Wuthering Waves Tier List

We offer separate tier lists that assess characters based on different criteria due to the diversity of character traits and abilities different contents require in order to beat them. As a result, we recommend you to check all of the tier lists we offer before concluding on a character’s full position in the game’s meta. The better they perform in a variety of gamemodes, the more valuable they are overall.

Important! Characters are ordered alphabetically within a tier.

Tower of Adversity

This tier list assesses characters based on their combat potential in one of Wuthering Waves’ most challenging endgame contents, Tower of Adversity (ToA). This tier list assesses their performance in the Hazard Zone that resets periodically, as other zones do not reset. ToA is a mode similar to Genshin Impact’s Spiral Abyss or Honkai Star Rail’s Memory of Chaos and requires 4 teams of 3 equipped with strong Echoes and good Weapons. This mode offers a reasonable mix of Boss encounters (single target) and Elite packs (2-3 targets) along with rare AoE scenarios (5+ targets), allowing different categories of characters to find a niche. However, a bias towards single-target is present, as the most challenging floors are centered around beating Boss enemies.

Whimpering Wastes

This tier list assesses characters based on their combat potential in another challenging endgame content, Whimpering Wastes (WhiWa). This gamemode, in a similar fashion to Honkai Star Rail’s Pure Fiction, heavily favours a character’s ability to deal with several waves of smaller, lower health enemies quickly (AoE). It requires 2 teams of 3 equipped with strong Echoes and good Weapons. AoE characters are very strongly favoured over single-target ones, almost always creating a big discrepancy between the two archetypes.

Characters on this Tier List are evaluated based on their average performance in the "Infinite Torrents" stage (final stage) where players are given a total of 2 minutes to clear as many waves of enemies as they can.

Skill Ceilings

As an action-combat game, Wuthering Waves offers many combat mechanics for players to exploit - some of which are not easily executed, but can boost character performance drastically. Such techniques won’t be for everyone, but a tier list must assess characters based on their optimal performance in optimal teams, up to a reasonable standard. We cannot expect players reading the Tier List to play like AI, inputting every action as quickly as theoretically possible, perfectly optimized for maximum DPS, and without any mistakes. Based on this reasoning, we’re only choosing to implement the most powerful Swap Cancels and Animation Cancels (think switching out of animations that are several seconds long and easy-to-input Animation Cancels), and generally speaking the characters will be judged using the rotations that serve as the baseline for calculations on the character pages in an order that makes sense given their role on the team.

More complex techniques and skill however need to be taken into account in some capacity, hence those will be reserved for a special tag, called Expert, which can alter performance when played at a more optimized level (still different from theoretical perfection, but closer to practical perfection with the purpose of clearing endgame contents in mind — which means speedrun-exclusive techniques still won’t be considered). This will not affect the character’s base position on the Tier List, but characters with the tag could be considered to be able to perform higher depending on player skill.

Buffs and debuffs that vary periodically are not considered, but may impact short-term unit performance.

Criteria

• All characters are assumed to be utilized in their full best 3-man team, played with optimal rotations used as our baseline for calculations without input mistakes, using the best Echo main sets and correct Energy Regen values. This means the overwhelming majority of rotations will be executed in a simplistic, one character at a time manner (save for Expert tag performance if noteworthy);
• All characters are using maximum level gold rarity Echoes;
• All Echo main stats are considered to be best in slot for that character’s build;
• Each Echo used by characters is assumed to have 5 sub-stats with average roll values;
• 15 Echo sub-stats are designated as “good” sub-stats the character would desire where the remaining (10) are random. This represents fairly high quality endgame gear;
• 5★ characters are all rated at Sequence 0 unless otherwise stated such as the Rover (Spectro) who starts at Sequence 6. 4★ characters are rated at Sequence 6.
• All characters are assessed as if they have access to R5 of all 4 weapons, R5 of all 2 and 3 weapons, R1 of the standard 5 Winter Brume weapon series, any one of which is given to select for free at Union Level 45. Additionally, all characters have access to any weapons permanently accessible and given for free (such as the Bloodpact’s Pledge Sword) at the max rank that is permanently accessible. The best out of all these choices is used for their assessment.
• In Whimpering Wastes, all characters are assessed as if they have access to any “Exquisite Token” (purple rarity) except builds catered solely towards abusing “Plunderer’s Captain Seal” are banned. The best out of all these choices is used for their assessment;
• All characters are considered to be the maximum possible level with all Fortes upgraded to the maximum level with a maximum level Weapon.

