PC Thoughts on Pre-Hardmode Summoner Viability

Mage-of-Rage

Duke Fishron
I originally posted this on Reddit but since I fear it'll just be buried in New I decided to post it here as well. Hope you all don't mind.

I've been thoroughly enjoying the new 1.4 update so far and one of the changes I was most excited about were the new summoner weapons and gear that would (hopefully) make summons more viable as its own class especially Pre-Hardmode as I personally found the class unreliable early on compared to its peers on Expert. Now that the update is here and I've managed to "beat" Wall of Flesh (I'll explain why this is in quotations down bellow) I wanted to be a bit more critical about the changes added to this update and see if it's really enough to make Summoners fun and viable enough for the early game and on its hardest difficulty, Master Mode.

Note: This current playthrough was made on a fresh Softcore character on a Master Mode World (no Journey with Corruption) and my thoughts will revolve around the viability on Summoners on Master Mode PRE-HARDMODE not overall or on Hardmode.


I was incredibly disappointed to find out that only two new Pre-Hardmode summon weapons were added in Journey's End. I honestly expected for some of the new pets to be additional summons but sadly that wasn't the case. On top of that all summon weapons still don't have their own unique modifier, still using Magic modifiers which is still weird as summons can't crit at all.

That being said the new "Finch Staff" is exactly what I wanted in an early game Summoner item though I would've liked it if it was moved to the normal chest drop like the Wand of Sparking instead of a reward from Living Wood chests but this cuts down the RNG for a beginner Summoner item immensely.

The second weapon is the "Vampire Frog Staff" which I have serious issues with. The weapon itself is fine but the main problem is its availability. Not only are Blood Moons incredibly RNG dependent but the biggest hurdle in getting this staff are the enemies that drop it. Both the Wandering Eye Fish and Zombie Merman are incredibly difficult enemies to fight (On Master the Zombie Merman has a whopping 1200 HP!) on top of the staff itself being quite the rare drop. If the staff was moved to common Blood Moon enemies and the Zombie Merman/Wandering Eye Fish simply had an increase drop chance I wouldn't mind but as it stands I don't find the staff worth the hassle to get.

The only weapon out of the three pre-existing early game summons that got a buff is the Imp Staff, decreasing its damage (21 to 17) but increasing its fire rate. I've personally found this a positive change as I feel the increase DPS offsets the damage decrease and lends itself better in handling crowds of enemies more. That said the strategy to spam the staff to refresh the fire rate has decreased in viability due to the lower damage which comes back to bite us later...

I feel like there's still a bit more work to be done on the summon weapons in the early game. Looking into making both the Vampire Frog Staff easier to obtain as well as taking a long look at the viability of the Hornet Staff (spoiler alert its still not good) would make summons have a smoother curve in power instead of Finch Staff > Imp Staff.

The new type of Summoner based weapons, and they're strangely not summons at all. Whips are weird to say the least as they are essentially "Melee Weapons" that scale off "Summon" Damage. This isn't just because they act similarly to pre-1.4 flails but due to the fact they scale off Melee Attack Speed so wearing a full set of Shadow Armor increases your damage significantly.

This is weird to me as there is no new accessory that takes advantage of this unique interaction especially considering the Titan Glove's new effect mentions it working for whips and is given explicit mention in the patch notes yet "Titan Glove" or attack speed accessory for Summoners does not exist. All the accessories that the Titan Glove builds into are still melee oriented but no item that allows increased attack speed/to hold the mouse button to attack AND syngergize with Summon Damage.

That being said whips are probably the thing Relogic got the most 'right' with a new brand of summon weapons and are contender for my favorite changes in 1.4. The ability to 'mark' enemies and make your summons target said marked enemy on top of the 'tag damage' not only increases Summon DPS but also seems to be summoners answer to the lack of critical hits the class does as well as providing some sort of team dynamic between you and the summons. It was fun to mark Skeletron's hands and watch my Imps focus fire them and even the Snapthorn (the jungle whip) is enough to kill EoW without summons.

