Weapons & Equip - Sentries are unbalanced and need serious buffs/reconsiderations (Full breakdown). (2024)

Intro
In this post I am going to mostly focus on the Tier 2 old one's army sentries, using the full set of buffing armour associated with them. However, given that the sentries are just differently upgraded versions of one another, pretty much everything I am exploring here should be applicable to the other tiers.

First and foremost, I would like to emphasize that my main concern here is for pure summoner, outside the bounds of fighting the OOA. This is because the OOA sentries and armour represent the overwhelming majority of sentry options available to summoner. I am well aware that the armour sets do in fact encourage hybrid play, but I would also like to counter that by pointing out that none of the Dark Mage/Ogre/Betsy drops are summon weapons. The part of the event that gives summoner time to shine is primarily in the sentries, and so I feel like it is fair to treat them as summoner-focused. Additionally, between the existing whips and the large number of whips in the upcoming Dead Cells update, a summon-based playstyle no longer leaves your hand slot open, so it's not exactly unfair to expect to be able to effectively use a whip. Finally, gear like the Frost Armour is entirely competitive when used as Melee-only or Ranger-only, even when compared to full Titanium Armour with the appropriate headgear slot. Just because an armour is hybrid doesn't mean it needs to force the user to hybridise to get use out of it.

Info on the tests/gear:
My accessories weren't really relevant as I wasn't using anything that wasn't % based in terms of damage boosts, so 10% or 15% more or even 50% less still amounts to the same % difference between sentries in terms of DPS. I used a sentry-capacity boosting accessory as well as the war table in order to maximise focus on sentry play.

For Armour, I used a full set of T2 OOA armours (Squire, Huntress, etc), based on the sentry I was testing.

For high damage per shot sentries, I used a legendary Firecracker.

For low damage sentries I used a combination of legendary Leather Whip, Snapthorn, Spinal Tap, Cool Whip, and Durendal, as these are the tag-damage whips available at the same time as T2 OOA.
For the whip combination, I used a macro to cycle through all five whips in rapid succession. While this is arguably an unrealistic level of consistent tag application, I wanted to give every sentry the maximum possible benefit of the doubt, as the current winner (Ballista) works better when holding M1 with the Firecracker anyway.

The target of the sentries was a single Super Dummy, and when summoning the sentries I made sure to summon them in such a way that they shot a (relatively) constant stream of projectiles, meaning no significant fluctuations in DPS outside of when using the firecracker.

Ballista Cane:
Right off the bat, the 5 ballista are dealing a meh 550 or so dps (I am on a dungeon spike to ensure ballista panic is always active).

Although not super impressive, adding on the firecracker gives us a very meaty single-target DPS value.

All things considered, the T2 Ballista is actually quite effective. That having been said, the combo leans heavily on the Squire Armour and Firecracker, if you don't use those enhancers the Ballista is practically worthless, which is probably fine for the T2 and T3 ballista, but leaves the T1 ballista in a pretty awkward position. If we were only considering T2 and T3 Ballista and nothing else, I probably wouldn't be making this post at all.

Flameburst Cane:
Okay so this is already pretty underwhelming, right off the bat. We're looking at pretty much half of the DPS the ballistas have. But alright, maybe we can redeem this with whips...

Well whatever redemption we're looking for, the Firecracker isn't really providing it. This is also where I would like to point out that for all sentries other than ballista, I took outlier DPS values in order to give the sentry as much leeway as I could. 924 dps would be a letdown, but that isn't even accurate - the actual DPS is sitting more around 800 or so.

Switching to whip-cycling also doesn't really bring us any futher.

Explosive Trap Cane:
Explosive traps are dealing a cool 612 damage per second, putting it around the ballpark of the Ballista, which is pretty bad considering calling it melee range would be generous.

Adding on the Firecracker, we can get a neat... 1400. Let's be extra-generous and assume that it's the same as Ballista as well. Once again - not worth it considering the tiny attack range.