Roles

We compare characters within their role - so DPS are compared to other DPS for example, and their ratings are adjusted based on their performance within the role. Please do not compare characters between roles, as their ratings are based on entirely separate criteria.

DPS

DPS characters focus on being your main damage dealers and the rest of your team is built to synergize with them and make them stronger. Stacking Echo set bonuses, character kits and Outro Amplify bonuses together to power up a DPS is the goal of a lot of meta teams. Some exceptions exist as certain DPS characters can be played with multiple characters of the same role, but they’ll generally aim to occupy the most of your team’s on-field time, sometimes even up to 14 or 15 seconds. This time can vary depending on the character, but in all cases they’ll have the goal of making the most of your team’s buffs to deal the majority of your team’s damage.

Criteria that impact ratings for DPS:

• Character rotation difficulty (potential for mistakes, or severe decrease in performance if their playstyle isn’t the absolute best possible);
• Character damage within best possible team;
• Character on-field flexibility and adaptability (Does being forced to dodge hurt them? Are they able to follow a scripted rotation easily? Can they adapt to different enemy mechanics?);
• Character ability to deal with different situations (AoE, Cleave, Single Target). This has a minor impact in ToA as single-target is favoured. In Whimpering Wastes, dealing AoE or Cleave damage is heavily favoured.

Hybrid

Hybrid characters directly support your damage dealer of choice, often with incredibly synergistic kits, specialized Outro buffs like “Amplify” multipliers or other beneficial effects, or even by being a great source of secondary damage. They’re often built to complete their rotation right before your DPS performs their full damage combo, as their buffs may, in some cases, expire when switching. Hybrid characters, fittingly to their name, can often execute a variety of roles and offer offensive, supportive or sustaining abilities, if not all three at the same time. As a result of this, they fill the widest variety of niches and playstyles. They typically want to execute their combos in the shortest time windows possible in order to generate Concerto and Resonance Energy quickly to get their buffs up for your main damage dealer in the shortest amount of time. Certain Hybrid characters may be especially desired to deal additional damage in concordance with your main damage dealer, but in any case they’ll usually want to swap in and out of the field quickly.

Criteria that impact ratings for Hybrid:

• Character rotation difficulty (potential for mistakes, or severe decrease in performance if their playstyle isn’t the absolute best possible);
• Character performance within best possible team;
• How many effective teams the character is playable in;
• Impact of kit on a team’s performance (units that can carry teams a rank higher);
• Character on-field flexibility and adaptability (Does being forced to dodge hurt them? Are they able to follow a scripted rotation easily? Can they adapt to different enemy mechanics?);
• Character effective damage contribution after including their buffs on the team;
• Total on-field time required to perform rotation.

Support

Support characters must have the capability to provide benefit to the team regardless of the order in which they are switched in, so as to not conflict with the majority of Hybrid characters’ Outro buffs, that tend to solely buff the next character to enter. Their primary utility is to provide team-wide buffing, but they may often be desirable by providing defensive and sustaining/healing capabilities as well; all of this in the shortest field time possible, as they typically aren’t personally responsible for the majority of their team’s damage, in order to maximize the potential of your DPS and Hybrid characters.

Criteria that impact ratings for Supports:

• Character rotation difficulty (potential for mistakes, or severe decrease in performance if their playstyle isn’t the absolute best possible);
• Character performance within best possible teams;
• How many effective teams the character is playable in;
• Impact of kit on a team’s performance (units that can carry teams a rank higher);
• Character on-field flexibility and adaptability (Does being forced to dodge hurt them? Are they able to follow a scripted rotation easily? Can they adapt to different enemy mechanics?);
• Character effective damage contribution after including their buffs on the team;
• Total on-field time required to perform rotation.