That being said the fact that there's only two whips that exist before killing the WoF is my biggest complaint with the weapon itself. A whip that exists bellow the Leather Whip would give the summoner class that small 'push' to more reliably get past the early game without overly rellying on the Finch Staff and a whip that exists after the Snapthorn but still Pre-Hardmode would help give the weapon a much smoother power curve. As it stands though the Snapthorn is great it tends to fall off Post-Skeletron (perhaps a Dungeon Whip?).

With all the new changes to Summoners I successfully managed to beat all but one boss with the new tools available to me. At this point, no part of the game felt overly hard though there were many parts I did wish I was playing something else like the Goblin Army, using only summons and whips I managed to get pretty far into Pre-Hardmode that was of course until I had to fight the Wall of Flesh.

To explain the problems I had with this boss I need to discuss the biggest drawback I found when it came to playing with a Solo-Summoner and that is with groups of enemies. As mentioned previously I struggled quite a bit with the Goblin Army but I've also struggled in non-event/non-boss cases where there were just a cluster of enemies coming at me. This is due to the lack of knockback and unreliable burst damage the summoner weapons have. With the former this means if the enemy just has a bit of knockback resistance they can just slowly walk up to you while you are attacking them, this is most apparent when enemies come from multiple directions as you will simply have no means to control the crowd as they come to you. The latter means it becomes difficult to manage low health enemies as they either live too long and unnecessarily draw summon aggro to them instead of high priority targets. The 'tag' system with whips mitigates this somewhat but not fully.

The reason I had to explain this is because the Wall of Flesh embodies ALL of those drawbacks and turns it into a literal wall that prevents progression into Hardmode. The player and summons cannot deal with The Hungry that WoF fast enough to give you breathing room as you simply cannot keep them off you AND deal meaningful damage to WoF before more can respawn. Using whips to deal with The Hungry help but that makes it so that you tag The Hungry making the summons focus fire on them instead of WoF and you simply don't have the armor and damage to get close to WoF reliably for whip to be a viable source of damage to the Wall itself and though the Imps have piercing projectiles because they are aiming at the many Hungry and not WoF they're shots tend to miss most of WoF's body. Lastly due to the increase HP WoF has on Master Mode, even more so than Expert the summons cannot burst kill him fast enough before he can either catch up or straight up kill you on his last legs.

I managed to 'beat' WoF but I had to switch to the Minishark and Meteor Shots (still wearing full Bee Armor) in order to kill him for good as he just seemed too difficult. Now I know that Ningishu managed to beat WoF on 1.3 on Expert Summoner Only also with no Underworld arena BUT that was on Expert not Master even with the new tools available the whips don't have much of an impact on the fight and the re-summoning strategy with the Imp Staff that she uses in the video has been nerfed due to the balance changes.

Before anyone says anything it is no secret that Ningishu is an incredibly good Terraria player, better than I am by what is probably light-years. But the fact one needs to compensate the problems Summoner has with incredible skill, much more than one would need when playing Melee, Range or Magic leads one to question the state of the class especially considering I am here to discuss the viability of Summoner compared to other classes, not if its possible.

It was close, so incredibly close but the WoF simply has too much stacked against it still to make Summoners be a reasonable solo pick on Master Mode on the very least. Which is a shame since the new changes have made summoner not just in the early game but overall much better to play but this one boss seems to be far too much for the class to handle. The farthest I ever gotten to beating the WoF was the point where he hit max speed and even then I'd still say the viability of summoner would still be questionable.

I feel like the changes I proposed would greatly help summoners early viability (Post-Skeletron Whip) or make the difficulty curve more manageable (Better weapon accessibility/ More Summoner Weapons and Earlier Whip). I also think a more early game oriented Summoner Armor and or accessory should be considered now that Magic have their gem robes and Ranged now having Fossil Armor or perhaps a Summoner Armor that is stronger than the current Bee Armor or just buffing Bee Armor straight up.

