Queen Spider Staff

It lobs eggs instead of shooting directly. The eggs are heavy, they bounce and roll along the ground, and after a moment or on contact they burst into a small pack of baby spiders that chase the nearest target and die on impact. The egg itself does no damage at all, so the number on the tooltip badly undersells the sentry: every shot is worth several spider hits.

The turret lands on the first solid ground beneath your cursor, so aim at a floor rather than at open air. Because the payload rolls, a long flat stretch of arena in front of it is worth more than height. The spiders it spits out do not climb walls the way Spider Staff minions do, which makes vertical fights the weak case.

Lots of small fast hits off a low base is exactly the profile that tag damage and armor penetration want, so this gains more from Ichor and similar effects than any other sentry does. Its projectiles also travel faster than nearly everything else in the sentry list, and it is the only one that homes at all, grounded as that homing is.

Every spider that connects applies Acid Venom, the strongest damage over time any sentry can put out. On a summoner that is free extra pressure alongside your minions, and on any other class it is a cheap filler that keeps working while you focus on your main weapon.

Well into Hardmode. It still outperforms the middle tier of Tavernkeep sentries, which is unusual for something you craft this early out of Spider Fangs, and it no longer costs mana to place. Fabled is the modifier to reforge toward.