Disclaimer: All information is provided assuming that you know how Dark Gaming’s PvP differs from other servers. If you do not know about the differences, please check out these posts:
As well as checking out the PvP Manager and Armor Spreadsheet for weapon and armor differences.
Introduction
A lot of things have happened in the realm of DG PvP’s weapon balancing. The biggest thing is the release of v1.4.4 of Terraria, which brought with it a lot of significant weapon changes. Some weapons became outright broken and needed to be nerfed, while some others became non-functional.
This ‘guide’ is more of a showcase of the updated tier list, accounting for most of the changes made in 1.4.4 as well as some changes made by me simply changing my opinion on them.
The Updated Tier List
The Changes
New Tiers
I’ve decided to add 2 new tiers below Bad tier, those being The Worst tier and Broken tier. The tiers are self-explanatory, The Worst tier is for the small group of what I consider to be the absolute worst weapons in DG PvP.
If you want more information on why i consider these to be the worst, check out this forum post:
Spirit Flame was actually buffed in 1.4.4 so that it hits more reliably, but that wasn’t enough to save it from being in the bottommost tier.
The Broken tier is for weapons that don’t function properly, meaning they do no damage. Prior to 1.4.4, the only weapons in that tier were Star Cannon and Bladetounge.
Because Dark Gaming isn’t fully updated to 1.4.4, the reworks to True Excalibur, True Night’s Edge and Terra Blade weren’t implemented properly. True Excalibur does no damage, and True Night’s Edge and Terra Blade were banned.
The reason they were banned is because if they functioned, their projectiles would be near-undodgeable and thus unable to be balanced properly.
Razorblade Typhoon is a strange outlier in the Broken tier. While it technically wasn’t broken prior to 1.4.4, it wasn’t made broken by 1.4.4 either. When attempts were made to rework the weapon to have the projectile have more than no velocity, it caused the weapon’s projectile to break entirely, only appearing for a split second.
New Weapons
6 new weapons were made viable after the first tier list I made. These weapons are Flamelash, Blood Rain Bow, Light’s Bane, Sleepy Octopod, Obsidian Swordfish, and Red Ryder. They all have varied amounts of viability, but most of them aren’t very good.
Flamelash
Damage: 57
Max Damage: 78
Min Damage: None
Velocity: 8
Tier: Low A+
Flamelash is seen as a middle ground between the Magic Missile and Rainbow Rod, not only because of its stats, but because of how it functions. While Magic Missile and Rainbow Rod hit 1 and 3 times respectively, Flamelash hits twice before disappearing. Its resemblance to Magic Missile and Rainbow Rod means it’s one of the only really strong weapons added.
Blood Rain Bow
Damage: 51
Max Damage: 56
Min Damage: None
Velocity: 11
Tier: D
Blood Rain Bow is intended to be a sidegrade to Blizzard Staff and Daedalus Stormbow, due to its projectile wall-piercing. However, just like Daedalus, it does not cover that good of an area. It’s got decent base damage, but it’s really hard to hit with and you’re better off using Blizzard Staff for better area coverage.
Light’s Bane
Damage: 78
Max Damage: 111
Min Damage: None
Velocity: 0
Tier: Bad
Light’s Bane is a candidate for the Broken tier due to the fact that the newly added “projectile” doesn’t do damage. The only reason this weapon isn’t in the Broken tier is because the projectile’s range is so short that it doesn’t hinder this weapon’s “viability.” This weapon is easily in contention for the worst sword in the game, alongside the joke weapon Copper Shortsword.
Sleepy Octopod
Damage: 96
Max Damage: 150
Min Damage: None
Velocity: 24
Tier: Bad
Speaking of terrible weapons, we have the Sleepy Octopod. The only thing this weapon has going for it is the high damage and the fact that it is technically true hitscan, meaning it hits the first frame after it’s used. The reason this weapon sucks is obviously because of the range. I don’t even know if the shockwave it creates does any damage, and if it did, it’d still be useless because both you and your opponent would have to be grounded for it to hit.
Obsidian Swordfish
Damage: 92
Max Damage: 185
Min Damage: None
Velocity: 7
Tier: Bad
And lastly, to cap out the bad new melee weapons trio, we have Obsidian Swordfish. This weapon is intended to be a fast, but short spear. The problem is, spears are already tough to hit with, so a short spear is just hopeless. The damage isn’t even very good compared to the good spear weapons, at least not good enough to make up for how close you have to be to hit with it.
