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

[Shyguymask]

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.

Snapthorn + 2 Flinxs with Flinx Coat and nothing else (zero damage bonuses or reforges) also gets around that DPS on a single target, if not higher thanks to the poison. Sandgun under these conditions will deal higher DPS against enemies with defense, but Snapthorn setups scales harder through buffs/damage bonuses. An additional minion slot, Shark tooth necklace, whip stacking with Leather Whip, obtaining Vampire Frog and also the easily obtainable Ale. Just adding Ale and then Vampire Frog as a third minion, with no other additions, increases the DPS to approximately a whopping 230. Then you can keep adding more and more. Snapthorn may have damage falloff against multiple targets, but minions here are perfect for slicing through groups of grounded enemies with ease.

Meanwhile, Sand Gun, even with the piercing infected sand blocks, literally blocks itself from hitting grounded target you're aiming at, while you're again making a mess at the place around your base. Sand Gun is good, but not THAT good.

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.

Going to explore Underground jungle in general is beneficial when you get chests or material for other items like Staff of Regrowth, Feral Claws, Lightning Boots, Ivy Whip hook and more. And besides, exploring the underground Jungle on Classic or Expert with Flinx Staff and some other basic gear shouldn't really be a major issue.

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.

Right I forgot about the damage fall off leading to pierce cap, however any situation where Snapthorn is fighting 6+ tightly packed enemies at once is also an amazing opportunity for minions to deal extremely piercing damage and quickly get rid of these tightly packed enemies all at once. There's a good reason as to why with Vampire Frog, Summoner can quite easily clear Master mode Brain of Cthulhu's first phase in under 15 seconds.

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.

If you want to play aggressively against Moon Lord:

• Melee can survive for a bit longer and use any of its strong close-range options, including Terra Blade to hit two eyes at the same time.
• Ranger can just have good aiming with Phantasm while stacking as much damage & crit chance as possible. And if it's to be taken into consideration, there's also the Chlorophyte Arrow stacking trick to burst down the upper eye.
• Mage can use Bubble Gun to match aggressive Summoner while being more consistent than Dragon + Firecracker. I also heard good things about Nebula Arcanum but I haven't dig into that.

There's also the fact that Stardust Dragon is basically handed to you on a silver platter, doesn't scale as much from minion slots and has more consistent AI with fewer segments. This means the three other classes can all use Stardust Dragon for a quick easy DPS boost, widening the gap against Summoner. Every class can shred Moon Lord if playing hyper aggressively with optimized builds, but at the very least, Summoner is the least consistent at it.

 

[RainbowPotato]

What about post ml?

I would assume summoner to be worst and melee to be best but still.

 

[Meowlegend]

What about post ml?

I would assume summoner to be worst and melee to be best but still.

Yeah, that's how it is.

 

[Dark Lord Fladnag]

One thing I would add for pre-mech mage is that even if you are playing corruption and don’t want to go out of your way to get the Life Drain, you still get the Putrid Scent (which can be combined with the mana flower) (edit: Coleyohley is right that you probably don’t want to lose the damage boost from Putrid Scent, but since summoner benefits a lot less from the extra crit chance, the Putrid Scent is still better for mages.) and the Clinger Staff (which is mostly nice for the destroyer), and the Wrath Potion is better than the Rage Potion in my opinion, which matters for mage because losing the Heartreach Potion doesn’t hurt mage as much as the other classes.

 

[Coleyohley]

One thing I would add for pre-mech mage is that even if you are playing corruption and don’t want to go out of your way to get the Life Drain, you still get the Putrid Scent (which can be combined with the mana flower)

You would never want to combine this with Mana Flower (I mean, maybe you would, I'm not your dad. It's still a terrible idea though.): you lose out on the damage bonuses Putrid Scent gives, and Mana Flower can be combined with other, more useful mana items like Celestial Magnet, which is pretty good for Destroyer, Queen Slime, and Invasions, since Mana Stars will be dropping left and right and the magnet will grab them from far away. Magic also has precious few damage accessories too, so it needs all it can get.

..and the Clinger Staff (which is mostly nice for the destroyer)..

That's true, Clinger Staff  is very good against the Destroyer, but the Life Drain is still way, way better than it there. Where Clinger Staff really shines is when exploring and fighting invasions, since the wall of flames has extremely strong knockback and can easily keep enemies away.

..and the Wrath Potion is better than the Rage Potion in my opinion..

The two are about even for Mage specifically, since Wrath boosts the damage from any side Minions you might have (if you're wearing the Forbidden Armour, for instance) but Rage Boosts the damage from Spectre Armour, which is a DPS titan in the lategame and you want to be boosting it as much as possible.

