves, get a 1/20 Solar Eclipse, farm Tortoises, kill the Wall multiple times, or farm mech souls for great output here.

Shadowflame Knife is sufficient for mech bosses with a defensive loadout that plays safe. Drippler Crippler is just as good as Fetid for facetanking Plantera. Grinding for titan gloves is something that can be done pre-mech, gives you a lot of money in the process and you can grind for those at the same time as Turtle Armor, while building a Plantera arena. Grinding the setup takes little time, because in this case you can grind several things at the same time. Wall of Flesh is also just trivial at this point and he gives decent money. Also, True Excalibur is the one that is crafted with Chlorophyte bars, True Night's Edge is the one that needs the souls.

Also, I would not consider biome keys easy to get at all.

Crimson/Corruption keys happen to be the keys you'll be most likely to randomly loot since you'll be farming for Ichor/Cursed Flames, Souls of Night and more in the evil biomes. Still hard to get, but Vampire Knives is worth to grind for if you're struggling.

 

[Coleyohley]

What I was trying to say back there is that even new players playing Mage can stumble upon random viable weapons like Crystal Serpent and Sky Fracture among others, which is convenient compared to Summoner having very limited options you need to go out of your way to obtain. It's not a major point by itself, but all in all Mage simply has a lot more options and flexibility than Summoner has in this tier.

I'd say a newbie player in pre-mech who doesn't follow guides would have an easier time with Mage, while an intermediate player with moderate skill & knowledge would have a better time with Summoner...

I think a critically important factor (and one nobody ever seems to mention) is that by this criteria, a blind player playing summoner doesn't get Abigail either. Abigail is a terrible minion in prehardmode, dealing no knockback and having terrible mobility, damage, and tracking; nothing about Abigail says or implies that she would get a further (and potent enough to be viable) scaling boost in hardmode, so unless the player has watched videos about her or read the wiki, why would they  ever think to use this early-game and terribly underpowered (to their reasonable knowledge, at least) minion in Hardmode? If anything, her hardmode scaling is an easter egg and the fact that she's a competent minion at this stage of the game is intended to be a pleasant surprise rather than a cornerstone of the class's expected progression. If summoner at this tier is already taking hits for only having obscure and out-of-the-way options, then this just puts it even further behind.

To be clear, I already agree with you, I just think this digs Pre-Mech summoner further into the grave and nobody ever seems to talk about it.

 

[ggyt]

a blind player

I think we have to qualify how "blind" a player is. Realistically nobody is getting far in this game without a guide, there are too many places you can just get stuck and be unable to continue.

What I was trying to say back there is that even new players playing Mage can stumble upon random viable weapons like Crystal Serpent and Sky Fracture among others, which is convenient compared to Summoner having very limited options you need to go out of your way to obtain. It's not a major point by itself, but all in all Mage simply has a lot more options and flexibility than Summoner has in this tier.

New players don't fish, and they might just gloss over the sky fracture because they didn't find the magic missile or don't have a hallowed desert. The magic weapons a new player would most likely use pre-mech are the laser rifle and the craftable books. For melee, swords and spears (maybe yoyos) until they realize how hard those are to use effectively and change classes/look up better weapons. For ranged, the CAR and repeaters. For summoners, spiders I guess.

For melee you also have to go out of your way to get a good weapon, and the weapons you do end up getting are not as good as the blade/sanguine staff. I would argue it's similar for mage (fishing is definitely going out of your way when playing casually), but at least the crystal storm is okay I guess. Ranged is the only class you truly don't have to go out of your way.

 

[J Bame]

Spiders are an easy enemy to farm, but having to farm enemies to get any entry into hardmode is a problem unique to that class

Spiders are indeed a very easy enemy to farm and once you do you get the equivalent of Adamantite/Titanium armor and one of the best mobbing weapons. Summoner doesnt need 5 variance, they just need to get Spider Staff and something to take care of Queen Slime/Dreadnautilus

Besides, "problem unique to that class"? Do other classes not need to mine a lot of Ore to get gear? Is melee not filled with mediocre swords and spears? Summoner skips the early stage of Hardmode where you are still stuck with your phm gear and can barely fight because of it.

Or I guess you could grind for Firecracker, repeating summoner's worst matchup over and over again.

there is a difference between not having the single best safety/killtime ratio and actually being bad. Obsidian Armor with Spinal Tap and Imps deals great damage to the wall, clears all the hungries with extreme ease and wins the DPS race against the lasers every time, even on Master Mode. Summoner has no issue farming Firecracker and once they get it, they have a solid weapon that you can use all throughout hardmode.

another thing is that if you are that scared to use whips, in practice it costs you nothing to just use a Ranged weapon with Bee armor for the wall. The post is only focusing on Pure classes, because then the line between what is a Hybrid class and what isn't becomes frustratingly arbitrary, but it's something to point out.

