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

[AngryNimbus]

PRE-EVIL BOSSES
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.

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.

PRE-EVIL BOSSES
Overall, I agree, especially about Flinx Fur armour. Yet, Melee can easily compete with summoner even without mixing full platinum armour with summoner's fur coat. Full platinum armor and armored or warding acessories can reduce damage from many sources down to 1 on master mode. This allows to safely use true melee, where Starfury is an undeniable leader, beating 20 seconds on Master EoC. Boomstick is at low 20s (22-23s), Mixes of frog/slime/flinx with Snapthorn are around 25s. Starfury also has an exceptional utility potential underground, competing with minions' conveniences on mobs: it simply reaches & damages at ANY point of the screen and produces large amounts of light. As for Snapthorn: Blade of Grass is a very decent competior in mobbing and if you use it instead of shapthorn in a "tank" platinum/gold build

PRE-CULTIST
Oh,no,no,no.
Melee is the best. Vampire Knives, despite being the only lifestealing weapon instead of "everything for mage", has advantages from huge DR and defense stat. (and in mixing classes, but we don't write about that here).
Bubble Gun doesn't have the highest DPS. Horseman's Blade with scale mail or Hallowed/Shinobi/Valhalla set has more damage potential, but: a) it isn't immediate, has delay before pumpkins hit, therefore limiting speedkill potential (it's 2-3 sec slower than Bubble Gun on EoL). Howewer, if the fight is against 2 or 3 targets, Horseman crushes bubble gun, sclaling it's DPS linearly by 2 or 3. Example: Pumpkin Moon: 30000 points for Bubble, 42000 for Horseman. Moon Lord 44s for Bubble, 35 for Horseman.
You can base on EoL, and be right: Horseman is 18 sec, Bubble is 16s. But melee has the ace in it's sleeve! Influx Waver in true melee with slightly less damage than Horseman, but with instant damage for bursts, plus lasting North Pole projectiles! 11 second EoL with phase skip, destroying any combo with Bubble Gun
Terra Blade gets boosted by Scale mail once golem is down and becomes simply better overall weapon than Razorblade Typhoon in any case. Single Target damage is done proj Influx Waver. Stellar Tune's block biercing ability is countered by Flying Dragon. Easy, long-range mobbing is done better by Scourge of the Corruptor than with, let's say Nightglow (delays, less range) and Bat Scepter (no bounce)

 

[Meowlegend]

Terraprisma has lower dps than stardust dragon.

... Terraprisma is better for pretty much everything except for ML, though. Dragon isn't directly/exactly better.

 

[Clockwork17]

... Terraprisma is better for pretty much everything except for ML, though. Dragon isn't directly/exactly better.

Yes, but it still isn't Zenith-tier.

 

[Dapling]

... Terraprisma is better for pretty much everything except for ML, though. Dragon isn't directly/exactly better.

The fact that you can compare the two in different situations pretty much automatically means that it doesn’t really serve as a zenith alt.

 

[Shyguymask]

PRE-CULTIST
Oh,no,no,no.
Melee is the best. Vampire Knives, despite being the only lifestealing weapon instead of "everything for mage", has advantages from huge DR and defense stat. (and in mixing classes, but we don't write about that here).
Bubble Gun doesn't have the highest DPS. Horseman's Blade with scale mail or Hallowed/Shinobi/Valhalla set has more damage potential, but: a) it isn't immediate, has delay before pumpkins hit, therefore limiting speedkill potential (it's 2-3 sec slower than Bubble Gun on EoL). Howewer, if the fight is against 2 or 3 targets, Horseman crushes bubble gun, sclaling it's DPS linearly by 2 or 3. Example: Pumpkin Moon: 30000 points for Bubble, 42000 for Horseman. Moon Lord 44s for Bubble, 35 for Horseman.
You can base on EoL, and be right: Horseman is 18 sec, Bubble is 16s. But melee has the ace in it's sleeve! Influx Waver in true melee with slightly less damage than Horseman, but with instant damage for bursts, plus lasting North Pole projectiles! 11 second EoL with phase skip, destroying any combo with Bubble Gun
Terra Blade gets boosted by Scale mail once golem is down and becomes simply better overall weapon than Razorblade Typhoon in any case. Single Target damage is done proj Influx Waver. Stellar Tune's block biercing ability is countered by Flying Dragon. Easy, long-range mobbing is done better by Scourge of the Corruptor than with, let's say Nightglow (delays, less range) and Bat Scepter (no bounce)

Before anything else, when I talked about DPS, I was talking in term of single target DPS. Additionally, I should have said it in the OP, but I also don't take pre-fight projectile stacking cheese into account, because at that point we might as well bring up MappyGaming's Flamelash/Rainbow Rod and the Explosive Trap Stacking EoL instakill among other things.

