Is it just me or does summoning suck endgame?

[Zombie]

I got all the sets and stuff and I have a decent array of weapons and ultimately it feels summoning is overall not worth it.

The stardust set imo is the worst endgame set, it has horrible defense and its set effect which lets you use the gaurdian is pretty useless, at least from the things I've tested it on. By the time you get the gaurdian, nothing else in the game that isn't a boss even needs to have its aggro taken off of you, your minions wreck stuff way too much and the crystal dragon destroys practically anything before it even gets on screen. The stragglers left behind are almost effortlessly dispatched by whatever you choose to use with it.


I'm not saying that the guardian is completely useless, I'm sure it has a few uses here and there but what is important is how it compares to all the new crap other classes got.


Melees endgame armor has the best defense, insane movement speed, very good critical bonus and the set effect is amazing and allows the user to both stop using their shield of cthulhu and it blocks a whopping 30% damage which, stacked with all the other % damage reduction items and the frozen turtle shell is literlaly insane. To top this off, melee gets an easy-to-use massive DOt inflicting sword-whip that can go through walls, an insane sword that can call machine-gun meteors from space, can throw around cat-projectiles that basically fill the entire screen with death and have access to one of the highest DPS in the game with the Terrarian yoyo.



Mages endgame get an insane hitscan weapon(the prism) that takes almost no effort to aim and does insane damage, they get a controllable meteor-machine-gun spell that can penetrate through walls, a pretty strong(but harder to aim less homing) version of the razorblade typhoon and their set effect is amazing even if you're not using magic due to the % damage increasing boosters and the HP regeneration boosters, overall they get a pretty insane upgrade from their spectre sets.


I haven't delved much in range yet because I dislike the range theme in just about any game, but their stealth mode toggle is pretty good and the phantasm bow pre-nerf was one of the most ridiculous items in the game(and is still pretty godly), they also have much better defense than the other classes(besides melee) and have the damage and crit to make up for it.



Summoners get a set with trashy defense, a mediocre set effect, a decent familiar that can go through walls and does incredibly high damage, but cannot withstand the countless amount of mobs during an invasion like the moon events and requires a ton of accessories dedicated to summoning and have no secondary usage to even be slightly decent, and their few advantages like auto-aiming and effortless fighting become obsolete with the sheer destruction other classes get. And a UFO turrent toggle that will never be of any real use many end game events, and ultimately, a non-summoner can just throiw out a single(or double with witch table) stardust dragon minion and call it a day, and it'll have pretty much most of the utility a fully dedicated minion army can muster when combined with your massive DPS anyway.



I think the gaurdian should give the summoner a defense buff that builds up over time like the solar armor and beetle armor, and also have the seconary ability to be deployed(like how melees set effect has the dashing secondary usage). The gaurdian should become stronger and have a larger AOE based on what charge it has built up to. Perhaps you could possibly rework it's goofy tanking ability and just have a deployed gaurdian buff your minions and maybe allow them to do critical hits or something? The tanking ability of the gaurdian is better suited to a midgame set and not an endgame one.


What do you guys think about summoning? Perhaps you guys know something I don't that makes summoning not suck endgame?

[Pixel Peeper]

No, it's pretty bad.

I mean, everyone will come here and say the Stardust Dragon does a ton of damage, and that's true enough.

But its AI is pretty weak, and the Summoner is left using some other class' weapon half-assed while trying not do die despite having the worst Defense in the game and no healing.

The Guardian should be better, survivability should be increased one way or another, and most of all, Summoners need class-specific "weapon" that lets them designate targets for their minions.

Else you're just some weak idiot running around while your minion chases its own tail half the time.

[Zombie]

Summoner weapons that apply massive debuffs to mobs and cause your minion to aggro them would put a truly unique twist on summoners, that's a pretty good idea!

Mages have their own glorified life-drain weapon(life drain staff) like melee does now, so a summoner debuff that causes minions slightly heal you or give you a regeneration over time buff on hitting the afflicted enemy sounds interesting.


Perhaps a weapon that lets you ''eat'' your minions to heal yourself but gives you a debuff that decreases your max minion count every time it is used for a few seconds, a summoner would have to choose whether or not sacrificing their minions for a quick heal is worth it.(or hell, possibly other buffs)

[zeeborphis]

THE SUMMONER IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE A LOT OF DEFENSE ITS NOT A TANK CLASS

[Yuki]

Summoners were the class main focus of 1.3. Summoners ARE supposed to have low defense, they have minions to fight for them unlike the other classes where they have to fight for themselves. The only thing I despise is the Guardian. Its basically a cosmetic item. Also your suggestion for the guardian is terrible (Except the buff the minion part). Melees were ment to be a tank. Not a summoner.
In my opinion, Summoners were supposed to be a support class. Dealing a great amount of damage without even getting near them. Like the ranger, it wasn't ment for straight up to the face combat. Just a support class.