 

[Coleyohley]

I think we have to qualify how "blind" a player is. Realistically nobody is getting far in this game without a guide, there are too many places you can just get stuck and be unable to continue.

After the addition of the Bestiary and the new advice/directions added to the guide, I'm not so sure I agree that nobody would be able to finish the game nowadays without external resources. I think they would certainly miss a vast amount of the game's content, but I think it's plenty reasonable to beat the Moon Lord, especially on Classic Mode (the mode I think new players are inclined to start on), with just the hints provided by what's in the game.

How Terraria currently guides the player through its content can be a difficult thing for experienced players like us to evaluate, since I fully agree that it  used to be practically mandatory to use one; however, the developers have taken substantial efforts to move away from being a "wiki game" with the afforementioned bestiary and guide dialogue. How effective those are would be tough to evaluate because all of us here know exactly what to do already.

It can also be pretty difficult to evaluate its effectiveness because the game is so popular and has been out for so long that it can be tough to find someone willing to play it (and hasn't yet) who doesn't know plenty about it already.

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

Sandgun gets 127 DPS no mod no damage buffs, it is quite literally half a Star Cannon in damage output and doesn't experience damage dropoff with multiple targets. And sure, for getting the 2 minute kill it does expect the player to place a flat line of blocks and fight the Goblin Army there instead of getting all their NPCs killed in their houses. Getting topaz is a bit luck-reliant and you have to remember to talk to the Arms Dealer at night, though if we're bringing up reforge money at all, the combined cost of Illegal Gun Parts and reforging Sandgun to Unreal is lower than the up-front cost of no mod Minishark, while giving you a monster that competes with Molten Fury and Hellwing Bow of all things. The biggest problems with Sandgun are actually getting evil sand ammo, there's a decent chance where you don't get an evil desert from world gen and have to use one or two evil powder to get enough evil sand for evil bosses, and block placement, where for arenas you want to use minecart tracks on the ground to prevent sand placement.

As for Grenades, sure, they struggle with hitting bats and demon eyes. But Goblin Army is entirely grounded, and easily moved down to a solid block floor at your leisure. Grenades have practically infinite range when pointed down, and are very easy to hit even horizontally if you just roll them towards an approaching enemy and back away. They don't require beginner players to go jungling, kill a ton of hornets, kill man eaters (though grenades are themselves fantastic for man eaters), any of that. They're a tool you can buy at the start of day 3 because you broke a crimson heart early but things haven't been progressing as well as you've expected but now there's goblins at your front door and you need something to push them away. Them being trivial to get is the main thing that pushes them above Sandgun for Goblin Army specifically in my eyes. And yeah, they do deal self-damage, that is annoying. Goblin warriors and archers and sorcerers also deal a lot of damage, and a grenade is an easy way to push away an entire group.

For comparison, Snapthorn actually does have a pierce cap. With no damage mods and no mod, this is 5. With Legendary, Flinx Fur Coat, and a tier 3 food buff, this is 6 instead. Once the damage dropoff hits 0, the whip stops being able to break chaos balls, vile spit, or interrupt archers, and damage rounds down with each hit. Goblin Army can potentially beat this out. It's still a good weapon for the event, naturally - you'd hope it was, given the need to grind underground jungle enemies and underground snow enemies in preparation for an earlygame event.

Shadowflame Knife is sufficient for mech bosses with a defensive loadout that plays safe. Drippler Crippler is just as good as Fetid for facetanking Plantera. Grinding for titan gloves is something that can be done pre-mech, gives you a lot of money in the process and you can grind for those at the same time as Turtle Armor, while building a Plantera arena. Grinding the setup takes little time, because in this case you can grind several things at the same time. Wall of Flesh is also just trivial at this point and he gives decent money. Also, True Excalibur is the one that is crafted with Chlorophyte bars, True Night's Edge is the one that needs the souls.

I confused the soul count requirements for TNE and Avenger Emblem. Thought getting double glove was 40 of each soul, not 10. That does make that count more reasonable. Drippler Crippler also works, though I just kinda have awful luck with getting on-demand Blood Moons and with getting Bloody Tears too. I have grinded entire Blood Moons in the hopes of getting a Bloody Tear, so that later I could potentially get a Drippler Crippler or Sanguine Staff, and then I just don't get the tear. As for mimic and turtle farming while making an arena, though, I feel that for newer players this is a big source of frustration. They die a lot to moss hornets and tortoises as the player just wants to get an arena cleared out where nearby NPCs or proactively removing jungle grass spawn locations would make building the arena a lot safer, but lose out on the chance to double dip. Wall of Flesh grinding is more just an annoyance than a major challenge at this point, yeah. I would still agree with melee being the best against Plantera, though.