I also feel like Summoner Weapons not having their own Reforge Modifiers is still a glaring issue in its identity not that it borrows both Magic and Melee Modifiers. I feel like an exclusive modifier for Summon weapons would help it greatly and make it stand out more on its own like Modifiers that increase tag damage or increase the window of opportunity to inflict tag damage.
 
I mostly agree with everything, though I'd add that adding some knockback to whips would help a lot.
I've been playing summoner with some mage weapons, and while summons and whips are enough most of the time, I simply couldn't defeat the wall of flesh without using some magic, mostly the demon scythe.
Sadly, nothing new will be added anymore, and the most we can expect is little balance changes, but if I could change the game I'd add a weak whip you can craft early, probably made with rope or cobweb, a bone-whip that resembles a spine, and an accessory that increases the synergy between summons and whips, giving some buff to the player when summons hit a targeted enemy, or maybe increasing the whip's damage or giving it a projectile as long as the player has at least 1 free summon slot, giving some sort of risk-reward system by having less summons but more power to your own attack.

Kind of not exactly on topic, but someting I want to tak about hardmode, the problem you have with the blood frog is repeated for the blood bats. Not only blood moons are RNG, but now there are 5 fishable enemies and only one of them gives the summon. Still, it's my favourite new summon, mostly because instead of wandering around they stay exactly around you when not attacking.
 
Hey, I agree with everything you have said and I decided to make a fresh new account just to reply to this post.

I've been playing Terraria since it's release, and summons have always interested me. When the summoner class became it's own thing, it always made me condider playing it, but I just never found myself invested enough to only play as a summoner as it's way too unreliable as a solo class compared to the others.
Not only are the summons harder to obtain, it's harder to deal with bosses with them, as well as crowd control; but above all else, I think the worst deal about them is how you can never really farm harder content like bosses or waves of enemies with summons as fast as other classes. They are AMAZING for afk stuff, that's for sure, but if you're actually playing the game as intended with gear on the same level as the enemies you're facing, you'll simply fall behind other classes.
Summoner is only really reliable as a mainstay when your current gear is above the current state of the game you're in.

I think the best way to solve this would've been to give more summon-based weapons in concept that don't necessarily work the same way as summoning companions. Stuff like the Raven Staff which summons creatures to attack for us directly would've been amazing, as well as more turret-like summons to deal with crowds of enemies (we barely have turret summons and they're only post-hardmode?).
More readily-avaiable summoner armors with interesting effects would be pretty cool too. We get some interesting things with the other classes like different shields or buffs for melee, different kinds of ammo, stealth and the option to change between arrows and bullets for ranger (and now throwing weapons as well!), and mage has a plethora of options readily avaiable to deal with anything.

Meanwhile summoners only really get more minions until stardust armor, and every other class can make use of the minions as well with very few penalties. I know the same could be said for the other weapons, but summons are different in two regards:
- If you are playing summoner, you'll only really use the newest tier of minion at all times because there aren't really different options of summons for different purposes throughout the game until endgame with the stardust dragon and the probes.
- The whips are interesting, but again, you're only stuck with the newest one and that's it.

Adding more weapons, making more summons avaiable at the same tier offering versability (give us different summons for different purposes) and making more interesting full-set bonuses that rewarded maining summoner rather than just taking it as a sideclass would make the class shine more. I don't think we necessarily need a guardian-like entity like the Stardust (I like that one being exclusive to the endgame class), but things like Spider Armor making your minions inflict poison damage, bee armor making your attacks spawn bees from time to time, etc.. could be fun.
 
I've opened all the living wood chests from over a dozen worlds and am yet to see a finch staff. It needs to be way more common or in normal surface chests if summoner playthroughs are to be taken seriously, especially with blood moons being so unreliable.

Also anyone think blood moon chance has been reduced? I've had 3 in nearly 30 hours of play.

I love the base changed to how summons work though.
 
I've opened all the living wood chests from over a dozen worlds and am yet to see a finch staff. It needs to be way more common or in normal surface chests if summoner playthroughs are to be taken seriously, especially with blood moons being so unreliable.
Would be nice if the finch staff was craftable with wood and birds at a living wood loom.
 