Lightning Aura Cane:
We have a pretty lousy 350 DPS without whips, but that's OK! After all, the Lightning Aura was nerfed with whip tag damage, it must be comparable to the Blade Staff, right?

Oh. Bear in mind, this is me applying five sets of tags to the enemy, an amount that the average player is probably never going to bother applying consistently.

In fact, I actually went out of my way to test just using Durendal with a single Snapthorn use every once in a while to refresh the whip speed bonus, and I ended up with pretty much the same DPS - stacking tags isn't even useful!

"But the Flameburst has extra range!"
One might argue that the big boon of the Flameburst is that it has a much larger range than the Ballista with the armour set equipped. And that would be a good point, if the only thing we were swapping out would be the summon. But we're not. We're also swapping out the Squire Armour for the Apprentice Armour. And the Squire Armour also features very substantial health regeneration, as well as a LOT of defense points. It actively compensates you for the smaller range of the Ballista by giving you the means to tank the occasional hit in order to keep the enemy from moving too much.

And here's the kicker: The Flameburst may as well not even have extra range in the first place. For one, it has a smaller viewing radius than the Ballista, meaning no shooting directly up (good luck stopping an enemy from flying overhead). But much more importantly, the projectile speed of the fireball is complete arse. Unless the enemy sits completely still the Flameburst can and will whiff its shots constantly.

"You're ignoring the Lightning Aura's defense penetration!"
Some people will probably argue that the Lightning Aura's main boon is ignoring enemy defense, but that's also just not a worthwhile reason to use it. For one, the Ballista's high damage per shot means that defense isn't a big blow to its damage in the first place, but for another, most enemies don't even have that much defense to begin with outside of Master mode, and even then the Lightning Aura doesn't even attack particularly quickly to begin with, the delay between attacks with full monk gear is 0.42, meaning less than 2.5 attacks per second. Not to mention - you're trading the Squire/Vahalla's sustain in exchange for the Monk/Shinobi Armour, which only really has the benefit of enhanced whip speed. And whips are absolutely AWFUL with this sentry, as demonstrated.

I also want to just make clear that these tests are also being unreasonably charitable to the Lightning Aura by assuming you're able to fit the enemy within its radius at all times. If you were playing solo, I am willing to believe that you might be able to manipulate the movement of an enemy to remain within the aura at all times, but if you play multiplayer, you will doubtless have experienced the phenomenon of a boss running around an arena, switching its primary target willy-nilly. Now obviously all of the sentries will suffer from this to some degree, but the sentry currently least affected by it is the Ballista, as it gives you stats that make it more reasonable to be the one deliberately taking enemy aggro via your team's Flesh Knuckles/Putrid Scent use, and you can move in a way to ensure enemies are hit by your Ballistas.

"But the Lightning Auras/Explosive Trap sentries are meant for crowds!"
Ok, so first and foremost, I would like to show you this:

This is the an unassisted test (i.e no Firecracker) of the Ballistas vs SEVEN target dummies, because that's how many targets they are capable of hitting at the same time. Now I want to ask you: given the crowd control capabilities of these things with that much pierce, what niche do the other sentries have?

If I am looking for "round" AOE, I can also just use the Firecracker with these in order to produce even more meaty DPS, which also covers crowd control even better than just the pierce alone. And sure, if I had a giant pile of like 100 or even as low as say, 50 or even 40 enemies, the Explosive Trap or Lighting Aura might start to pull ahead. But I want to ask: how often does that actually happen? Even during the Pumpkin Moon and Frost Moon, the grounded clumps of enemies aren't really the main threat, it's the Pumpkings and Snow Queens. Sure, the projectile spam of the Everscreams/Mourning Woods/Santanks is an issue, but the sentries aren't going to kill them before they can do that, all they're potentially providing is a little more DPS during a specific period of time, while being completely out of range of the more pressing threat - the flying things. And even if we assumed they were perfect for the moons, they'd still be worse for single target, as well as worse against literally everything else. That still wouldn't be good enough to justify 6 entire sentries existing.

