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Whips are exceptionally useful for clearing foliage due to their range and broad area of effect.For more risk/reward, the Shinobi Infiltrator armor has a +60% damage bonus and a +20% speed bonus (which affects whips more than most melee late game weapons), but less armor and no healing. 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 not affected by melee damage because they have a summon damage tag.Summon tag damage can be stacked with the use of multiple different whips which has an even greater effect on minion DPS than using only one.
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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 summon tag damage gives significant bonuses to minions.Whips do not gain benefits from any other melee 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. 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. This includes melee speed bonuses from Snapthorn, Durendal and Dark Harvest.This means that melee-oriented armor sets and equipment, such as Shadow armor and Feral Claws, can greatly increase their effectiveness. Whips are affected by melee attack speed bonuses.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. This does not stop whips with debuff effects such as Snapthorn from applying their respective debuff.
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This penalty is heavier on earlier whips, and lighter on later whips. 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.
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