Stardust Dragon is great vs bosses, it hugs the target and if you fully max out your summoner with the best items for its class it could easily kill the Mech Bosses up to Moon Lord easily. Summoners are best at its job, being a support class. It supports as a extra damage dealer. Summonners could outclass Melee in terms of DPS aswell as Ranger I don't know if it could out class mage with the Lunar Flare and the Last Prism.

[Zombie]

Just saying ''summoners aren't supposed to have high defense'' is not a good enough excuse, I don't expect them to be tanking moon lords laser beam on expert mode while the player is playing some mini apps on their phone until the minions kill it.

I do expect them not to die in literally 3 hits on expert mode. There is a serious balancing issue where any class besides summoner can forgo their damage-increasing accessories for defensive ones and still do a massive load of damage, but summoners neglecting their accessories cripples their usefulness even more and the defense they gain from it won't even allow them to survive possibly more than 1 or two hits.



Like I said, their damage and strength simply doesn't amount to much when it comes to endgame content, Warriors not only have a far more tankier structure and more forgiving build standard, but their weapons literally cause pandemoniom on the screen with little effort, and they have the absolute highest DPS in the game now with the Terrarian.



Stardust dragon sucks against bosses that you are expected to fight by the time you get it. Sure, it destroys the twins, thje destroyer, and skeletron prime, but those bosses are complete garbage, being able to destroy the destroyer in 2 seconds has been pretty standard in Terraria, I could do it with a daedalus stormbow without even switching to ranger gear!

Against fishron, it can barely keep up with him and doesn't do much damage compared ot just steamrolling him with one of the sunlight weapons or the nebula weapons. It takes no effort to fly away from fishron and spam these, the magic one even auto-aims towards fishron and the player using it is free to make more mistakes because they'll likely have the spectre armor on and will be MASSIVELY healing themselves every time they take damage.


It's a complete joke on moon lord, and even with a balanced minion army, they can't keep up with the pillar invasions or moon events, it's much easier to just mindlessly spam the solar eruption that goes through walls and throw some vampire knifes when your HP gets low as a melee, as a summoner you can't even support yourself with vampire knifes with the chaos that goes on because you just take way too much damage and will likely die.



It's unfair that Melee has higher DPS and Armor, and is free to customize their accessories much more lazily than summoners because of this freedom, when a summoner has to literally dedicate their accessories to their minions or they lose a MASSIVE amount of utility that they already are lacking.


Even if the gaurdian was buffed to block a % damaage for the player, the absolutely abyssmal pre-hardmode defense of the armor would cause you to die in like 3 hits on expert mode anyway, but at least it wouldn't be two hits, and with everything taken into consideration is the least they could do to help summoners compete.





they also FAIL as a support class, BADLY, the stardust dragon when fully upgraded causes so many hitsplats on a target that nothing else can attack the enemy it happens to be sitting on. I have tested this, a single charge of the stardust dragon attacked a paladin in my world, and was hitting ot so much my solar javelines went right through the paladin and my solar eruption could not hit it, you are DENYING your comrades possible hits in favor of your damage that can't even do critical hits and isn't even the highest anymore with the introduction of the terrarian, and non summoners can throw out a single charge of the stardust dragon to handle their offscreen enemies and just disable it on boss fights and get the best of both worlds.


all things considered, summoners need an endgame buff, they were fine in the 1.2 update and had their realistic pros and cons, but with the introduction of expert mode and these end game enemies, it just can't keep up with the other classes.

[Heather]

The stardust dragon staff was meant down to take down larger foes. The stardust CELL staff was meant to take down hordes of enemies.

[Darqfalls]

Your argument doesn't hold up. Summoner is a support class, yes, but unlike the other "support classes", it can't hold its own by itself.

I mean, there's what, five sets of Summoner armor? And only one of those is pre-hardmode? There's 3 Summoner weapons, the earliest you can guarantee one is in Jungle ffs. And after that is Hell! And then you have to brave a hardmode spider cave for the next set. The next set is after Plantera. And then Pumpkin Moon. And then Moon Lord. And after hardmode starts there still isn't many Summoner weapons. Most of them don't do very good damage for very long, or can hold up against bosses.

You said Ranger was a support class. Ranger has the highest sustainable DPS in the game. It has better defense than Mage and Summoner. It has the ability to not consume ammo, multiple ammo types, even multiple weapon types. Once you get to the endgame, stealth mode comes into play, which rapidly increases your ranged attack stats at the cost of mobility.

Mage is the easiest class, once you get your Mana maxed, which shouldn't take long, and it gets waaaay easier once you have the Mana Flower. Essentially pick a spell and spam. And there's a HUGE array of spells to choose from. Pair that with Mages having the earliest specialized set (Gem Robe and a Wizard's Hat) and they're pretty great from the start, and stay strong up till the end. Once you get farther along, you get to heal yourself at the cost of damage, or do extra damage at the cost of defense, while still having a decent amount of defense either way. Not that it really matters, you never have any reason to get close to the enemy. And endgame? Good defense, and you can buff regen, mana, and strength just by dealing damage with your spells. By that point, spells will either cover a large area or home, if not both. Most spells penetrate, from even the earliest spells, and penetration is ALWAYS a good thing. Oh, and Mage ties with Ranger for having the highest sustainable DPS (Ranger can likely sustain for longer, however).