Also, I'm going to defend adamantite/titanium sword and phasesabers. They're good mobbing weapons in the same cases as prehardmode, but now you have enough mobility to quickly chase down enemies and swing at them with your absurd knockback big stick. They're even so nice as to preserve their swinging direction when walking backwards, which makes them workable, if a bit questionable, against biome mimics and other fights where you need to constantly move back. Sure, they're bad against the mechanical bosses unless you have a cross necklace and good mobility against Destroyer, but they work well enough for getting another weapon that functions better against the mechs, and for that matter I'd still consider them a decent side arm for yeeting probes, with admittedly low range that requires you to rush the probes down. The bigger problem beginner melee players against the mechs face is that Night's Edge is flashy and why would they bother upgrading when they already have the flashiest weapon possible? The fact that its attack visual doesn't stop when the weapon pierce caps also implies that it would be a lot better against Destroyer than it actually is.

Someone did actually recently stream Terraria completely blind. They were playing on expert mode, and wound up kinda suffering for it, ultimately dropping the game when they couldn't figure out how to get past mechs. This wasn't on Master Mode, to be fair, and since I'm not much for streams I didn't personally watch much of it. But these people do exist. This was AboutOliver on YouTube.

Besides, "problem unique to that class"? Do other classes not need to mine a lot of Ore to get gear? Summoner skips the early stage of Hardmode where you are still stuck with your phm gear and can barely fight because of it.

This is admittedly influenced by me being someone who does know how to stack mining speed, I find rushing ores trivial while killing enemies can take a while and if I mess up I take a lot of damage. Getting all those spiders to spawn and then beating them down with whips and minions is still more time in my case than swimming through stone with blisteringly fast mining speed for at least a weapon, if not full armor set, and in that time I also get the hardmode anvil.

And now for refighting Wall, you're again assuming lining up fully optimal gear. All the buffs, shelling out for full warding, remembering to rebuild the Guide's house immediately after dropping him into lava so he doesn't move back in on the surface and cost you 20 minutes of waiting before you can kill him again. You mess that one up and it does become faster to just grind spiders. Sure, Wall of Flesh being such an arena-focused and preparation-focused fight means that if you set up the same circumstances again you're practically guaranteed to kill him. But setting up those circumstances itself and for spawning the boss can be a pain.

...Uh, this got long. Oops.

 

[ggyt]

Someone did actually recently stream Terraria completely blind. They were playing on expert mode, and wound up kinda suffering for it, ultimately dropping the game when they couldn't figure out how to get past mechs. This wasn't on Master Mode, to be fair, and since I'm not much for streams I didn't personally watch much of it. But these people do exist. This was AboutOliver on YouTube.

It's possible to beat the game blind, but it's unlikely. There's just too much that can go wrong; when I started the game I didn't know that you had to make an NPC house let alone the requirements. Sooner or later the guide died, and I just meandered around exploring and getting ore gear until I got bored and looked up tutorials.
It's definitely not the normal way to play the game.

Speaking of grenades they're really good for early pirate invasions as well.

 

[J Bame]

And now for refighting Wall, you're again assuming lining up fully optimal gear. All the buffs, shelling out for full warding,

No... I've done this fight a lot of times often very unoptimized. I've been doing unsafe WoF ever since Nights edge got autoswing in 1.4.1 which was far far worse than the Night's edge we have now.

I notice that almost every single time people dont fail at preparation, they fail at execution. Its really just a matter of swinging the whip upwards while running at the wall's speed, I often see people underestimate their whip and start running away from the Hungries, wasting a ton of time, tanking a ton of lasers and then dying because they ended up dragging on the fight for too long.

If you have no issue killing Biome mimics and Destroyer Probes with Phasesabers of all things, then i just fail to see how Obsidian armor and spinal tap can be out of your reach against the wall of flesh. These two things were even specifically made for this fight.

 

[RandomDuckNerd]

yeah uh, Summoner really does need something with Chlorophyte.

I'm pretty sure we're getting a summoner Chlorophyte helmet in the 1.4.5 update which will definitely release in 2025 for sure, no doubt about it

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

Apparently Phasesabers do actually have you turn around, which makes them very bad against biome mimics, though if you have awful aim like me they're still convenient for yeeting probes to another screen. My initial testing against biome mimics was a bit flawed, I thought that the brief rises and falls from the mimic towards me were it dashing then getting stuffed out by my swings, but after testing more a mimic actually lived long enough to do the 3 dash attack and I found out that that, along with the small hop, are knockback immune. Now, as a weapon for biome mimics, it does do good damage, but if the 3 dash attack comes out you do just eat a hit and even against basic hops you need careful spacing or good backwards mobility. Adamantite and titanium sword do keep your facing direction, though, I wonder where the difference comes from... and wish it was a behavior for all swords.

