How FAR can you push Terraria’s Blade Staff?

How FAR can you push Terraria’s Blade Staff?

You’ve all heard of the Blade Staff, the 
infamous rapidly attacking minion with absurdly low base damage, tied for 
the lowest with Abigail’s Flower. Which of course means it has great synergy 
with whip stacking, a technique where a humble Summoner switches between whips 
every few seconds for extra effects, and more importantly, extra tag damage.
75% of this tag damage can be added onto the Blade staff’s damage for 
sometimes an absurd increase in dps! And of course, we can’t forget about the 25 base 
armor penetration this weapon has, allowing it to bypass most enemies’ defense for early hardmode.
So with enough whips, how good is this minion really, and how far can we take this 
summon before it becomes obsolete? But first, how can you effectively 
get this weapon in the first place? I’m gonna tell you how to effectively 
get this weapon in the first place. The only way to obtain a Blade Staff is from the 
Queen Slime, so you’ll first need another minion. Even though the Sanguine Staff is the strongest 
option for this due to its consistency and damage, it can be quite difficult to obtain.
There also exists the Abigail’s Flower and the Spider Staff. Which while being less consistent, 
both still offer high damage output, and they can both be obtained considerably easier.
Now for the whip, you’ll want to use a Firecracker, which can be 
dropped by the Wall of Flesh. Then as for the arena, Kepples finds one that is 
platformless with lava on the floor to be quite effective for the fight, as it neutralizes 
her minions from becoming a major problem. Alternatively, you can just use a 
regular long multi-platform arena, as long as you avoid backtracking 
whenever possible to avoid minion spam. Now when fighting her, keep some distance 
during the first phase, but for the most part you can attack her freely from the sides.
Then once she drops below 50% HP into her second phase. Moving in one direction horizontally 
on a fast mount works wonders here, but some minions will have difficulty catching up.
So if you want more damage from those minions, use the lava arena to counter her minions, 
and aim to be below her on the side. If she does her orb attack, There’s a couple easy 
gaps to squeeze in-between, mainly on the sides. If you see her doing her slam attack, move away 
as quickly as possible via a dash or flight. Here’s hoping you get a Blade 
Staff on your first try, see ya. Thank you! So how effective is the 
Blade Staff against its intended foes? For most of these fights, I prioritize using the 
Blade Staff with whips that provide summon tag damage, as Firecracker’s on-hit effect isn’t 
very effective with Blade’s critically low base damage. But I have also done a handful of 
Firecracker related tests to compare anyways. Now out of the three mechanical bosses, the Blade 
Staff performs the worst against The Destroyer. The Blade Staff doesn’t seem intended for this 
fight, as the blades don’t hit many segments at a time, and their damage is also reduced 
slightly by not having enough armor penetration. Now what about the Twins?
While the Blade Staff performs better here than before, it still 
falls behind Sanguine a tad overall. However the Cool Whip has longer reach than 
the Firecracker, allowing players to more easily hit Spazmatism during it’s phase 1, which 
may count as a win for Blade Staff indirectly. Now Skeletron Prime on the other hand, finds the 
Blade Staff to be around an equal with Sanguine when making use of whip-stacking, as the 
latter’s lack of armor penetration may help push it down to Blade Staff’s level.
Fighting Duke Fishron Pre-Mech is also an option with the Blade Staff, although 
expect a gruesome 4 to 5 minute fight due to higher defense in the first phase.
I would definitely prefer the Sanguine Staff for that fight as it’s around a minute faster.
However, out of all the bosses tested for this video, the Blade Staff really 
shines against Plantera. She is a great candidate for whip-stacking, 
as her attack patterns are quite simple, is a large target, is usually reachable, and 
doesn’t require complicated movement to avoid. Plus, the Durendal now exists, offering 
9 summon tag damage, and on its own it allows Blade to surpass Sanguine.
But there is a new foe, the Optic Staff, and when combined with three spiders 
from the Spider Staff, it is well ahead. If we introduce a second whip into the mix, being 
the Cool Whip, then Blade Staff inches closer, being well ahead of Sanguine at this 
point, but still a bit behind the mix. Next we introduce a third whip, the 
Spinal Tap, and now Blade is only mere inches away from the Optic and Spider duo.
However a fourth and final whip, the Snapthorn, allows Blade to FINALLY surpass them for real 