Other criteria affecting the ratings

The criteria above this section apply to all our tier lists; however, each unique tier list rates characters based on their average value in the specific mode it represents. Hence, the higher a character is rated on a given tier list, the greater their power and usability in the mode, making accessing all rewards easier for players. We do not consider going for the highest scores or lowest time, only the ability to easily max out rewards. However, some criteria may be specific to certain character archetypes, or within certain modes altogether, depending on the tier list you view. They are as follows:

• For certain Hybrids: ability to perform effectively at lower levels of investment (if applicable, this is only a slight bonus judged on a separate scale and never negatively impacts other character ratings);
• For Healing and Shielding Supports: how much sustain/defensive utility they provide to the team, how much they allow for mistakes during gameplay;
• For Whimpering Wastes characters: ability to gather enemies efficiently, ability to deal with multiple waves of enemies quickly.

Additional specific criteria may be developed according to game updates/meta shifts.

Special tags

Tags represent the most defining features of a character's kit.

• ST - Character deals mostly single-target damage to enemies but can hit multiple enemies if they are stacked directly on top of each other.
• Cleave - Character has a mix of smaller range cleaving attacks or attacks that strike in a radius around them but does not consistently hit all enemies on screen with the majority of their rotation.
• AoE - A large portion of these characters’ damage or benefit is in the form of pure AoE, hitting most if not all enemies on the battlefield.
• Frazzle: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Spectro Frazzle to enemies.
• Erosion: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Aero Erosion to enemies.
• Bane: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Havoc Bane to enemies.
• Burst: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Fusion Burst to enemies. (Currently unused).
• Chafe: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Glacio Chafe to enemies. (Currently unused).
• Flare: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Electro Flare to enemies. (Currently unused).
• Sustain - Character can provide effects that increase the team’s resistance to damage, such as Healing, Shielding or Damage Reduction. This tag is only given to characters who can provide these effects to party members other than themselves.
• Coord - Character can perform or benefit from Coordinated Attacks consistently, thanks to a major portion of their kit revolving around Coordinated Attacks or being able to execute Coordinated Attacks, providing damage and/or utility even when off-field.
• Control - Character has elements in their kit that can hinder enemy actions, such as freezing, slowing or stunning them.
• Gather - Character is effective at grouping clumps of small enemies together, allowing you to deal with several targets at once effectively.
• Partner - Character is graded based on their best team as normal, but is especially reliant on being partnered with one specific character in order to function at the highest level. Characters marked with this tag will perform at least one tier lower than their listed position on the tier list without those characters alongside them (sometimes even more).
• Expert - Character can be considered one placement higher than their default tier list ranking, but has an optimal playstyle that needs to be mastered to qualify for that higher rating. Characters only obtain this tag if the expert playstyle creates a significant discrepancy in power compared to their baseline playstyle, more so than characters without the tag.
• S0 - Exclusive to 4-star characters. Characters with this tag have their performance noticeably lowered if they are at S0 (no duplicates) instead of S6 (max duplicates, which they are graded with on the Tier List). This tag provides precisions on how much being at S0 hurts them — for example, a character with the S0 -1 Tag will perform 1 tier lower at S0 compared to their rating on the actual Tier List.