"Ok but what about the Oiled debuff?"
You can only have one source of damage over time applied at once (so no stacking fire debuffs with oiled), and the oiled debuff is just an extra 25 dps on top of whatever fire debuff you are using. It doesn't even scale with the debuff's intensity - on fire, cursed flames, hellfire, shadowflame, frostburn, frostbite? All just get 25 DPS. If you can't see why that's a meaningless amount, I don't think I have the ability to persuade you otherwise.

"These weapons are fine/useful during OOA"
Honestly? I don't know whether or not that's true and I don't care. I don't hate OOA as much as a lot of other players seem to, and I do play all 3 tiers every time I do a playthrough with my friends, but I have never found myself needing to do anything other than spam Ballistas to win. If you think the traits of the sentries are suitable for the OOA, I have absolutely no problem if they are only changed outside of OOA. My issue lies entirely in the power level of sentries when used outside of OOA, where we can't throw down fifty sentries using Etherian Mana, and are limited to at most three, five, or six sentries at a time.

That having been said I would absolutely at least consider using the non-Ballista sentries during OOA if these changes were applied there as well.

MY SUGGESTED BUFFS/CHANGES:

Ballista:

• Ballista Panic removed from the game.
• Valhalla Armour:
  • No longer reduces base attack cooldown of Ballistas.
• Ballista Rod:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 1.67 second (Current attack speed cooldown of Valhalla Ballistas.)
• Ballista Cane:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 1 second (Current attack speed cooldown of panicked Squire Armour Ballistas.)
• Ballista Staff:
  • Attack cooldown 3 seconds -> 0.5 seconds (Current attack speed cooldown of panicked Valhalla Armour Ballistas)

While I did imply that I think the T2 and T3 Ballista are fine, I think the best way to fix the T1 would be to remove Ballista panic as it is the cause of the issue, and buff the attack speed of base Ballistas to compensate. This would serve to make the T1 sentry much more powerful, and make using the Ballistas with a different OOA set, or with a minion-based summoner build much more realistic and reasonable. The Squire and Vahalla Armours are already incredibly potent armours, and they already provide the Ballista with more projectile speed and +3 pierce. The Ballista Panic mechanic is also just very poorly thought out as it forces you to periodically slam your face into a dungeon spike or enemy just to keep your DPS somewhat consistent.

For the Cane and Staff I just went with the attack cooldown you could achieve anyway, but for the Rod I decided to take the Valhalla's base attack cooldowm. The Rod is in a bit of an awkward position, as sentries are effectively "free" pre-hardmode, outside of a single accessory slot for the scarf, and summoner is going to be running that anyway for the 10% extra summon damage. That having been said it is still far too weak for how difficult it is to make it land hits on enemies, especially given it is only available after EOC and Eater/Brain. The only real utility it used to have was repeatedly summoning it to skip the attack CD.

Flameburst:

• Flameburst Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • Now have homing on fireball projectiles. (If DD2 consistency is a concern, bump the projectile speed up high enough to make it almost always hit)
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd could be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Now have substantially increased rate of fire, reducing the difference in single-target dps when compared to the Ballista (probably around 20-30% less than the Ballista or so).
  • Field of view weakness removed (Or keep the FOV limits but make it still able to shoot projectiles within its FOV that then home in on enemies outside the FOV)
• Flameburst Rod:
  • On Fire! -> Hellfire
  • 25% more range.
• Flameburst Cane:
  • Hellfire -> Cursed Inferno OR Something with equivelant DPS if we're worried about visuals/DD2 lore consistency.
  • 50% more range.
• Flameburst Staff:
  • Hellfire-> A fire-themed DOT effect with about 100 to 150 DPS or so.
  • 100% more range.
• Apprentice Armor Set Bonus:
  • No more projectile speed bonus.
  • 50% extra range on Flameburst Sentries for a total of (75%/100%/150%more range).
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Flameburst Sentry explosions are now twice as large.
  • Flameburst Sentry now applies ichor for (3/5/8 seconds)
• Dark Artist Armor Set Bonus:
  • No more projectile speed bonus.
  • Infinite range on Flameburst Sentries.
    • If this turns out to be too reliable as free damage, it'd be cool if this bonus only applied while the target is tagged.
  • Flameburst Sentry explosions are now three times as large.
  • Flameburst Sentries now apply Betsy's Curse for (3/5/8 seconds)

