Whips

Whips are close-range summon weapons that swing in an arcing motion and produce a unique sound. Like all summoning weapons, whips receive damage bonuses from minion damage and cannot normally deal critical hits.

When an enemy has been hit with a whip, any minions the player has summoned will target that enemy, much like when right-clicking an enemy with a summoning weapon.

Most whips have damage bonuses that apply to any attacking minions, in addition to their regular damage statistic. These damage bonuses last 4 seconds after striking an enemy.

Whips can have the same modifiers as swords, including Legendary. Their best modifier is Massive for size and Legendary for everything else.

Tips

 * Because the primary hit of a whip operates similarly to a piercing melee weapon, they are effective against enemies that pass through blocks, such as worms, cursed skulls, and casters with destructible projectiles.
 * However, all Whips will deal less damage to each successive enemy hit close together in a single swing, all the way down to 1 damage. This penalty is heavier on earlier whips, and lighter on later whips.
 * This does not stop whips with debuff effects such as Snapthorn from applying their respective debuff. However, Firecracker's Explosive Burst effect will only be applied to the first enemy hit, even if the whip causes a different enemy to be targeted instead.
 * Whips are affected by melee attack speed bonuses. This means that melee-oriented armor sets and equipment, such as Shadow armor and Feral Claws, can greatly increase their effectiveness.
 * This includes melee speed bonuses from Snapthorn, Durendal and Dark Harvest. If the player is fast enough, they can strike once with a speed-increasing whip, then switch to a higher-damage whip to gain immense damage bonuses. The autoswing effect of Feral Claws makes this much easier, as the player can simply hold the attack button down and use the numbers on the keyboard to switch between whips.
 * Whips do not gain benefits from any other melee bonuses, with the exception of flasks.
 * The summon tag damage gives significant bonuses to minions. For instance, the pre-Hardmode whips can more than triple the DPS of the Slime Staff against the Eye of Cthulhu, and Kaleidoscope increases the damage of the Xeno Staff, an already-powerful summon, by more than 50%.
 * The Feral Claws and its variants give autoswing to all whips and Flasks buffs are also applied to them, despite them not dealing melee damage.
 * Whips have excellent synergy with the Valhalla Knight armor, which has a +60% summon damage bonus, high defense and regeneration, and several sentry slots, but few bonuses to other types of weapons.
 * Whips are exceptionally useful for clearing foliage due to their range and broad area of effect. Combined with the ability to break plants behind solid walls, a whip can erase an entire thorn bush in a single swing, quickly bring down vines, and can safely trigger rolling cacti to roll away.
 * Speed modifiers from armor, accessories, and buffs do not affect the range of whips; only the modifiers on whips affect the range of said whip.
 * 1.4.1 Fixed an issue where size modifiers on Whips had an inverse effect on speed, meaning big whips were always slow and small whips were always fast, therefore Sluggish is no longer a viable modifier to give whips.

Trivia

 * Whips were added as a homage to summoners with whips from the Final Fantasy series, notably Rydia from Final Fantasy 4.
 * In real life, are generally used on animals, for training and performance purposes. This is potentially why the Zoologist sells the Leather Whip.
 * Despite their similarities with Melee weapons, whips are still classified as Summon weapons.

History
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