Horseman's Blade may in theory have even higher raw power on single target than Bubble Gun, but in practice this mostly doesn't apply to late Hardmode Pre-Cultist. It loses to Bubble Gun against Empress of Light, it obviously loses to Bubble Gun against Duke Fishron and even against moon events, the vastly delayed damage output means Bubble Gun and do the job just as fast if not faster on minibosses. The only situation where I can see Horseman Blade meaningfully outperforming Bubble Gun for mainly single target DPS purpose, is OOA tier 3 because hitting multiple enemies to kill the minibosses faster with more pumpkins is very useful (but even then it's maybe still just on par with Bubble Gun due to delayed damage output). I'm also pretty sure Nightglow has higher damage output than Scourge of the Corruptor. And when it comes to Stellar Tune and Flying Dragon, I haven't really used each weapon much (especially flying dragon), but I believe Stellar Tune also has higher DPS. Lastly, the 11s EoL Melee combo involves facetanking, so this is not usable for Daytime EoL.

 

[AngryNimbus]

Before anything else, when I talked about DPS, I was talking in term of single target DPS. Additionally, I should have said it in the OP, but I also don't take pre-fight projectile stacking cheese into account, because at that point we might as well bring up MappyGaming's Flamelash/Rainbow Rod and the Explosive Trap Stacking EoL instakill among other things.

Horseman's Blade may in theory have even higher raw power on single target than Bubble Gun, but in practice this mostly doesn't apply to late Hardmode Pre-Cultist. It loses to Bubble Gun against Empress of Light, it obviously loses to Bubble Gun against Duke Fishron and even against moon events, the vastly delayed damage output means Bubble Gun and do the job just as fast if not faster on minibosses. The only situation where I can see Horseman Blade meaningfully outperforming Bubble Gun for mainly single target DPS purpose, is OOA tier 3 because hitting multiple enemies to kill the minibosses faster with more pumpkins is very useful (but even then it's maybe still just on par with Bubble Gun due to delayed damage output). I'm also pretty sure Nightglow has higher damage output than Scourge of the Corruptor. And when it comes to Stellar Tune and Flying Dragon, I haven't really used each weapon much (especially flying dragon), but I believe Stellar Tune also has higher DPS. Lastly, the 11s EoL Melee combo involves facetanking, so this is not usable for Daytime EoL.

Projectile stacking is divided into two categories:
1) simple without any preparations, just "cursor up + LMB"
2) using difficult wiring mechanisms.
Those are not even remotedly comparable based on effort taken. North Pole goes into the first category, Mappy's setups into the second one.

Everything about Bubble use on Day EoL: agree, nothing to counterargument with, before I kill Day EoL with NP
I meant mobbing in the sense of "decent but not best out of three DPS + range + bounce + no delays + homing": only Scourge can do that, also melee defense

In OOA HB crushes Bubble, as it can hit 2-3 enemies per swing and spawn much more pumpkins. Bubble is just a very powerful single targret non-piercing gun without similar potential. Also, spread should greatly hurt it against tiny W1-W3 enemies, while HB slashes work as usual
Unrelated: Solar Pillar mobs (which are the trickiest enemies) are much better done with the Horseman's Blade; Martian Saucer is much better done with HB than with Bubble, as a clump of pumpking spawns during P1 enough to oneshot P2

--"Obviously loses to Bubble Gun against Duke Fishron and even against moon events."
Seriously? 19K frost moon for Horseman vs.16-17K Bubble Gun. In Pumpkin moon the difference is 30% in favour of HB
Duke Fishron... HB beats bubble gun! See my new Hexxed Branch strat, with 18-19 sec HB on Duke, while Bubble kills him in 21 sec.