...which matters for mage because losing the Heartreach Potion doesn’t hurt mage as much as the other classes.

How so? I'm curious of how you got to this conclusion. The only thing I can think of where this would be true is Spectre Hood, but Melee has Vampire Knives (which have equally busted healing) and Melee armours generally have more defense, so Melee arguably needs it even less than Magic.

 

[Dark Lord Fladnag]

How so? I'm curious of how you got to this conclusion. The only thing I can think of where this would be true is Spectre Hood, but Melee has Vampire Knives (which have equally busted healing) and melee armours generally have more defense, so Melee arguably needs it even less than Magic.

I was going off the fact that killing things with magic weapons often doesn’t drop hearts to begin with, so the other classes get more healing from the potion by default. But you could argue mage might also need the extra survivability more, so that’s something. Even then, this only really applies to the destroyer anyway, for this stage of the game.

You would never want to combine this with Mana Flower: you lose out on the damage bonuses Putrid Scent gives, and Mana Flower can be combined with other, more useful mana items like Celestial Magnet (which is pretty good for Destroyer, Queen Slime, and Invasions). Magic also has precious few damage accessories too, so it needs all it can get.

Didn’t realize you lost the damage boost. That’s my mistake. Pretty much agree with everything you say here.

 

[Coleyohley]

I was going off the fact that killing things with magic weapons often doesn’t drop hearts to begin with, so the other classes get more healing from the potion by default.

I personally have never experienced this, and I have no idea why it would happen. Mana and Heart pickups aren't supposed to be mutually exclusive with each other; I'm not denying your experience but this does sound like a bug rather than intended behaviour from the game.

But you could argue mage might also need the extra survivability more, so that’s something. Even then, this only really applies to the destroyer anyway, for this stage of the game.

At this stage of the game, I would indeed argue that, since Melee armours have the highest defense naturally, Ranged weapons generally have more range and can stay at a safer distance (and Ranged armour sets have a bit more defense too), and Summoner can use Blade minions with Defensive accessories/reforges without losing too much damage since Blades barely gets boosted by damage accessories/reforges anyway. Heartreach, when applicable, is fantastic on any setup but Magic weapons and armour
do tend to have the lowest survivability at this stage of the game.

 

[Dark Lord Fladnag]

At this stage of the game, I would indeed argue that, since Melee armours have the highest defense naturally, Ranged weapons generally have more range and can stay at a safer distance (and Ranged armour sets have a bit more defense too), and Summoner can use Blade minions with Defensive accessories/reforges without losing too much damage since Blades barely gets boosted by damage accessories/reforges anyway.

That’s fair.

I personally have never experienced this, and I have no idea why it would happen. Mana and Heart pickups aren't supposed to be mutually exclusive with each other; I'm not denying your experience but this does sound like a bug rather than intended behaviour from the game.

The wiki claims that hearts and stars don’t ever drop at the same time, which makes heart drops rarer when using mana by default, and from my experience that seems to be true. Don’t know for sure though.

 

[Coleyohley]

The wiki claims that hearts and stars don’t ever drop at the same time, which makes heart drops rarer when using mana by default, and from my experience that seems to be true. Don’t know for sure though.

Really? Huh, I've never noticed (I haven't actually played Magic all that much recently, it's a bit too stinky in too many places for my tastes). I will say though, this is exceptionally stupid and I'd like it to be changed as soon as possible, but it does mean you are correct about Heartreach being significantly worse for Magic than any other setup. I stand corrected.

Nevermind, I guess. Thank you, @Mille Marteaux.

 

[Mille Marteaux]

The wiki claims that hearts and stars don’t ever drop at the same time, which makes heart drops rarer when using mana by default, and from my experience that seems to be true. Don’t know for sure though.

This is incorrect. Mana stars drop when you are below max mana while recovery hearts drop when you are below max HP. The two are not mutually exclusive.

The reason you see fewer recovery hearts while using magic weapons is you are typically not missing health when mobbing weak enemies with a magic weapon and on stronger invasion events you usually just get killed instead.

 

[Dark Lord Fladnag]

The reason you see fewer recovery hearts while using magic weapons is you are typically not missing health when mobbing weak enemies with a magic weapon and on stronger invasion events you usually just get killed instead.

You underestimate how bad I am at the game. But jokes aside, you might be right. I don’t know. I’ll have to pay more attention to it the next time I play.

 

[Mecha_]

Disappointing to see ranger in so many worst positions.

A lot of people forget that ranger's not just about the weapons accessories and armour, but the ammo as well.
There are so many types of ammo in the game and people really don't get how powerful it actually is. I mean, ichor and venom bullets/arrows do a ridiculous amount of damage PLUS debuffing the enemies with either decreased defense OR a 30 dps Acid Venom proc.

