Summoner whips should be removed from Terraria

If you have played with a whip as a summoner, you will see that whips are basically like flails. You throw them at a specific direction to deal damage at that direction. This is just a fancy way for summoners to play melee. It doesn't add any depth to the summoner class at all and instead uses an existing game mechanic and applies it to summoners. It is rather a lazy implementation by Re-Logic.

Whips would be most suited for melee characters. If you removed the summoner damage from whips, people would see it as a melee weapon. Of course, adding summoner damage would just be a simple way to make a summoner weapon instea dof an actual reworking of summoner.

The developers could have added whips as a new flail weapon for melee, but instead, they made it a summoner weapon. Instead of rebalancing the actual summoner mechanics, they just applied an easy fix by using weapons that wouldn't belong to a summoner.

Many summoner mains know that the best way to play summoner is to let your minions fight while you maintain a distance from the boss. However, whips limit you to stay as close as possible to the boss and attack them directly. You have to get close to the boss to deal damage with whips, and you aren't just letting your minions do the damage; you are also dealing damage with the whips. The implementation of whips have ruined the way summoner should be played.

If whips were made longer, this would remedy the issue a bit; however, it doesn't change the fact that it's simply a melee weapon that does summoner damage. The summoner would still be basically playing a longer range melee class that has helpers do a bit more damage.

Summoner is the least skilled class in Terraria; everyone knows that's a fact. However, adding whips makes it even less skilled. Your already skill-less class is having the computer do the aiming and shooting for you, and using a whip would simply let them do their job even better. This means that you can achieve a high DPS by simply having your minions around and meleeing the enemies. You literally just hold left click in order to double your damage.

In addition, 1.4 introduces a new mechanic called whip-stacking, where you can use multiple whips to inflict multiple debuffs. This literally only takes 3 button presses to even use this whip-stack mechanic. It doesn't matter if you're 7 or 77 years old, you will still be able to beat Terraria with summoner.

Terraria is a sandbox game that anyone can pick up, but it takes years to master and to get good at. Many people study this game in and out, with playtime greater than 10000. These people have demonstrated how skilled you can get at the game, and it has proven that Terraria is a skill-based Minecraft bullet hell.

Who doesn't love holding your mouse button over the same place, right? Whips are the most uninteresting and unengaging. Other classes, like ranged amd magic, requires you to have good management skills and keep an eye on your resources, such as ammo and mana. This creates for more ways to handle fights. How conservative should you be with your resources? When should you attack and when should you stay away? And with melee, you have to tank damage efficiently and find a good strategy to aggro the boss away from your team.

With summoner, all you're thinking about is your health. That's it. You are just holding left click. There is nothing engaging about that. Maybe dodge a couple of times, but that's it. A better alternative would be to let minions deal more damage during their initial summon. That way, players can summon minions on enemies to deal extra damage and make summoner gameplay more interesting.

The three clases melee, ranger, and mage have been balanced in Terraria since its initial release, but summoner has been left in the dust. Pre 1.4, they were not a viable class to play, but post 1.4, they became one of the strangest class to exist. It's an amalgamation of melee and magic that introduces weird gameplay mechanics to ruin the skill and purpose of summoner.