Tier list

The Identities are actually decently balanced and you can make a lot of them work. This tier list tries to rate these IDs on their average performance in Railway content.

Ratings take into account potential team synergies, rated with only their base ego, and in their ideal team composition.
EGO synergies are mentioned in reviews and do not affect placement on the tier list.
Ratings are based on Tier 4 Identities. If any ID requires Uptie 4 to function, please check their tags on the tier list or check out our "Uptie 4 Priority" Guide.
Identities within a tier are placed in alphabetical order.

NOTE: We also added tags below each character to facilitate understanding their niche and help with team building. If you want to know more about each character, please check their page for full information and review.

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Specialty Tags

There's mainly tags for what ID specializes in what, and none of them is a con. If Uptie 4 is a requirement for their kit to even function, it would be listed as a downside for that ID. Statuses that are already explained in the game (i.e Tremor, Charge, Sinking, Rupture, etc) will not be listed here.

AoE Skills - The ID has access to damage multiple enemies at once in their kit.
Coin Reuse - The ID has skills which reuses it's coins.
Nuker - The ID specializes in dealing a large amount of damage in a single turn.
Debuffer - The ID specializes in giving enemies negative status effects.
Buffer - The ID specializes in giving allies and/or themself positive status effects.
Discard - The ID's core gimmick is discarding skills.
Every Status - The ID has the ability to potentially inflict every status in the game.
Negative SP - The ID's core gimmick is that they use negative coin skills.
Counter - The ID specializes in their counter skill.
HP Gimmick - The ID's core gimmick lies in being above/below a certain HP threshold.
A-Reson/Reson - The ID's core gimmick lies in getting Sin Resonance or Absolute Sin Resonance.
Passive Provider - The ID has a pretty useful Support Passive.
Req. U4 - The ID needs Uptie 4 to work on an efficient level.

Criteria

All conditionals when ranking these are fulfilled
Using optimal team composition
Railway buffs and support passives are not taken into account
Mirror Dungeons and unique Story buffs aren't taken into account

Roles

We compare characters within their role - so damage dealers are compared to other damage dealers and the ratings are adjusted based on their performance within the role.

Damage Dealer: Rating is heavily influenced based on the ID's damage and utility to both deal damage and amplify the damage of others, including their own.
Status Specialist: Rating is heavily influenced based on the ID's ability to stack the count and potency of every status or brings something unique to that status to make it overall effective and stronger.
Support: Rating is heavily influenced based on the ID's ability to give buffs to allies, debuffs to enemies, and overall utility to help defeat enemies quicker.
Tank: Rating is heavily influenced based on the ID's ability to take damage and their benefits to taking damage

Other criteria affecting ratings

Clashing and ability/capacity to deal damage is usually the biggest defining factor that differentiates many IDs compared to others. We consider:

Flexibility - How the ID's kit functions on its own and how difficult it is to play.
Clashing - How good the ID is at clashing. We consider 15-17 to be the exact average for clashes. Everything less than 14 is below average, while everything above 18 is above average.
Utility - There's a great number of IDs that possess abilities that lie beyond their defined role, for example Pequod Heathcliff scales in damage the lower HP he has, and gains buffs whenever allies or himself gets hit to deal even more damage. The more an ID helps the team outside of their role, the bigger positive impact on their rating it has.

Meta Lines

Meta Lines categorize each section of the tier list into a power bracket. Here are the four brackets:

Best in Role Characters (SS & S+) - IDs in this bracket are the best of the best. They can dish out outrageous damage, enables a ton of synergy with other IDs, and provide massive buffs or debuffs with their kits. They are, most of the time, essential to achieving the lowest turn counts for Railway content, while also making all other content in this game a complete pushover.
Meta Characters (S & A) - Characters in this bracket perform extremely well in content, but compared to the tier above them, they don't perform as well or more work is required for them to operate. They'll still be able to consistently clear all forms of content though.
Niche Characters (B) - Characters in this bracket have the really short end of the stick, either extremely reliant on the team they're put in, requires a bunch of effort to get working, or just overall does not perform as good as the characters in the higher tiers.
Bad Characters (C & D) - Characters in this bracket are just not good. Even in their best conditions they have absolutely nothing that makes them even remotely useful to the team. You'd actively be crippling yourself by using them.