I think considering how most of our stuff is locked behind some excruciate levels of pain in pre hard-mode, the devs must really hate summoners.

Finch staff = Not guaranteed
Slime staff = 1/10000 drop
Frog Staff = 1/44 chance from fishing which is a chance game during an event which is random...
Hornet staff = GL pure summoners with no summoner armor.
Imp Staff = Finally getting somewhere... Right at the end of hardmode. :sigh:
 
It honestly feels to me like Summoning is a purposefully incomplete class pre Hardmode, the same way that Throwing falls off a cliff once Hardmode starts. Like, you're supposed to be a mage and transition into summoner as soon as you can in Hardmode. Like, the summons exist to supplement your magic damage and the first time you're supposed to seriously consider summoning is when the Bee Queen is killed.

Feels pretty odd for a class that gets its own eclipse pillar and endgame armor, right?
 
It honestly feels to me like Summoning is a purposefully incomplete class pre Hardmode, the same way that Throwing falls off a cliff once Hardmode starts. Like, you're supposed to be a mage and transition into summoner as soon as you can in Hardmode. Like, the summons exist to supplement your magic damage and the first time you're supposed to seriously consider summoning is when the Bee Queen is killed.

Feels pretty odd for a class that gets its own eclipse pillar and endgame armor, right?

That would seem to be the case. When I play summoner, I always only use Magic weapons other than summons, mostly because it makes sense thematically. Well, now I use the Zenith too, because it's OP (just got it a couple hours ago) but other than that, I always only used mage weapons to complement summons, and I always use one summon when playing mage. I see them as pretty much two variants of the same base thing, considering they're the two classes that use mana and both summoner and mage weapons can get the same modifiers (except now whips get melee modifiers, which gives me a reason to try a melee/summon build, or it would if whips were a bit better)

Well, still, I think summoner is in a better place than it was before 1.4, even if not perfect, and I can't wait for Calamity and Thorium to be updated to 1.4 to bring the class to its full potential.
 
I originally posted this on Reddit but since I fear it'll just be buried in New I decided to post it here as well. Hope you all don't mind.

I've been thoroughly enjoying the new 1.4 update so far and one of the changes I was most excited about were the new summoner weapons and gear that would (hopefully) make summons more viable as its own class especially Pre-Hardmode as I personally found the class unreliable early on compared to its peers on Expert. Now that the update is here and I've managed to "beat" Wall of Flesh (I'll explain why this is in quotations down bellow) I wanted to be a bit more critical about the changes added to this update and see if it's really enough to make Summoners fun and viable enough for the early game and on its hardest difficulty, Master Mode.

Note: This current playthrough was made on a fresh Softcore character on a Master Mode World (no Journey with Corruption) and my thoughts will revolve around the viability on Summoners on Master Mode PRE-HARDMODE not overall or on Hardmode.


I was incredibly disappointed to find out that only two new Pre-Hardmode summon weapons were added in Journey's End. I honestly expected for some of the new pets to be additional summons but sadly that wasn't the case. On top of that all summon weapons still don't have their own unique modifier, still using Magic modifiers which is still weird as summons can't crit at all.

That being said the new "Finch Staff" is exactly what I wanted in an early game Summoner item though I would've liked it if it was moved to the normal chest drop like the Wand of Sparking instead of a reward from Living Wood chests but this cuts down the RNG for a beginner Summoner item immensely.

The second weapon is the "Vampire Frog Staff" which I have serious issues with. The weapon itself is fine but the main problem is its availability. Not only are Blood Moons incredibly RNG dependent but the biggest hurdle in getting this staff are the enemies that drop it. Both the Wandering Eye Fish and Zombie Merman are incredibly difficult enemies to fight (On Master the Zombie Merman has a whopping 1200 HP!) on top of the staff itself being quite the rare drop. If the staff was moved to common Blood Moon enemies and the Zombie Merman/Wandering Eye Fish simply had an increase drop chance I wouldn't mind but as it stands I don't find the staff worth the hassle to get.

