The Summoner Meta (so far, Early Hardmode)!

[Toxophilite [East]]

I've been seeing a lot of complaints about the Summoner Class & how weak it feels in Master Mode Worlds, basically complaints about low durability & unreliable minions. I've been experimenting with the Summoner Class in Journey Mode, Master Mode (10x enemies), swapping the difficulty around, just to test certain things whenever I wanted to. Here's what I've gathered so far...

Rules of Thumb, Summoner Class (Master Mode 06/04/2020):

1. In a full party, the Summoner Class appears to play the Crowd Control role. That being the case, the Summoner should have both a Whip Weapon equipped (for the obvious bonus) & a high-knockback projectile-type weapon (i.e Shotgun, Explosive Bullets etc).
   
2. Solo or in a full party, the Summoner Class should be swapping certain Minions in & out depending on the circumstances (oftentimes a mixture of several). Some Minions are superior to others in certain situations. For example, Spider Minions are extremely great against grounded enemies, but struggle against airborne enemies.
   
3. To get the full benefit of Summoner Class, players should be using DoT (damage over time) & debuff abilities (i.e. Ichor Darts, Cursed Darts, Weapon Buffing Flasks), alongside their Minions. A Summoner should be dealing out as much DoT/ DPS as possible, while keeping their distance & also closing in when warranted. You'll get the best out of your Minions & Whips abilities this way.
   
4. Summoner Class should always have the following potions equipped in Master Mode, Iron Skin, Endurance, Dangersense, Hunter, Night Owl, Swiftness, Heartreach & Recall. Most of these are absolutely essential, expect to die often if you chose to ignore this.
   
5. Lastly, the Summoner Class should have a Summoner's loadout, Summoner Emblem included, with a preference for Menacing tinkering & less of the usual Warding. You want to be doing as much damage as possible & have good movement, the potions you have equipped will help greatly with this when being swarmed. If you are surrounded, Warding won't help the Summoner Class nearly as much as the DPS from Menacing tinkering, so try going for more damage & less defense.

That's pretty much all I've got so far. I know it works well, because I was slow to upgrade in Early Hardmode & was doing pretty ok, until the damage wasn't enough to keep enemies at bay. Once enemies started dying faster, there were almost no issues, I was even able to stand up to swarms with the 10x enemies settings with just Spider Armor. Good luck!

-Toxophilite [East]

Edit: Rules of Thumb, Summoner Class (Master Mode 06/06/2020):

• A Summoner seems to collect Enemy Banners regularly. You should be farming for them, storing some for later encounters & have some form of chest or extra storage dedicated to Mobs that give you the most trouble.
  
• The Star Veil item (Star Cloak + Cross Necklace) is extremely useful for Summoner Class in Early Hardmode! Get your hands on that item or something similar a.s.a.p (anything that either negates damage or inflicts damage upon being hit)!
  
• With a few of the newer adjustments to my Summoner, I was able to battle a swarm of Hardmode Mushroom Biome enemies & a Biome Chest Mimic (Hallowed) with relative ease!
  
• Be sure to set-up-shop at any places you plan to farm, such as, Bewitching Table, Cat Statue, Camp Fire, Heart Lanterns, Junk Chests, Enemy Banners etc.

引用自 CellarDoor96：

The main divide between minion types isn't aerial vs grounded, but penetrating vs single-target and wallhacking vs non-wallhacking. For instance the ravens are penetrating but can't pass through walls, making them particularly good for crowds but not spelunking, while the desert tiger's ability to target enemies through walls makes it great for spelunking, but its inability to attack more than one thing at a time makes it less good for crowds.

It should be noted that the Terraprisma has a really unique AI when it comes to walls, in that it can only target enemies through them if it's already spotted another enemy that isn't behind a wall. You can think of it as having two "modes", an idle mode and an attack mode, with idle mode being unable to see through walls while attack mode can.

Edit 2: Rules of Thumb, Summoner Class (Master Mode 06/08/2020):

引用自 Souper Chicken：

I had my hopes up that 1.4 would finally make this class viable. It hardly does, it still barely has any weapons and the new whips are just terrible rip off flails. And the few weapons it does have, most of their AIs are so bad its more entertaining to laugh at them desperately try and hit something than try and effectively play. The only way I can ever stand this class is in a mod like Calamity. Does anyone else share the same opinion?