This is a LOT of buffs, but the Flameburst is genuinely awful right now and is completely outclassed by the Ballista in every meaningful way. I think the best way to handle these is to lean into the whole "ranged" aspect of the sentries, giving them homing (or really high projectile speed) to make them a good choice for playing with a friend running a more tanky build, as well as a good choice for non-sentry summoners to use when playing a high-evasiveness summon build, as you won't have to worry about making the boss stay still like you might for other sentries.

I bumped up the DOT debuffs of the sentries quite substantially, as On Fire! is FAR too weak for an item that is both post-Brain/Eater AND post Dark Mage. Hellfire is also a ridiculously weak debuff for a post single Mech Boss post Ogre item - you can get Cursed Inferno inflicting weapons via flask, arrow, tome, dart, and bullet before doing literally anything else in HM, even if you have a Crimson world. Cursed Inferno wouldn't suffice for a post-Golem post-Betsy item, so a new debuff would probably have to be added. You could argue the DOT debuffs could probably be buffed even further given how easy it is to get Venom as summoner immediately into HM via Spider/Spider Queen staves, but the latter is competing for the same slot as Flameburst and neither synergise well with high-mobility long-range play, so it'd probably be fine.

As mentioned, the homing combined with the additional range might push this over the edge in terms of being too reliable as free damage, so forcing the player to commit to summoner via a whip wouldn't be a bad idea + it'd force the player to at least occasionally risk running in to go for a tag, while not requiring the same level of commitment as Ballista or Lightning Aura.

The Ichor/Betsy's curse application is primarily intended to make using the Flameburst with the intended Armour set more rewarding without invalidating the use of Flameburst on other armour sets. (I.E We don't want to lock long-range or homing capabilities behind the armour as reliable long-range damage is the primary benefit of this sentry when compared to Ballista). It'd also be a decent team-support option, which would fit well with these sentries being good in multiplayer situatuions where you cannot rely on the boss moving predictably.

The explosion radius boons are primarily intended to compete with the Vahalla's Pierce boons in terms of adding multi-target capabilities to an otherwise less crowd-damage-focused sentry.

Overall I envision this sentry as being akin to the Sanguine Staff/Xeno Staff - Consistent, reliable damage that works well against enemies with a lot of mobility but worse if you can control the enemy's movement or the enemy is slow. Enemies like the WOF, Skeletron, The Twins, Empress and Duke Fishron come to mind, but if your friends are anything like mine practically any boss can becoming an erratically-moving unpredictable mess that is more suited to lower-damage never-miss weapons.

Explosive Trap:

• Explosive Trap Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • MASSIVE damage increase, AT LEAST 150% more, possibly within the range of 200% more.
  • Attack cooldown 1.5 seconds -> 3 seconds.
  • Now have much faster summon item use times and lower Mana costs to make re-setting traps mid-combat more practical.
  • Explosions now briefly stun some enemies, with bosses being unable to be stunned and stun length being different based on the enemy type.
• Huntress Armor Set Bonus:
  • No longer reduces trap attack cooldown.
  • Oiled debuff now scales based on the type of fire applied instead of being static 25 extra DPS.
  • Oiled debuff now also makes DOT effects tick faster, making the overall damage of the DOT finish sooner and raising the DPS they inflict.
  • Increases both explosion size and activation radius of traps.
• Red Riding Armor Set Bonus:
  • No longer reduces trap attack cooldown.
  • Oiled debuff now scales based on the type of fire applied instead of being static 25 extra DPS.
  • Oiled debuff now also makes DOT effects tick even faster, making the overall damage of the DOT finish much sooner and further raising the DPS they inflict.
  • Explosive Traps also apply Betsy's Curse for 20 seconds.
  • Increases both explosion size and activation radius of traps.