The only weapon out of the three pre-existing early game summons that got a buff is the Imp Staff, decreasing its damage (21 to 17) but increasing its fire rate. I've personally found this a positive change as I feel the increase DPS offsets the damage decrease and lends itself better in handling crowds of enemies more. That said the strategy to spam the staff to refresh the fire rate has decreased in viability due to the lower damage which comes back to bite us later...

I feel like there's still a bit more work to be done on the summon weapons in the early game. Looking into making both the Vampire Frog Staff easier to obtain as well as taking a long look at the viability of the Hornet Staff (spoiler alert its still not good) would make summons have a smoother curve in power instead of Finch Staff > Imp Staff.

The new type of Summoner based weapons, and they're strangely not summons at all. Whips are weird to say the least as they are essentially "Melee Weapons" that scale off "Summon" Damage. This isn't just because they act similarly to pre-1.4 flails but due to the fact they scale off Melee Attack Speed so wearing a full set of Shadow Armor increases your damage significantly.

This is weird to me as there is no new accessory that takes advantage of this unique interaction especially considering the Titan Glove's new effect mentions it working for whips and is given explicit mention in the patch notes yet "Titan Glove" or attack speed accessory for Summoners does not exist. All the accessories that the Titan Glove builds into are still melee oriented but no item that allows increased attack speed/to hold the mouse button to attack AND syngergize with Summon Damage.

That being said whips are probably the thing Relogic got the most 'right' with a new brand of summon weapons and are contender for my favorite changes in 1.4. The ability to 'mark' enemies and make your summons target said marked enemy on top of the 'tag damage' not only increases Summon DPS but also seems to be summoners answer to the lack of critical hits the class does as well as providing some sort of team dynamic between you and the summons. It was fun to mark Skeletron's hands and watch my Imps focus fire them and even the Snapthorn (the jungle whip) is enough to kill EoW without summons.

That being said the fact that there's only two whips that exist before killing the WoF is my biggest complaint with the weapon itself. A whip that exists bellow the Leather Whip would give the summoner class that small 'push' to more reliably get past the early game without overly rellying on the Finch Staff and a whip that exists after the Snapthorn but still Pre-Hardmode would help give the weapon a much smoother power curve. As it stands though the Snapthorn is great it tends to fall off Post-Skeletron (perhaps a Dungeon Whip?).

With all the new changes to Summoners I successfully managed to beat all but one boss with the new tools available to me. At this point, no part of the game felt overly hard though there were many parts I did wish I was playing something else like the Goblin Army, using only summons and whips I managed to get pretty far into Pre-Hardmode that was of course until I had to fight the Wall of Flesh.

To explain the problems I had with this boss I need to discuss the biggest drawback I found when it came to playing with a Solo-Summoner and that is with groups of enemies. As mentioned previously I struggled quite a bit with the Goblin Army but I've also struggled in non-event/non-boss cases where there were just a cluster of enemies coming at me. This is due to the lack of knockback and unreliable burst damage the summoner weapons have. With the former this means if the enemy just has a bit of knockback resistance they can just slowly walk up to you while you are attacking them, this is most apparent when enemies come from multiple directions as you will simply have no means to control the crowd as they come to you. The latter means it becomes difficult to manage low health enemies as they either live too long and unnecessarily draw summon aggro to them instead of high priority targets. The 'tag' system with whips mitigates this somewhat but not fully.

The reason I had to explain this is because the Wall of Flesh embodies ALL of those drawbacks and turns it into a literal wall that prevents progression into Hardmode. The player and summons cannot deal with The Hungry that WoF fast enough to give you breathing room as you simply cannot keep them off you AND deal meaningful damage to WoF before more can respawn. Using whips to deal with The Hungry help but that makes it so that you tag The Hungry making the summons focus fire on them instead of WoF and you simply don't have the armor and damage to get close to WoF reliably for whip to be a viable source of damage to the Wall itself and though the Imps have piercing projectiles because they are aiming at the many Hungry and not WoF they're shots tend to miss most of WoF's body. Lastly due to the increase HP WoF has on Master Mode, even more so than Expert the summons cannot burst kill him fast enough before he can either catch up or straight up kill you on his last legs.