Meta Lines

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

• Apex Characters (T0 & T0.5) - characters in this bracket are the cream of the crop. They’ll make clearing content a breeze, by doing some of the best damage numbers in the game, and/or providing massive buffs or debuffs quickly. Certain sustain characters even make dying practically impossible no matter how little you dodge enemy attacks. In their best teams, these characters make achieving the best results simple and consistent.
• Meta Characters (T1 & T1.5) - characters in this bracket still clear endgame contents easily, however they may need you to put more effort in your playstyle, or require higher levels of investment to perform comparatively to top tiers. This can be because they’re more restrictive in their builds, they’re mechanically intensive, they’re overshadowed by better options, or they possess a notable weakness or downside. Most often a mix of these reasons, they’ll regardless not disappoint if you give them the conditions they need to shine.
• Niche Characters (T2 & T3) - characters in this bracket are lacking in their respective roles. They have one fundamental flaw that makes them comparatively worse to higher tier characters, or they have multiple smaller flaws that add up together. More often than not, they cover a niche that’s filled by another unit that performs much easier than them. They’re played noticeably less and will require higher maintenance to perform.

25/12/2025

Today is the big 3.0 day! To anyone who reads this, Merry Christmas from the theorycrafting team. We sincerely hope you didn’t gamble all your Christmas money on gacha pulls if you celebrate (please).

With 3.0 came Lynae, and she’s quite a game-changer for certain characters. In fact, her meta presence is something we’ve never seen before, and you’ll see it has most notably shaken up the ToA Tier List quite a bit. We also went over our WhiWa tier list in full, and lots of placements changed there as a result. Let’s get into what changed:

ToA Changes:

• Lynae - Added as T0 Hybrid (Both Tier Lists). Lynae doesn’t need her Signature at all, and Lynae buffs basically everyone all the same. While she has her specifications in providing a higher amount of buffs to Liberation damage dealers compared to others, it doesn’t stop her from pairing with literally any DPS she wants. And she does it really well, too. It’s honestly hard to overstate how flexible Lynae truly is when it comes to the number of teams she fits in. We’ve seen flexible Hybrids before, like Iuno for all Heavy damage dealers and Lupa for all Fusion damage dealers, but Lynae is the first truly universal Hybrid we’ve got. Her meta presence on release is reminiscent of Shorekeeper’s current meta presence. This should say a lot in terms of how universally good she is, and it’s definitely a huge factor on our Tier List’s criteria. Probably the easiest T0 Hybrid we’ve ever given.
• As a consequence of Lynae's existence, literally every other Hybrid except Ciaccona on the Signature Tier list has been pushed out of T0. Because Ciaccona is part of two of the best teams in ToA, being the Cartethyia and the Iuno team, with her Signature included to make her stand out from Shorekeeper in the Iuno team, she still warrants a T0 placement. Everyone else has been pushed out, and placements have been adjusted accordingly (though this doesn’t prevent previously T0 Hybrids from rising back up with future character releases). This change will definitely seem drastic (because it is), but we really encourage you to test Lynae out in-depth; she’s honestly that good (especially by how we grade Hybrids on our criteria).
• Regardless of this, we will highlight that both Yinlin and Roccia have fallen down to T2 on both Tier Lists. Since they are now not a part of any of the best teams of the characters they were intended for (Lynae is stronger for Xiangli Yao and Camellya; Qiuyuan is stronger than Roccia for Phrolova), they can only be deemed worthy of the Niche character bracket. As time went by, their pull value inevitably decreased.
• Iuno (DPS) - T1 → T0.5 (No Signatures); T0.5 → T0 (With Signatures). With Lynae’s release, Iuno is closer than ever to the likes of Cartethyia, particularly featuring Ciaccona as the third slot teammate. While she’s not better than her, she gets really close, and that says a lot about how good Lynae truly is. Lynae is the buffer Iuno needed to stand on top of the meta as a DPS, to a point where she can honestly be considered better in this role than her Hybrid role with Augusta in ToA at this point (though this is not the case in WhiWa).
• Calcharo - T3 → T2 (Both Tier Lists) and Expert tag changed (+2 → +1). While Calcharo has not gained anything when it comes to Quickswap team compositions (hence why his Expert rating is unchanged), Lynae helps him in his simpler non-Quickswap playstyles, where her Outro and general buffs prove more useful to him than Yinlin’s.
• Xiangli Yao, Phoebe (DPS), Jinhsi, Camellya - placed on Watchlist. With Lynae’s release but also certain past character releases like Iuno and Ciaccona boosting Jiyan’s potential by a lot, we’ve noticed a significant gap between certain DPS characters in T1 and T1.5. By Mornye’s release, we will conduct more in-depth testing and determine how we want to go about handling these 4 DPS characters who have had their meta relevancy significantly changed over time (some may go up, some may go down accordingly).
• Rover-Spectro (Hybrid) - Removed from Tier List. With Spectro Rover’s only meta-relevant Hybrid role being as a cope option for both Zani and Phoebe too, now, we have decided to remove them from the Tier List entirely and grade them only as a Support, as they are much stronger in this role.