Explosive Traps are honestly not a bad concept, the entire problem they run into is that they don't reward the player for consistently leading enemies onto the tiny area that the mines take up. Having a sentry that punishes an enemy for coming to you is a solid alternative to a sentry that can keep its distance, as instead of dealing consistent damage at range, they can deal all of their damage in a very short period of time. The entire crux of the issue currently is their overall DPS being on the level of the Ballista Cane, but that DPS is achieved by lowering the attack cooldown of the traps. Considering that the traps are much smaller than the Ballista and getting an enemy to run over the trap is much more work than the Ballista, it only follows that the focus should be on rewarding the player as much as possible for getting one hit off with the Trap instead of trying to promote repeated hits.

The Oiled debuff sucks and needs some severe buffs to be at all worthwhile, considering this sentry has about the same range as the Fetid Baghnakhs. If the Dark Lance can inflict shadowflame (25 DPS), this thing should be doing something WAY more substantial.

For the Red Riding Armour, the post-Golem stage of the game is so full of flying enemies and other annoying-to-maneauver foes that giving the player an extra-long Betsy's Curse seemed an appropriate bonus.

The main concern would be that the Firecracker might be disproportionately powerful with this unit, but with how good Ballistas are with Firecracker currently, this doesn't strike me as a huge problem, especially given you're combining a relatively short range whip with an even shorter ranged stationary sentry.

• Lightning Aura Rod/Cane/Staff:
  • 50% reduction in tag damage -> removed.
  • Attack cooldown 0.5 seconds -> 0.25.
• Monk Armour Set Bonus:
  • Lightning Aura attack cooldown Bonus 0.12 less -> removed.
  • Whip (and melee weapon(?)) size increased by ~50%.
  • Crit chance of Lightning Auras increases past base 12% if the enemy has been tagged.
  • Lightning Auras now inflict Electrified on enemies for 32 DPS if moving, 16 DPS if stationary.
• Shinobi Infiltrator Set Bonus:
  • Lightning Aura attack cooldown Bonus 0.12 less -> 0.05 less (0.25 -> 0.2).
  • Whip (and melee weapon(?)) size increased by ~100%.
  • Crit chance of Lightning Auras increases past base 25% if the enemy has been tagged.
  • Lightning Auras now inflict Electrified on enemies for 32 DPS if moving, 8 DPS if stationary.
  • Electrified's DPS now scales with tag damage (4 damage per tag per tick if moving, 1 damage per tag pick tick if stationary)

I genuinely cannot understand why the tag bonus was nerfed on these sentries, I can only assume that they were tested with super master legendary mode crowds of enemies with very high defense,with all of them being hit by the lightning. Or maybe the idea of this Sentry being disproportionately beneficial to whip usage was assumed to be OP given the sentry was assumed to be balanced, which it isn't - it sucks. Either way making the Sentry benefit a lot from whip tags is honestly a great way to set this sentry apart from the more burst-heavy sentries, with them tending to benefit a lot more from Firecracker. It is of course entirely possible that these buffs I have given over-correct for the current lacklustre state, but given they're effectively an even more niche version of the already niche explosive traps in terms of getting enemies to consistently remain within range, I feel like you could easily let these be the highest-DPS option available to players willing to go through the fuss of stacking whip tags. You're already filtering out anyone who doesn't want to grind for the defender Medals needed, as well as anyone who finds whip-stacking too much work.

Bear in mind that the specific stats I suggest are moreso meant to be a guideline that needs adjusting. I think the overall goal should be that using ONLY Durendal + Monk + Lightning Aura Cane should edge out to ~2000-2200 DPS or so on a single target, so around 33%-40% more than Ballista + Firecracker. That seems fair given the small range of the Auras + the worse defensive stats of the Monk armour vs Squire. The DPS for adding on other whip tags would depend on how difficult Re-Logic considers whip stacking to be. I am less familiar with post-golem and post EOW/BOC dps values, but I imagine they could be scaled appropriately given pre-hm only has 3 tagging whips while post-mech boss adds things like Kalaedescope.