I managed to 'beat' WoF but I had to switch to the Minishark and Meteor Shots (still wearing full Bee Armor) in order to kill him for good as he just seemed too difficult. Now I know that Ningishu managed to beat WoF on 1.3 on Expert Summoner Only also with no Underworld arena BUT that was on Expert not Master even with the new tools available the whips don't have much of an impact on the fight and the re-summoning strategy with the Imp Staff that she uses in the video has been nerfed due to the balance changes.

Before anyone says anything it is no secret that Ningishu is an incredibly good Terraria player, better than I am by what is probably light-years. But the fact one needs to compensate the problems Summoner has with incredible skill, much more than one would need when playing Melee, Range or Magic leads one to question the state of the class especially considering I am here to discuss the viability of Summoner compared to other classes, not if its possible.

It was close, so incredibly close but the WoF simply has too much stacked against it still to make Summoners be a reasonable solo pick on Master Mode on the very least. Which is a shame since the new changes have made summoner not just in the early game but overall much better to play but this one boss seems to be far too much for the class to handle. The farthest I ever gotten to beating the WoF was the point where he hit max speed and even then I'd still say the viability of summoner would still be questionable.

I feel like the changes I proposed would greatly help summoners early viability (Post-Skeletron Whip) or make the difficulty curve more manageable (Better weapon accessibility/ More Summoner Weapons and Earlier Whip). I also think a more early game oriented Summoner Armor and or accessory should be considered now that Magic have their gem robes and Ranged now having Fossil Armor or perhaps a Summoner Armor that is stronger than the current Bee Armor or just buffing Bee Armor straight up.

I also feel like Summoner Weapons not having their own Reforge Modifiers is still a glaring issue in its identity not that it borrows both Magic and Melee Modifiers. I feel like an exclusive modifier for Summon weapons would help it greatly and make it stand out more on its own like Modifiers that increase tag damage or increase the window of opportunity to inflict tag damage.


summoners and magic casters don't scale all that well early game (pre-hardmode or pre-planterra) on master mode. on expert mode the scaling is fine. on master mode they either need more survivability or more potential damage output options pre-planterra
 
summoners and magic casters don't scale all that well early game (pre-hardmode or pre-planterra) on master mode. on expert mode the scaling is fine. on master mode they either need more survivability or more potential damage output options pre-planterra
Going to have to disagree on you there in regards to Magic. Magic users have access to plenty of early game equipment mainly the Gem Robes and Gem Staffs which can carry them hard till Skeletron especially the Ruby and Diamond Staffs and now with the introduction of random Gem Trees underground gems are easier to get.

Also if you're feeling really daring there's nothing stopping the player from rushing to Jungle Armor as unlike other class specific armors in pre-hardmode that one is one of the few that is not locked behind boss progression (Meteor/Shadow/Crimson and Molten are locked behind EoW/BoC. Necro is locked behind Skeletron and Bee is behind QB). The only other armor set that is similar to it is the even easier to get new Fossil Armor for Rangers.

This is also another point I like to address and just realized it now but since 1.4 Summoners are the only class to get one specific armor dedicated to it pre-hardmode.

Melee: Shadow/Crimson/Molten
Ranged: Fossil and Necro
Magic: Robes/Jungle/Meteor
Summoner: Bee

They also can't use the reworked Ninja Armor unlike the other classes as Summoners are the only class that can't crit. It's almost jarring how railroaded the class in general is pre-hardmode compared to everything else that exists in the game.
 
I like the whips for my archer+summoner build as I found I can just whip a target to mark them then go ham with arrows, yes I have to reapply the mark every few seconds but I've found it decent enough.

I do understand how it can be bad for pure summoners though.
 