Whimpering Wastes Changes:

• Lynae - added as T1 Hybrid (Both Tier Lists). In WhiWa, while Lynae definitely retains her universality, the DPS characters who are really at the top of the meta right now are not characters that are best paired with her. This makes Lynae still very strong by team flexibility and general use potential alone (even in top meta teams), however, she’s not the one doing the heavy lifting in the top meta teams which doesn’t warrant her going above T1 for now.
• Camellya T0.5 → T1 (Both Tier Lists). As the damage numbers required to kill an enemy increase with every cycle, Camellya’s potential to score really high dwindles a bit, which makes her still a good meta contender but not a dominant presence like she used to be. However, her drop has caused a lot of other DPS to drop down as well.
• Carlotta T1.5 → T2 (Both Tier Lists). While Carlotta definitely can get some scores good enough to clear, it’s not without effort and proper builds due to her lack of an ability to keep up damage outside of her Ultimate window, which really hinders her performance (not to mention her ability range can be quite limited), warranting her drop.
• Phoebe T1.5 → T2 (Both Tier Lists). Phoebe definitely has her grouping and stunning abilities helping her out in the mode, but that doesn’t help her low damage ceiling from improving. Most of her multipliers are quite low and Ciaccona is needed to apply multi-wave Spectro Frazzle for her Heavy Attacks to hit hard enough, which makes her base damage not strong enough to keep up with other T1.5 units.
• Brant (DPS) T1.5 → T2 (Signatures). Similarly to the others who dropped from T1.5, Brant’s ability to clear waves as a DPS is concentrated in two damage windows and nothing else, which makes his performance in Whimpering Wastes more limited than above characters.
• Lingyang T1.5 → T2 (No Signatures). While Lingyang’s perk of not relying on any Limited weapons to perform is nice, his performance doesn’t align with that of the characters in T1.5 anymore which is why he dropped down.
• Changli T0.5 → T1 (Both Tier Lists). With Galbrena’s release and her displaying generally stronger performance than Changli in a lot of situations in the Mono Fusion team, Changli’s role in the meta has been for the most part replaced which caused Changli to drop out of the Apex character bracket (although she still remains a highly viable and strong choice for the Mono Fusion team).
• Roccia T1.5 → T2 (No Signatures) and T1 → T1.5 (Signatures). Roccia’s role in the meta has been replaced by both Lynae in the Camellya team and Qiuyuan in the Phrolova team, which causes her to become more niche than before. However, Roccia retains additional grouping capabilities and being highly competent in the best Whimpering Wastes in the team means she doesn’t warrant being placed in the Niche character bracket for now.
• Sanhua T1 → T1.5 (No Signatures). Sanhua’s meta relevancy has dwindled further with Lynae’s release as she is a more potent buffer for Camellya which makes Sanhua drop once again (however she may rise back up with future Basic Attack damage dealers since her base kit is really strong).
• Chisa T2 → T1.5 (No Signatures). While Chisa lacks a lot of team utility and personal damage without her Signature weapon equipped, her additional grouping capabilities are nice and she ends up displaying similar performance to Aero Rover in a Cartethyia team thanks to this, which warrants them being placed in the same tier.
• Jiyan → Expert +1 Tag Removed. Jiyan in his baseline and optimized playstyle doesn’t match up to the only DPS in T0.5 who is Augusta, so we removed the tag for now (however it may pop back up with future meta shifts).
• Iuno (DPS) placed on Watchlist. We’re still testing Iuno in WhiWa due to her limited AoE capabilities, but Lynae buffed her by so much that we’re still getting pretty good results with her. Further testing will determine whether or not we keep her in her current tiers or change her placements, at the latest around Mornye’s release.