I tried to lean into the whip focus a little more with the extra size making it easier to use lower-grade whips like the Leather Whip/Snapthorn. Scaling the crit chance is also meant to encourage the same behaviour, while the Electrified DOT is meant to compensate a little for enemies with a lot of movement speed leaving the aura more frequently. If Re-Logic were feeling spicy they could even just outright convert the Melee bonuses of Monk/Shinobi to Whip ones, as it'd remove Melee having two Hybrid sets and work well with the upcoming Dead Cells update whips.

"What about the other sentries?":
The problem with the other sentries is that there are not a lot of them, and the place they fit within the game is a lot harder to sus out given every sentry-boosting armour set also boosts a specific OOA sentry further, and sentry-boosting sets are also only available after beating a mech boss. That having been said, I will still give my thoughts on where they stand/should stand.

• Houndius Shootius:
  • This thing sucks. Even if pre-hm sentries are "free" compared to having to commit to OOA armour for HM sentries, the Houndius still manages to be absolutely attrocious.
  • I reckon you could easily bump up its damage per shot and rate of fire pretty substantially.
  • That having been said it also just suffers from the issue of not really standing out over the Ballista/Flameburst.
  • Funnily enough the Houndius is also supremely underwhelming in Don't Starve Together, with its primary purpose being a stationary meat shield that outlasts enemies rather than outdpsing them.
  • With that in mind, it might be good to give it the ability to inflict confusion on enemies to emulate "drawing aggro".
  • Even if you do the above, the DPS it deals still needs to be bumped up a lot, Deerclops is not exactly easy and a lot of people think she is meant to be fought post-Skeletron.

• Spider Queen staff:
  • This thing is honestly perfectly fine.
  • I think if we were to get some sort of OOA stage 2 or even pre HM sentry armour id want this thing to be bumped up in reliability/damage at least a little, but right now it is essentially gifted wholesale to summoner players and makes for a very effective way to control area in early HM.
  • I think the walking spiders and venom would keep it better at that job than any of the buffs I proposed to T1 sentries, and buffing the Houndius to be better than this thing would be an astounding achievement.

• Staff of the Frost Hydra:
  • This thing screams outdated and is strictly worse than the Ballista Staff. So I guess you could use it to beat Golem to unlock OOA T3, and then immediately replace it.
  • I haven't bothered testing whether it even manages to outclass the Ballista Cane, because truthfully this weapon is incredibly boring and not worth grinding for an Ice Key, especially compared to the much more unique and interesting Desert Tiger Staff.
  • It doesn't even have local immunity frames, meaning using it with a sentry build is entirely pointless.
  • I think the most interesting way to rebalance this weapon would be to make it consume all of your sentry slots and scale in strength, similar to the Desert Tiger/Stardust Dragon/Abigail.
    • This would set it apart from the OOA weapons, as well as make it unique enough to feel like a worthwhile reward from a Biome Chest - the other Biome Chest weapons are much more unique for their class type.
    • This would also harken back to how sentries worked before the introduction of the OOA sentries.
    • The way I imagine it'd work is that placing it would immediately eat up all of your sentry slots and delete any sentries filling a slot to do so.
• Lunar Portal/Rainbow Crystal Staff:
  • I don't care about these very much, they make Summoner feel like an Afterthought and there's no way to specc into a sentry-focused playstyle post ML - you just get gifted a few sentry slots wholesale.
  • In my experience using them before the most recent changes, they had been worse than the Ballista Staff when using Vahalla Armour (the best option for sentry-focused summoner even post ML), and the Rainbow Crystal has only been nerfed since then despite having completely awful accuracy. The buffed Lunar Portal Staff seems okayish, although I haven't tested it nor do I particularly care for it.
  • I feel like one of them could have probably been turned into a minion instead.
  • Giving Stardust Armour the ability to convert its minion slots into sentry slots could also make them more interesting.
  • Either way like I said I don't care about them very much and I find them to be much less satisfying than other ML weapons as well as less satisfying than the Terraprisma or Stardust Dragon Staff.