As to summoner, big part of it is that I don't have much experience with the class. Full class playthroughs, my only one was in a large multiplayer server and in that context summoner against Wall is miserable. Hungry are basically immune to knockback and you can't get close, leaving you stuck relying on pure minion damage because whip swings distract minions and any loosed hungry would kill some 5 people. And, seeing that summoner was listed as worst for wall here too, I assumed that typical contexts for summoner against Wall would have summoner struggling. Still, though, farming a boss for a 1/4 chance is more work from my perspective than just mining up an ore set - the half hour spent farming Wall is enough for at least a tier 3 repeater if you're not stacking mining speed, and a full armor set if you are.

 

[J Bame]

Still, though, farming a boss for a 1/4 chance is more work from my perspective than just mining up an ore set - the half hour spent farming Wall is enough for at least a tier 3 repeater if you're not stacking mining speed, and a full armor set if you are.

I mean a lot of people farm the Wall just to have the class Emblem, and thats also a 1/4.

You can just grab Spider Staff and maybe even Cool Whip and this is no less of a chore than any early hm grind.

Adamantite and titanium sword do keep your facing direction, though, I wonder where the difference comes from... and wish it was a behavior for all swords.

A flag in the code called "useTurn". when set to true (phasesaber) the player will swing in the direction they are walking in. If not they always swing in the same direction.

Projectile swords, and swords that got an aura in 1.4.4, turn the character in the direction of the cursor, and imo thats the best choice because then you can swing in the direction you want.

 

[tornado1234 🌳🪓]

If your willing to get close to ml, whip stacking or just using the whip you get from pumpkin moon (damn, i forgot its name again), you can shred ml as long as you have a semi optimal setup. The setup is basically just stuff you get from the pumpkin moon, (spooky armor, the scroll thingis, the scarab [i think you get it from pumpkinmoon], etc.), a few whips from early hardmode like firecracker and/or cool whip if you want to whip stack. As for minions, the Martian aliens are insane, but the best choice is stardust dragon. Anyways, the reason why this is sort of relevant is because I do not believe summoner is worst class for pre ml. I think mage doesn’t do as well as summoner and melee, and I haven’t done a full playthrough with ranged yet. I am definitely a risky player tho, so it might be influenced by my melee nature. However, if you’re going to try to blitz through the game, then I think summoner is much worse and probably the worst for ml. It requires time (mostly to farm drops), and some things can easily be replaced.

I however, likely do not have as much experience, and I never experienced the issues posted at the top for pre-ml. I probably f*cked up something while doing mage, and probably got lucky with the targeting not being an issue on lower difficulties (yes, my first summoner playthrough was classic, since i thought it was going to be much worse than it actually is) and the whip i used (pumpkinmoon) shredded it.

I also am a summoner loyalist so the entire thing i just said was biased. This is just my personal opinion mostly, and different playstyles lead to different results. Basically, this is just saying that it is likely not the best for most people. Basically, I’m repeating dialogue and now i should hit submit before i add 5 more paragraphs saying the same thing over and over.

 

[Clockwork17]

If your willing to get close to ml, whip stacking or just using the whip you get from pumpkin moon (damn, i forgot its name again), you can shred ml as long as you have a semi optimal setup. The setup is basically just stuff you get from the pumpkin moon, (spooky armor, the scroll thingis, the scarab [i think you get it from pumpkinmoon], etc.), a few whips from early hardmode like firecracker and/or cool whip if you want to whip stack. As for minions, the Martian aliens are insane, but the best choice is stardust dragon. Anyways, the reason why this is sort of relevant is because I do not believe summoner is worst class for pre ml. I think mage doesn’t do as well as summoner and melee, and I haven’t done a full playthrough with ranged yet. I am definitely a risky player tho, so it might be influenced by my melee nature. However, if you’re going to try to blitz through the game, then I think summoner is much worse and probably the worst for ml. It requires time (mostly to farm drops), and some things can easily be replaced.

I however, likely do not have as much experience, and I never experienced the issues posted at the top for pre-ml. I probably f*cked up something while doing mage, and probably got lucky with the targeting not being an issue on lower difficulties (yes, my first summoner playthrough was classic, since i thought it was going to be much worse than it actually is) and the whip i used (pumpkinmoon) shredded it.

I also am a summoner loyalist so the entire thing i just said was biased. This is just my personal opinion mostly, and different playstyles lead to different results. Basically, this is just saying that it is likely not the best for most people. Basically, I’m repeating dialogue and now i should hit submit before i add 5 more paragraphs saying the same thing over and over.

You buy the scarab from the Witch Doctor.

 

[tornado1234 🌳🪓]

You buy the scarab from the Witch Doctor.

My bad.

 

[Clockwork17]

My bad.

It's a forgettable item without the upgrade, you're fine.