View attachment 20s HB Duke Hexxed Branch.gif
P.S. Name of the gif is wrong, it's 19 sec (18.8 sec). Duke build: Hallowed/Shinobi/Valhalla, 6 damage accessories, 5 Violent 2 Menacing, 3 Xeno. Latest and greatest moon scores are 1-2K higher.

 

[Shyguymask]

Projectile stacking is divided into two categories:
1) simple without any preparations, just "cursor up + LMB"
2) using difficult wiring mechanisms.
Those are not even remotedly comparable based on effort taken. North Pole goes into the first category, Mappy's setups into the second one.

Everything about Bubble use on Day EoL: agree, nothing to counterargument with, before I kill Day EoL with NP
I meant mobbing in the sense of "decent but not best out of three DPS + range + bounce + no delays + homing": only Scourge can do that, also melee defense

In OOA HB crushes Bubble, as it can hit 2-3 enemies per swing and spawn much more pumpkins. Bubble is just a very powerful single targret non-piercing gun without similar potential. Also, spread should greatly hurt it against tiny W1-W3 enemies, while HB slashes work as usual
Unrelated: Solar Pillar mobs (which are the trickiest enemies) are much better done with the Horseman's Blade; Martian Saucer is much better done with HB than with Bubble, as a clump of pumpking spawns during P1 enough to oneshot P2

--"Obviously loses to Bubble Gun against Duke Fishron and even against moon events."
Seriously? 19K frost moon for Horseman vs.16-17K Bubble Gun. In Pumpkin moon the difference is 30% in favour of HB
Duke Fishron... HB beats bubble gun! See my new Hexxed Branch strat, with 18-19 sec HB on Duke, while Bubble kills him in 21 sec.
View attachment 495005
View attachment 494998
P.S. Name of the gif is wrong, it's 19 sec (18.8 sec). Duke build: Hallowed/Shinobi/Valhalla, 6 damage accessories, 5 Violent 2 Menacing, 3 Xeno. Latest and greatest moon scores are 1-2K higher.

The thing about Scourge is that compared to Mage's kit, it's basically just average at everything. Bubble Gun and Razorblade are opposite in their strengths and weaknesses, so you use both to excels in all situations.

As I said for OOA, I'm talking in term of single target DPS, mostly for minibosses and Betsy. HB is absolutely better at clearing the crowds in general, but against the minibosses and Betsy, they are comparable. And of course, as I said, Bubble Gun is often paired with Razorblade to alternate between the two extremes.

Solar Pillar is not Pre-Cultist, so not relevant in this specific subject.

In Moon event you want to kill minibosses, and Bubble Gun tends to be more reliable if not straight up better for the job in most cases, especially against the flying minibosses.

Even if HB does beat Bubble Gun, the way you're playing is simply risky and not very practical. And the reason I say "even if" is...

 

[AngryNimbus]

The thing about Scourge is that compared to Mage's kit, it's basically just average at everything. Bubble Gun and Razorblade are opposite in their strengths and weaknesses, so you use both to excels in all situations.

As I said for OOA, I'm talking in term of single target DPS, mostly for minibosses and Betsy. HB is absolutely better at clearing the crowds in general, but against the minibosses and Betsy, they are comparable. And of course, as I said, Bubble Gun is often paired with Razorblade to alternate between the two extremes.

Solar Pillar is not Pre-Cultist, so not relevant in this specific subject.

In Moon event you want to kill minibosses, and Bubble Gun tends to be more reliable if not straight up better for the job in most cases, especially against the flying minibosses.

Even if HB does beat Bubble Gun, the way you're playing is simply risky and not very practical. And the reason I say "even if" is...

Mage wins the comparison on Duke, I slightly underestimated Bubble Gun here

 

[trya]

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

Don't hold your breath

 

[Clockwork17]

Don't hold your breath

They have leaked a new helmet, so what else would it be for?

 

[trya]

They have leaked a new helmet, so what else would it be for?

that the update will be in 2025

 

[Clockwork17]

that the update will be in 2025

Oh, that part. Yeah, we'd be lucky if they drop the release date this year.

 

[RandomDuckNerd]

Don't hold your breath

I was being sarcastic, I'm "1.4.5 will release" doubter

Oh, that part. Yeah, we'd be lucky if they drop the release date this year.

We'd be lucky if they tell us what quarter it'll release, this decade