Also, final sidenote - if Tune Rupture and Tune Strain become relevant enough in the meta to warrant special Tags being created for them, we will add those in the future; but they don’t centralize a team archetype currently, so we deemed them unnecessary for now. Expect them to come later if Kuro builds certain character kits around those mechanics, though.

11/12/2025

ToA Changes:

• Buling: Added as T1 (Both tier lists). While Buling is a capable Support option for currently strong meta contenders such as Phrolova and Carlotta, she fails to stand out, even at S6, from other meta generalist Support characters such as Shorekeeper and, more importantly, the easily accessible Verina. While Buling can match up to her in Carlotta teams and even outclass her in Phrolova teams (only at S6), not only is a good chunk of her potential locked behind her final Sequence node, her generalist use cases are also much fewer and far between compared to the universal, super short, consistent rotations Verina is capable of (not to mention Verina needs no damage investment at all while Buling ideally prefers some investment). Overall, while she is definitely a stronger generalist than Baizhi and has some use cases where she matches up to Verina, she may not find much use on endgame accounts and hence warrants a T1 placement.

Whimpering Wastes Changes:

• Buling: Added as T1 (Both tier lists). Buling is in a very similar situation in WhiWa and ToA, only with the added benefit that she is an Electro damage-oriented healer. This makes her a great wielder of the Plunderer Captain’s Seal token because she can activate it frequently via her many ticks of healing and also get good damage out of it since she wants to build Electro DMG Bonus regardless. She additionally has some small grouping and personal damage capabilities, which all contribute a small amount to her value. Overall, a great Support option in the mode, particularly thanks to her ability to work well with Phrolova as one of the best F2P options, which only adds to her value.

19/11/2025

ToA Changes:

• Chisa: Added as T1 (No Signatures) and T0.5 (Signatures) with Partner (Cartethyia) tag. Despite what her Tier List placements might say, Chisa is in a rather difficult spot in the current meta, because she only works with Negative Status characters and is only worth using over pre-existing options with her Signature weapon equipped in a single team: Cartethyia+Ciaccona. She’s worse than other options in other Negative Status teams and only replaces Aero Rover, however the two are still in the same tier on our Tier List. Why? Because Aero Rover was already meant to complete Cartethyia’s team. Sure, Cartethyia is the current best Tower of Adversity DPS in the game, and Chisa only adds onto that, which is why she places high by default. However, she adds onto an already complete team, and that leads to a very marginal increase in team performance. And that’s only with her Signature as well — she’s a team damage loss without it (unless Havoc Bane specifically is favoured with current endgame buffs). We advise considering carefully before deciding whether or not to get Chisa as a result, but in any case she is the best Support for the best Tower of Adversity team in the game which, of course, is bound to warrant good placements no matter what.
• Zhezhi: T0.5 —> T1 (Both Tier Lists). While Negative Status as an archetype got a new Support to work with in the form of Chisa, Zhezhi on her end has gotten no new teams to speak of since Carlotta’s release. The DPS roster has gotten stronger since 2.0 as time went by, yet Zhezhi works with none of them. This made her value gradually drop to where she now belongs more in T1 than being worthy of the Apex Character bracket.