Not only that, but the Aerial Bane does EXTRA damage to any mob above 12 blocks AND splits downward into five more arrows that can help if you're farming for the stake launcher etc.
For post mechanical boss players the pulse bow's really underrated, it pierces a ton and the bouncing mechanic often compensates for missing any shots.
Also, everybody underuses the Stynger, it's a great AOE launcher. And if you're lazy, you can just spam Chlorophyte Shotbow with Chlorophyte arrows to get a ton of damage.

Oh, I also forgot that there's no stopping you from using a simple bow to debuff enemies with something like ichor (and cursed flames) and then spam them with other debuffs.
-54 damage per second is nothing to joke about, PLUS (I think) it's affected by ichor, AND you can keep stacking other buffs on top of that. This does go for all classes, but it's about how you play the class that makes it good... Or bad.

 

[Golden Heretic Snakeboat]

Disappointing to see ranger in so many worst positions.

A lot of people forget that ranger's not just about the weapons accessories and armour, but the ammo as well.
There are so many types of ammo in the game and people really don't get how powerful it actually is. I mean, ichor and venom bullets/arrows do a ridiculous amount of damage PLUS debuffing the enemies with either decreased defense OR a 30 dps Acid Venom proc.

Not only that, but the Aerial Bane does EXTRA damage to any mob above 12 blocks AND splits downward into five more arrows that can help if you're farming for the stake launcher etc.
For post mechanical boss players the pulse bow's really underrated, it pierces a ton and the bouncing mechanic often compensates for missing any shots.
Also, everybody underuses the Stynger, it's a great AOE launcher. And if you're lazy, you can just spam Chlorophyte Shotbow with Chlorophyte arrows to get a ton of damage.

Oh, I also forgot that there's no stopping you from using a simple bow to debuff enemies with something like ichor (and cursed flames) and then spam them with other debuffs.
-54 damage per second is nothing to joke about, PLUS (I think) it's affected by ichor, AND you can keep stacking other buffs on top of that. This does go for all classes, but it's about how you play the class that makes it good... Or bad.

ranger is only in the worst position twice and the best position once (which is shared with mage; one stage where it's the best option, 2 consecutive stages where it's the worst option), and the stages where ranger is the worst option are also the stages where the other classes are absolutely dominating the competition, and for mage in the pre-cultist stage specifically, are at their absolute peak compared to the rest of the game; hell, even summoner is in the worst position four times and in the best position once at the very start of the game

also, debuffs aren't effected by defense reduction

 

[Kellam Yoshikage]

tbf it's literally the two, and those are indeed the two worst phases for ranger since that's the only part of the game where ranger doesn't get a free top tier weapon for 0 risk. They do get Shroomite for no risk, though, and while people say stealth isn't good because you can't make use of it against Fishron, Golem, or Moon Lord, you can make use of it against pillars, Cultist, Empress phase 1, moon events, and OOA, which is a pretty wide spread of uses.

54 DPS from debuffs is very minor at that point, though. Spectre armor isn't free to get like Shroomite is, the post-Plantera Dungeon is the most dangerous biome in the entire game and scary on Hardcore, but that provides 400 DPS, scaled further with crit rate. Now, really this depends on what you define as pre-Golem - you could, technically, argue based on rarity that yellow rarity drops from the Dungeon and Solar Eclipse should instead be post-Golem, as they're higher rarity. No one buys this argument, certainly not as long as Snapthorn's on the table for pre-evil. Though I would say it does hold some weight outside For the Worthy - you can rush Golem with the stuff you used for Plantera pretty easily, it just means it's a nothing stage.

From my perspective, Terra Blade is the post-Plantera version of what ranger got in the entire game up to this point - easy-to-use, powerful weapons that can last for a while just from sheer convenience and attainability alone. It also gets all of the melee speed jank, even with the small reduction in how much speed it gets - 18 base use time is fast enough that the melee speed tick means a lot, and melee gear is notoriously stacked when melee speed is a stat that exists. Then summoner's new armor is even easier to get than Shroomite and while Deadly Sphere Staff isn't a Terra Blade, it is a nice and easy-to-get upgrade. If ranger wants a Solar Eclipse upgrade, they have to find an answer to Nailheads; ranger's massive range does leave it pretty well-equipped for this, but they're still a massive pain. If you were to kill everything instantly, Nail Gun would actually take about the same time to get as Deadly Sphere Staff, but this just doesn't happen, barring maybe a pit farm with damage-boosted Clinger Staff, or stealth Grenade Launcher. Also I'm just personally annoyed that Nail Gun can't get Unreal. Beyond that, you're kinda stuck with Shotbow at this point outside of the admittedly very good but somewhat annoying to get Sniper Rifle. Stynger is good afterwards, for crowd control at least, though I tend to not farm Golem much personally.