I think the issue with summoners can be summed up with this table, kinda:

Melee: Shadow/Crimson/Molten
Ranged: Fossil and Necro
Magic: Robes/Jungle/Meteor
Summoner: Bee

It's not so much that "Bee" is the only summoner gear early-game. It's that summoners need gear to be summoners.

While Robes do make magic weapons more effective, you can still get decent effectiveness from magic gear without them. I beat the BoC with a magic weapon, while wearing Gold armor, since I'm not very good at dodging all the stuff. Sure, I had to stop attacking several times, or in later fights, switch to a lance to ward off random enemies while my meter refilled. But I was still primarily using magic gear.

I could have done the same with ranged weapons. Even Shadow/Crimson armor is justifiable to wear for ranger/mage builds. The speed boost from Shadow armor makes dodging that much easier. Yes, you're dealing less damage, but you're more mobile.

As the game progresses, this cross-classing of armor falls away, as the bonuses you get from class-specific armor become so substantial that you can't really ignore them. But in the early game, "being a class" is more about what weapon you're using, not what you're wearing.

To be a summoner requires armor in a way that other builds don't, especially early game. Oh sure, you can summon a single thing without armor, but you could do that while still being melee/fighter/ranged; you'd just be using the summoned guy to get some extra damage in. To be legitimately playing a summoner requires summoning multiple guys.

And that requires armor, since most of the summoner accessories are Hardmode.
 
I wish summoner had a more steady progression instead of being very weak until you get to queen bee. the whips in pre hard mode also kind of suck.

summoner should have been buffed more like given better armor in pre-hardmode and viable summons outside of 2 in pre hardmode.
 
I greatly appreciate the addition of new summons at various points of the game, especially early on.
However, obtaining said early summons... wew.
When Journey's End launched, I played for 36 hours (don't judge) and a lot of that time was spent trying to grind Blood Moons in master mode. The fishing enemies are incredibly beefy for that stage of the game (this is also a master mode issue but I digress), requiring new players to box in their lake so that the new monsters don't just lunge out and instagib them, costing a potential Vampire Frog. What's the point of an early-game summon if I practically have to be above its progression stage to realistically obtain it? Because by the time I did, I already had an Imp, making little Froggy a mere novelty item.
Also, my world, of medium size, had zero Living Trees, so no Finch for me. I ended up getting the Slime Staff before any other minion, just like how it always was in the past. Because it was still more realistic to obtain than the others. I was hoping for something different.

Anyway, I love whips. They feel great to use, even though I'm on the fence about attack speed lowering whip range (why would I ever use an upgraded Titan Glove then?). I can completely see the issue with the Wall of Flesh being almost impossible for a whip wielder, as my character still died to the Wall even after obtaining some decent early hardmode gear (we were able to win the first time because it was a multiplayer game). Maybe this also comes down to being a Master Mode issue though.
I don't mind the small amount of whips in pre-hardmode, as they do their job well. But Summoner still lacks something that can help push through Master Wall.

Also, yes, the Blood Moon problem still persists when trying to get the Sanguine Bats. More hoops need to be jumped through; the chance for a Blood Moon, the chance to fish up Dreadnautilus and not another five Blood Eels, and the 20% chance for him to drop the staff you need. On top of that, Naughty has a few issues of his own; it seems you literally need to take a hit from his charge attack (which does over 200 damage to me) in order for him to spin harmlessly around you. And if you try to dodge him the old fashioned way, he WILL catch up to you at mach speed, forcing you to take more hits anyway. The Frog Gear and Master Ninja Gear to dash upwards, followed by the steep drop of the Slime mount, are one of the only ways to reliably avoid that dash; and even then you might get hit anyway.
And good luck getting your minions to hit him with all that movement on both ends.
Although I do have to say, with all that effort put in, the Sanguine Staff is incredibly good; very solid, accurate damage, with none of the AI issues that almost every other minion suffers. Maybe it's a little too good....

I derailed a little bit here, but I hope I got my point across. Summoners are headed in a nice direction but some fine-tuning still needs to be done.
 
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