Summoner is one of the Classes that seem to get away with murder in Terraria 1.4.0.5.

I'm still testing things, but I think I see the issue ppl are having. From what I've gathered, I assume ppl think that Summoner is the kind of Class in this game where you can turn your brain off & go on cruise-control, it's not. In fact, I'd argue the more difficult the settings you play on, the more attention this Class will likely demand of you. You should be playing the absolute Meta with a Summoner at all times, especially on Master Mode. You'll likely ALWAYS have more options than any other Class in Early Hardmode too [see above examples].

[Sin Archbishop of Vainglory]

good luck fighting the destroyer with pre-mechanical boss items as a summoner, literally had to just go full melee and cheese the hell outta the fight with shadowflame knifes and the ship mount on master mode

[Toxophilite [East]]

引用自 Zach's Goblin Nose：

good luck fighting the destroyer with pre-mechanical boss items as a summoner, literally had to just go full melee and cheese the hell outta the fight with shadowflame knifes and the ship mount on master mode

What was your loadout? The way things seem to be in Master Mode, did you try using Recall Potions (i.e. setting up a base at the Boss Arena, campfires, heart lanterns, cat statues etc.)

[Endymion Gainer]

引用自 Zach's Goblin Nose：

good luck fighting the destroyer with pre-mechanical boss items as a summoner, literally had to just go full melee and cheese the hell outta the fight with shadowflame knifes and the ship mount on master mode

I managed with little more than the flame whip from the wall of flesh and the Twins minion times four. Takes a while, but very doable with a proper arena. The melee half of the pet is especially effective since it hits multiple segments on a charge; four of them going at once rather rapidly takes off health.

[Kascin]

I still wonder if it's possible to bank into crits on accessories and use a whip that allows minions to crit; will they have a higher critical chance with your equips, or only the 5/10% that's listed on the whip?

[Endymion Gainer]

引用自 Kascin：

I still wonder if it's possible to bank into crits on accessories and use a whip that allows minions to crit; will they have a higher critical chance with your equips, or only the 5/10% that's listed on the whip?

Minions cannot crit, period. Most whips cannot crit either. Those that can have a special type of crit that is unique to the weapon class (Summon Tag Critical) which is unaffected by crit mods.

Summon Tag Critical works by being a set chance of increasing the Tag Damage bonus that's applied to the damage your minions do to the tagged enemy for four seconds. It is not a Crit mechanically.

[Kascin]

引用自 Maximum Sen：

Summon Tag Critical works by being a set chance of increasing the Tag Damage bonus that's applied to the damage your minions do to the tagged enemy for four seconds. It is not a Crit mechanically.

Four seconds, you say. I didn't know that part. Noted.

[Toxophilite [East]]

I still see complaints, so I'm gonna bump this thread! (X-2-3)
Some players seem to not know about some of the newer/ older items.

Side Note: Keep in mind that, the Old One's Army Event updates immediately after killing your first Mech Boss!

[Jostabeere]

Well, summoner suffers from the crybaby syndrome. People are simply bad as ♥♥♥♥ and can't play a summoner. Ot they have the crazy mindset of a summoner not being allowed to use other stuff. Which is quite dumb.
This adds to people being simply not good with a summoner, which is a good damage class.
2 hybrid classes, being the melee summoner or the ranger summoner have ridiculous damage outputs, probably higher than full-melee or full-ranged classes.
People expect the whips to be like melee weapons and summoners behave like melees. Because they think: "ohh, I plays a summonur. "Oh look at me, I see zis whyp, it makes ouch with summonur. I have use zis whyp all teh tiem, Look at mee, ima summenor."

I don't agree on swapping summons. They all deal different damage types, and if possible one should always get flying summons instead of grounded ones.

[xenoonex369]

Good tips for people, if i play summoner its always dot/debuff summoner. shadowflame knife, flower of frost, golden shower, blowgun,betsy's wrath, nimbus rod, rainbow gun and clinger staff. Whips suck.