Red Ryder
Damage: 124
Max Damage: 170
Min Damage: 70
Velocity: 22
Tier: C
Red Ryder is a lot like Orange Zapinator in many ways. It’s a slower but higher damage Sniper, and it’s annoying to hit with because the bullet is ping dependent. Admittedly, the ping dependency is not as egregious with this weapon, but it’s still enough to make it tricky to hit with and not nearly as reliable as the Sniper. Still better than the Zapinator, though.
Weapons changed by 1.4.4
By far the biggest buff to several weapons in 1.4.4 was the addition of an autofire feature. This causes a lot of the best non-autofire weapons to be broken, and it caused a lot of the weapons that are bad because they don’t autofire to be very strong.
Handgun
Tier: Bad > High A
Handgun is one of two non-autofire guns to not be nerfed after 1.4.4. This is simply because the stats on it aren’t that crazy. It stands as a decent alternative to Laser Rifle.
Venus Magnum
Tier: Bad > High A+
Venus Magnum is the other weapon that hasn’t been nerfed since 1.4.4 It’s the faster but lower damage counterpart to the Handgun. It doesn’t have a perfect fire rate and it isn’t a true hitscan weapon, so as much as it wants to be like Heat Ray, it falls short in matching its power.
Revolver
Tier: Low A > Mid A+
Revolver was still really good before 1.4.4 as a pseudo-sniper, 1.4.4 just made it broken. Although the damage was toned down, it still ended up being better than it was prior to 1.4.4.
Phoenix Blaster
Tier: D > Mid S
Phoenix Blaster stands as the only weapon that needs to be nerfed because it was made broken in 1.4.4. It was actually not terrible prior to 1.4.4 because the base damage was relatively high. Now, it’s basically a Laser Rifle with 10 higher base damage.
Nerf Phoenix Blaster.
Dark Harvest & Morning Star
Tier: C > High B
Tier: D > High B
Both of these whips got fire rate buffs in 1.4.4, which was enough for their dps to outmatch Paladin’s Hammer, specifically Dark Harvest. This would be okay if it wasn’t for the fact that you did not need to aim with these. Morning Star is the worst of the two because it’s slower and you can get punished easier for missing. Dark Harvest was probably the most broken weapon after 1.4.4 came out.
Bubble Gun
Tier: Mid A+ > B
Bubble Gun was already cheap as hell before 1.4.4 even came out. 1.4.4 just jacked up the velocity and made it insane. Eventually the velocity for it was reverted, so it was just as good as it was pre-1.4.4.
However, a new rework would come in the form of reverting the velocity and reducing the damage to be along the lines of Crystal Storm. This rework made the weapon a lot worse since it didn’t have the same range and area coverage as Crystal Storm, but it’s still really good.
Nerfing this weapon buffed dsaf. We’re doomed.
Magic Missile
Tier: Low S > Low A+
Magic Missile was buffed significantly by 1.4.4’s autofire feature, as it became a spammable menace. This weapon became an obvious contender for the most broken weapon after 1.4.4’s release. It was of course toned down significantly.
Gungnir
Tier: D > Mid B
Gungnir wasn’t actually on my tier list the first time I made it, but I would’ve put it at D. It had good base damage, but the range was very poor.
After 1.4.4 buffed the range significantly, this weapon became jacked. I abused it to reach my new highest killstreak.
The dps was so high it put Starlight to shame, which is saying something. After it was nerfed, it wasn’t put back in the trash, however, it still has its great range and good dps.
Aqua Scepter
Tier: High A > High A+
Blanc would never let this happen. Too bad he’s not PvP Manager anymore.
Aqua Scepter got a huge range buff in 1.4.4, meaning it pretty much does what Golden Shower does but with much higher dps. It hasn’t been nerfed since 1.4.4, but I think that’s fine since this weapon is still a bit awkward to use and still doesn’t out-dps Paladin’s Hammer.
Light Disc
Tier: Low A > High A+
After Bubble Gun was nerfed, Ice Sickle was poised to be the best anti-rush weapon. That was when Light Disc stepped in.
Initially, it wasn’t clear how crazy this weapon got buffed in 1.4.4. But the significant range buffs and additional area coverage provided by an additional projectile were found out to be insane. It got nerfed, but it’s still very strong, probably the best weapon that got nerfed after 1.4.4.
Flamethrower/Elf Melter
Tier: B > Low A (For Both)
These two haven’t changed that much in terms of viability since 1.4.4, but it’d feel wrong not to mention them.
The new projectiles created provided a large hitbox buff, meaning they now are much easier to aim. Like I said, this wasn’t that insane of a buff, but I might change my opinion on them later on, who knows.
Changed Opinions
The following list of weapons haven’t changed significantly since my last tier list, I just changed my opinion on how strong they are, hence the title of this section.