Also, Aerial Bane is a Betsy drop. From my perspective, ordering post-Golem content in terms of gear tiering and thus intended difficulty I'd say Pumpkin Moon < Frost Moon < Martians < Duke = Empress < OOA. Aerial Bane is really, really good, yes - it's supposed to be, and everything Betsy gives is really good. Whatever you used to actually do OOA can handle the moons just fine, too. As for chlorophyte arrows, they have some funny shenanigans against cases like Moon Lord from what I've heard, but I just haven't used them much since I'm too lazy to switch off of ichor arrows for the most part.

 

[Mecha_]

also, debuffs aren't effected by defense reduction

Or defense in general.

ranger is only in the worst position twice

When it shouldn't be
I'm kinda just giving advice after playing this class for... Too long.

 

[Coleyohley]

When it shouldn't be
I'm kinda just giving advice after playing this class for... Too long.

Has playing Ranged for so long perhaps made you unaware of how strong the  other classes are? Hell, one of the two times it's at the bottom (Post-Golem), Shyguymask admits that it  is very strong, just still not quite as strong as the other classes. The other time it's at the bottom (Post-Plantera) he also still mentions that it has decent options, but that those options just aren't enough to compete with the titans all the other classes unlock access to.

Calling it the worst isn't necessarily calling it bad, and mentioning the viable options it has doesn't actually counter the claim that it's the worst, it only counters the claim that it's bad; to do that, you'd also need to explain why those options are better than everything one of the other classes gets.

 

[Dapling]

Has playing Ranged for so long perhaps made you unaware of how strong the  other classes are? Hell, one of the two times it's at the bottom (Post-Golem), Shyguymask admits that it  is very strong, just still not quite as strong as the other classes. The other time it's at the bottom (Post-Plantera) he also still mentions that it has decent options, but that those options just aren't enough to compete with the titans all the other classes unlock access to.

Calling it the worst isn't necessarily calling it bad, and mentioning the viable options it has doesn't actually counter the claim that it's the worst, it only counters the claim that it's bad; to do that, you'd also need to explain why those options are better than everything one of the other classes gets.

It would make sense, ranger hasn't been nerfed much at all, but the other classes have gotten buffed so many times over so many updates that I could absolutely see a ranger classlocker not realizing things have changed if they haven't tried much else since, well, any update really.

 

[Mecha_]

Has playing Ranged for so long perhaps made you unaware of how strong the  other classes are? Hell, one of the two times it's at the bottom (Post-Golem), Shyguymask admits that it  is very strong, just still not quite as strong as the other classes. The other time it's at the bottom (Post-Plantera) he also still mentions that it has decent options, but that those options just aren't enough to compete with the titans all the other classes unlock access to.

I've been playing all classes in terraria for far too long... Since 2013, actually. I prefer playing ranger-

I could see a ranger classlocker

But I don't class-lock.

I feel like you're taking this too seriously.
I only say that it might be worth considering some of the things I've said that might not have been seen during making the decision to put ranger at last, because most people don't realise the little intricacies.

Calling it the worst isn't necessarily calling it bad, and mentioning the viable options it has doesn't actually counter the claim that it's the worst, it only counters the claim that it's bad; to do that, you'd also need to explain why those options are better than everything one of the other classes gets.

It sorta is...

Anyway, TLDR of my last post:
Ranger is really good in all stages of the game, because every class is going to be better than the other in one way shape or form. In ranger's case, ammunition type is really underrated, as well as a few weapons.

 

[Dapling]

It sorta is...

No, at no point does it say "bad" there. It says "least desirable or good". Being less desirable than the other 3 doesn't mean it's not desirable at all.

 

[Coleyohley]

It sorta is...
View attachment 492013

No, it isn't. "Worst" only means it's the lowest or the least-good in a category. I could score 98 on a test, you could score 99, and someone else could score a perfect 100; 98% is a fantastic score, but I still would have scored the worst out of the three of us. That is how Ranger's Post-Golem performance is being described: It scored very well, but everything else scored better.

Anyway, TLDR of my last post:
Ranger is really good in all stages of the game, because every class is going to be better than the other in one way shape or form. In ranger's case, ammunition type is really underrated, as well as a few weapons.

I am absolutely certain Shyguymask has thought about those. Having been around him for a while and participated in many discussions with him, the guy does his research. Him not properly using the ammo types available to him and not extensively testing which one performs the best in different situations is unfathomable to me.