[Toxophilite [East]]

引用自 xenoonex369：

Good tips for people, if i play summoner its always dot/debuff summoner. shadowflame knife, flower of frost, golden shower, blowgun,betsy's wrath, nimbus rod, rainbow gun and clinger staff. Whips suck.

I feel like that's true for most Classes, some kind of Hybrid set-up will typically be helpful. The more the difficulty spike, the more I feel this becomes obvious.

引用自 Jostabeere：

*snip*

I don't agree on swapping summons. They all deal different damage types, and if possible one should always get flying summons instead of grounded ones.

So long as you're performing well (with no issues), I feel like you're free to disagree with any or even all of my suggestions. However, I do a LOT of underground exploring, so I have a much different opinion than most probably with it comes to Minions & their effectiveness..

[Toxophilite [East]]

People seem fine now, that's good, so I'm only rly bumping this to update the thread itself, as I have some newer information & a few things I forgot to add! (X-X-3)

Rules of Thumb, Summoner Class (Master Mode 06/06/2020):

• A Summoner seems to collect Enemy Banners regularly. You should be farming for them, storing some for later encounters & have some form of chest or extra storage dedicated to Mobs that give you the most trouble.
  
• The Star Veil item (Star Cloak + Cross Necklace) is extremely useful for Summoner Class in Early Hardmode! Get your hands on that item or something similar a.s.a.p (anything that either negates damage or inflicts damage upon being hit)!
  
• With a few of the newer adjustments to my Summoner, I was able to battle a swarm of Hardmode Mushroom Biome enemies & a Biome Chest Mimic (Hallowed) with relative ease!
  
• Be sure to set-up-shop at any places you plan to farm, such as, Bewitching Table, Cat Statue, Camp Fire, Heart Lanterns, Junk Chests, Enemy Banners etc.

[Dimax-men]

引用自 Jostabeere：

Well, summoner suffers from the crybaby syndrome. People are simply bad as ♥♥♥♥ and can't play a summoner. Ot they have the crazy mindset of a summoner not being allowed to use other stuff. Which is quite dumb.
This adds to people being simply not good with a summoner, which is a good damage class.
2 hybrid classes, being the melee summoner or the ranger summoner have ridiculous damage outputs, probably higher than full-melee or full-ranged classes.
People expect the whips to be like melee weapons and summoners behave like melees. Because they think: "ohh, I plays a summonur. "Oh look at me, I see zis whyp, it makes ouch with summonur. I have use zis whyp all teh tiem, Look at mee, ima summenor."

This, i dunno why player should stick only to whips if he has acces to other melee and ranged/magick weaponry.

[Celator]

The main divide between minion types isn't aerial vs grounded, but penetrating vs single-target and wallhacking vs non-wallhacking. For instance the ravens are penetrating but can't pass through walls, making them particularly good for crowds but not spelunking, while the desert tiger's ability to target enemies through walls makes it great for spelunking, but its inability to attack more than one thing at a time makes it less good for crowds.

It should be noted that the Terraprisma has a really unique AI when it comes to walls, in that it can only target enemies through them if it's already spotted another enemy that isn't behind a wall. You can think of it as having two "modes", an idle mode and an attack mode, with idle mode being unable to see through walls while attack mode can.

[Toxophilite [East]]

引用自 Dimax-men：

This, i dunno why player should stick only to whips if he has acces to other melee and ranged/magick weaponry.

I tend to look at the Whip Weapon as a way to get the Summoner more involved in combat & to do more damage overall. The Whip seems to be extremely powerful, but a "purist run" is reserved for people who want a challenge IMHO. If you haven't mastered this game (i.e. Master Mode), you shouldn't be trying to do a purist run.

In truth, every class benefits in some way from being a bit of a Hybrid, that's just how Terraria is. Classes that play from ranged are usually going to do well in most games, purist or no, but at least, from what I've heard, Melee reigns supreme in certain situations.

[Celator]

You should be using a combination of summons and other weapons no matter what type of armor you're wearing, tbh, as they don't interfere with each other so there's no opportunity cost. Summoners just focus more on minions while other classes focus more on their respective weapon types. The fact that summons can be used alongside other weapons makes them fundamentally different from them, so summoner shouldn't be expected to work the same way as other classes.