Death Sickle
Tier: C > High A
For the longest time, I thought Death Sickle was just a weapon that randoms used to minimal success. It always felt like a weaker, shorter range and easier to dodge Ice Sickle.
Nowadays I think it’s cheap as hell. The projectiles are much larger and last much longer, and while the base damage is technically lower than Ice Sickle, there’s a projectile damage modifier of 107%, meaning the actual base damage of the projectile is 91, 2 higher than Ice Sickle.
Sure, it’s still loud, which means it’s easy to see coming, but considering that it should be used as an anti-rush, when your opponent doesn’t have time to react to you swapping to it, I think that it being loud isn’t much of a downside.
Combat Wrench
Tier: Low A+ > Low S
Combat Wrench’s best upside that I eventually realized is that you can swap off of it much faster than most weapons, meaning you can throw it out and in a fraction of a second you can switch back to whatever you were using beforehand.
This, combined with the fact that the damage is still strong and the projectile is still super fast and easy to aim, allowed this weapon to sit among other reliable S tier weapons.
Starlight
Tier: Low A+ > Low S
Starlight is cheap, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not.
If you time your hits right, this weapon’s dps can be absolutely insane. Plus, it’s still hitscan, it has great range if you put on melee speed boosting gloves, and you can aim it anywhere.
It should be your go-to weapon for point-blank interactions with your opponent.
Ghastly Glaive
Tier: B > D
Ghastly Glaive has technically received velocity nerfs to make it quite stubby, so this new placement isn’t entirely because of my changed opinions.
The real reason I moved Ghastly Glaive so far down is because Gungnir outclasses it so hard it’s not even funny. Sure, Glaive has higher base damage, but that range nerf really puts it to shame.
Demon Scythe
Tier: C > Mid B
Demon Scythe did not get better over time, it got more annoying over time. Basically, I realized how spammable it is, and while the initial projectile velocity isn’t doing it any favors, the acceleration can make the projectile harder to dodge than I gave it credit for.
Blood Thorn
Tier: C > Bad
I genuinely don’t remember why I put this in C tier. Sure, the dps is good if you catch someone with it, but the problem is that it’s impossible to catch someone with it.
Its projectiles can only appear on the ground, and even so, they appear with a delay and are slightly randomized. Bad weapon.
Hallowed Repeater
Tier: B > Mid A
Hallowed Repeater was moved up the tier list solely because of its capabilities at mid-close range rather than as a poke. If you land consecutive shots with it, you can do crazy damage. If your aim is good, this can be better than both Chlorophyte Shotbow and Stake Launcher at mid-close range.
Possessed Hatchet
Tier: Low A+ > Low A
Possessed Hatchet is an unfortunate victim of power creep.
For those of you who don’t know what power creep is, it’s when a weapon is outclassed by a newer, stronger option. Ghastly Glaive is also a victim of power creep.
Possessed Hatchet was unfortunately outclassed as the premiere anti-rush boomerang by Light Disc. It just doesn’t have the insane range. Even after it got a much-needed damage buff, it wasn’t enough to beat Light Disc. It’s still the best close-range option for full melee builds, however.
Bat Scepter
Tier: High A+ > Low A
I admit I definitely overhyped this weapon. I thought this thing was broken at area denial, when that couldn’t be more false.
It’s still great at area denial, it’s just got super slow projectiles. While that does make this weapon great for projectile walls, there are other faster, higher damage options that do just fine at making projectile walls. Speaking of…
Nebula Blaze
Tier: C > Mid A
I originally saw Nebula Blaze as a high DPS but unreliable mid-range weapon due to its high spread, but clearly that’s not what this weapon is good at.
If you use this as an area coverage weapon while coming in from a long distance, you can create a power projectile wall. The unreliable spread that was previously a downside becomes unpredictable and tough to dodge, making it an upside.
Razorpine
Tier: Low A > Mid A+
I did not give Razorpine enough credit simply because of its lack of high damage. This weapon doesn’t need high damage, it’s amazing at covering a certain area. The only reason it’s not as good as it’s counterpart, Betsy’s Wrath, is still because of a lack of damage, however.
Tsunami
Tier: Mid S > High S
The change in tier list position here is minor, but i still want to mention it.
I haven’t really had any revelations with this weapon, it’s still probably the best weapon stat-wise, and it’s remarkably consistent and reliable. It has just gotten more consistent and reliable over time.
Conclusion
Although Blanc is no longer PvP Manager, meaning we won’t get as many balance changes, that doesn’t mean we’ll be getting none. I think DG PvP is in a great spot balance-wise, despite what others may think.
I do not think I’ll be making another forum post about changes to my tier list unless Relogic releases another weapon balance update.
I will be posting occasionally about small updates to my tier list in the comments of this post, however.