this time, cementing their place at the top. Switching between four whips can be quite 
difficult though, in-fact, only 6% of my audience bothers to use 4 or more whips.
The idea is actually quite simple though. All you need to do is hold down your mouse, 
and use the 2-4 keys above the movement keys on your keyboard to switch between 
your other three whips while attacking, then switch back to the first slot via the 1 
key, once you’ve stacked all your other whips. You’ll want to do this every 3 seconds, as that’s 
the length of some whip buffs such as the ones that give you whip speed, although summon tag 
actually lasts 4 seconds instead of the previously mentioned 3 seconds that the buffs have.
You can also bind extra buttons on your mouse to any of the four keys to access some 
of them easier, such as the 1 and 4 keys as they’re the most awkward to reach of the four.
Though it’s important that you don’t rebind the controls for hotbar slots in the settings, as 
you lose out on the ability to automatically switch weapons when hotkeying while attacking.
Alternatively you could just use Firecracker and Durendal with the Spider + Optic 
combo and get around the same amount of DPS, I guess, but where’s the fun in that? 
Actually it’s kinda fun doing that too. Anyways, after Plantera, it seems like the 
fun ends for Blade Staff. As against Golem, the two new options available from the 
Dungeon and Eclipse, surpass even a quadruple whip-stacked Blade Staff, with ONLY one whip.
And it becomes even more of a joke when you introduce Pumpkin Moon gear and the Xeno Staff 
into the mix, as shockingly the Post-Golem gear puts the Pre-Mech weapon in shambles!
Still, the Blade Staff does pretty well for a Pre-Mech minion, although the whips may 
be doing a fair bit of the heavy lifting. But what if we use a Kaleidoscope dropped from the 
Empress? It has 20 summon tag damage, which should increase our Blade’s damage by quite a lot.
So let’s assume we take care of the Empress and the Pumpkin Moon for their gear 
before fighting a different boss, such as the Duke again, does anything change?
Well actually yes… as now the Blade Staff manages to keep up with the other main minions 
for this stage, except for the Xeno Staff, which also benefits a lot from the 
excessive whip-stacking, and is just a really good minion for this stage in general.
But what if we just keep adding more whips? Well, using more than 4 whips becomes increasingly 
difficult as you need to reach further across your keyboard to access later hotbar numbers, and 
it becomes difficult to keep track of them. Also, the extra summon tag gained from lower 
tier whips, gets completely countered by not using a strong whip such as Kaleidoscope 
or Morning Star as much during the fight, so there’s not really a benefit to using 
more whips here aside from “it’s funny”. So unsurprisingly, the Blade Staff remains 
a great option for the Early to Mid Hardmode stages of the game, even if it is locked 
behind a somewhat annoying boss to defeat. But once we introduced Post Plantera minions into 
the mix, things went south for the Blade Staff. However, stronger whips such as the Kaleidoscope 
did give second life to the daggers, but it’s still difficult to recommend using 
the Blade Staff when other minions at the Post-Plantera stage can do better, without needing 
quadruple-whip stacking to be fully viable. But overall, Blade Staff is great, as expected.
That’s all I have to say though, as usual, the killtimes for this video should be in the 
description. I also tested whip loadouts for a lot of bosses in this video, but didn’t end 
up using any of the tests in this video. But if you like more videos where I go 
in-depth on Terraria things, you might like this video where I go over the Titanium 
Armor set and its benefits and downsides. And if you felt like you got something out 
of this video, feel free to subscribe! Thank you to our members, 
and thank you for watching! Wait a minute… the Finch Staff… is just a 
Pre-Hardmode Blade Staff… GET THEM MY SCARABS.

How far into Hardmode should you use one of Terraria’s fastest attacking minions, the Blade Staff?
This video also serves as a Hardmode minion comparison for the most part, I guess!

Thanks to @Megaswave12 for partaking in these antics! Be sure to check them out!

Data/Testing for this video:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ohAcyaTa4q9727SOw83zSxmRw1PpJE0z3DJIrjzznXA/edit?usp=sharing

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== Music Used ==
A Hat in Time: So, What’s the Plan
Kirby Planet Robobot: Gorgeous Go-Round
Rivals of Aether: Customization
Kirby Star Allies: Eastern Wall
Sonic Mania: Steel Cortex (Titanic Monarch Zone Act 2)
Pokemon X & Y: Bicycle
CrossCode: Rhombus Square