Are you seeing a pattern here? If Melee is the main class and the others are support, then Summoner should be able to hold its own as well, but it can't, making a dedicated Summoner ultimately useless. It's nice if you want to challenge yourself, but not at all practical.

[Zombie]

I thought you were talking to me here, but it seems we're mostly in agreement, the Terrarian however puts melee at the top DPS period though, in my opinion, nothing can beat it besides a pre-nerf phantasm.


Piercing also isn't always a good thing, especially lategame, as only a certain number of piercing attacks can behitting an enemy per second and any other damage is meaningless(like my problem with stardust dragon sitting on a paladin).


Mages end game are the real support class, the droppable boosters they have makes melee users immortal, they simply cannot die. I tried multiplaying with someone just to see how easy the game would be with 2 players and with the regeneration boosters and my melee set I simply could not die, it was impossible, that's a real support class.

[Zombie]

Originally posted by Indominus:

The stardust dragon staff was meant down to take down larger foes. The stardust CELL staff was meant to take down hordes of enemies.

The cells are pretty lacklustre themselves, I was doing an expert mode pumpkin moon with all the summoner accessories, 2 stardust dragons and the rest cells and they couldn't even begin to compete with how fast I demolish everything on my melee set at lower risk of death and the ability to heal myself reliably.


Unfortunately it seems no one has any realistic arguments to the viability of summoning in the late game, it's really mediocre and needs a buff, I'm not sure what it needs to be able to compete with other classes but as it stands right now I feel like I wasted my time farming all these accessories and the stardust set.

[Celator]

If you're trying to use the summoner class to take down bosses, then you really aren't playing it right. Unlike the other classes, it's meant mainly for everyday use; it's by far the best class for spelunking, dungeon-delving, building, and all kinds of other activities that typically take up most of your game time in Terraria. When you want to fight a boss, you switch to your melee, magic, or ranged armor. But when you just want to explore or build and don't want enemies to give you too much trouble, you slap on your summoner armor and summon a few minions. In this way, I'd argue that it's actually the MOST useful class in the game, since it's the best thing to use for 90% of the game. The fact that it can also be used to beat bosses if you play it cleverly enough is just a bonus.

However, I do agree that Stardust armor's set bonus is pretty pathetic. At the very least, he should be able to attack without you telling him to, rather than just standing there and watching you take damage until you finally remember he's there (itself difficult at times). A lot of people have been complaining about the Stardust Guardian on official forums and such, so the devs are probably aware that there's a problem and will hopefully buff him in the next update.

Also, I'm not sure that the Terrarian is the highest DPS weapon in the game. Maybe with the Yoyo Bag, yeah, but I'm pretty sure that S.D.M.G. with stealthed Vortex armor is still better.

[Zombie]

I haven't tried the S.D.M.G yet, but I have been farming moon lord with the Terrarian and the yoyo bag and I usually kill him in less than 3 minutes depending on many factors and yeah I mean with the yoyo bag and ichor flask. It's also much easier to aim the terrarian than most other weapons.


I guess you have a point about summoning though, my main use for it has been helping me deal with spelunking for the most part, summons are very well equipped to deal with bats and generally support your DPS and with the stardust dragon spelunking undisturbed is usually how my experiences are most of the time, especially if you throw in a spore sac for good measure.

[Celator]

S.D.M.G. is insane. With my max-damage ranger character, I can do over 7000 DPS with it using musket balls. And that's in a regular-mode world, without additional damage from a sixth accessory.

It's harder to measure the Terrarian's DPS since it doesn't home on target dummies, but I don't think it does much more than 5000. Maybe if you had a boost from a Nebula user it could get higher, but rangers can get those boosts too.

I'm pretty sure Last Prism does way more DPS than the Terrarian, too, especially if you can line up multiple targets. Actually I'm more or less sure that melee has the lowest DPS out of all the classes - probably including summoner, too, since they can also use the Terrarian in addition to summons - which is how it should be.

[Zombie]

The Stardust Dragon is a piercing type minion and I have tried to use melee weapons while the dragon was attacking something, the dragon does so many hitsplats that my melee attacks went right through it, if you try to attack something with the terrarian while your dragon is also attacking it you will be competing with your own dragon for damage.


When it comes to multi-target DPS then yeah, mages have everything beat.


Summoners can't out DPS the terrarian because the lack of critical hit on minions, and the minion AI is very shoddy at times and can't consistently perform the same way a Terrarian can, I'll check out the S.D.M.G though and see how that fares with all my range stuff/

[Darqfalls]

It's worth noting that the Last Prism has the highest theoretical DPS. That's if you can line up enough targets.

[Robodemon]

Summoning might not succeed in the DPS department, but it wins on utility. Like Over8001 said, there's nothing better for exploring, mining, and constructing. I use melee armor for serious fights and summoning the rest of the time.