Whimpering Wastes changes:

• Chisa: Added as T2 (No Signatures) and T1.5 (Signatures) with Partner (Cartethyia) tag. Chisa is straight-up worse than Aero Rover without her Signature and is questionably better than them even with it in Whimpering Wastes, due to relying on Negative Status in order to apply DEF Shred in the form of Havoc Bane (a pretty big part of her team buff contribution). While her grouping capabilities are nice, Crowd Control is nothing that Ciaccona and Cartethyia can’t cover by themselves and as a result Chisa finds herself in a rather difficult position in Whimpering Wastes. She will need a new team to work with in order to stand out.
• Xiangli Yao: T2 —> T1.5 (Both Tier Lists). Xiangli Yao’s performance is not worthy of T2 because our Tier List criteria only consider permanently available tokens (up to purple tokens at most) and he is a fantastic user of the Plunderer Captain’s Seal token which periodically deals a blast of AoE Electro DMG. Being able to make good use of the best purple token as an Electro character and also retaining good damage and Crowd Control of his own makes him hold his ground in the gamemode, warranting a slightly higher placement.
• Ciaccona: T1.5 —> T1 (No Signatures). Ciaccona has access to a lot of strong team options in the form of Cartethyia, Jiyan and even arguably DPS Iuno. She retains a good baseline performance in all of those teams without her Signature thanks to Static Mist, so we deem her worthy of T1 even without her Signature (but it’s a big team damage increase if you do obtain it!).

General Tag changes:

The Partner tag now specifies the partner character in parentheses. For example, Zani has a Partner tag due to really needing Phoebe for optimal performance. This tag will be written as [Partner (Phoebe)] from now on instead of just [Partner] for clarification purposes.

30/10/2025

ToA Changes:

• Qiuyuan: Added as T0 (Both Tier Lists). Qiuyuan is one of the best teammates for the teams of 2 meta DPS characters, being Galbrena and Phrolova. The best part is that Qiuyuan doesn’t need his Signature weapon to work at all (since there are really good permanent options that work just fine on him, like Emerald of Genesis), being one of the least limited weapon-reliant characters in the game. He has a really strong spot in the meta if either of these two characters is owned (however, we advise carefully considering before pulling for him otherwise).
• Phrolova: T0.5 —> T0 (No Signatures). With the latest changes to ToA, Phrolova has become super strong in the meta. Her teammates are really flexible and accessible, she can serve as the primary or the secondary DPS to a team, she has a low rotation time by DPS standards, high room for optimization, and her damage ramps up the longer the fight goes on, making her perfect for clearing lengthy content. The thing is, while her Signature weapon is a huge boost in damage compared to any permanent options, with Qiuyuan’s release, Phrolova’s team has become so strong (comparable to Cartethyia in neutral content) that it’s difficult to argue against her being in any tier other than T0, so we’re putting her up there for now.

Whimpering Wastes changes:

• Qiuyuan: Added as T0.5 (Both Tier Lists). Qiuyuan is one of Phrolova’s best teammates. Phrolova has a stranglehold on Whimpering Wastes that no other character currently has. This is enough to make Qiuyuan strong as a Hybrid by default; however, he isn’t only tied to her; his synergy with Galbrena is definitely still worth mentioning as Galbrena does decently in this mode (nothing like Phrolova, but still quite good).
• Zani: Expert +1 Tag Added. Zani has crazy room for optimization in her rotations, and when optimized to their best, she can perform as one of the best Whimpering Wastes DPS units in the game. This tag was given to her to acknowledge this potential.

General Tag Change:

Ult Tag Removed. Because every character wants their Ultimate to operate ideally regardless, we deemed this tag to be uninformative and removed it from our Tier Lists.

09/10/2025

Today is the big ToA update day: we’ve revised our Tower of Adversity Tier List to include the addition of floors 3 and 4 to the Hazard Tower (middle tower). Here are the details on how this will impact our Tier List Criteria:

Since it is the new hardest endgame content available, we will mostly base our view of the meta based on the Hazard Tower as a whole, with a primary focus on floors 3 and 4 (as we want to base our Tier List on fully clearing the hardest endgame content available, without speedrunning). This means AoE capabilities will have some value in the meta (as seen in floor 3) without including multi-wave (reserved for WhiWa), but high single-target damage will remain the most valuable trait to have for DPS for example (since every floor in Hazard Tower features a boss as the highest HP target).

With that in mind, let’s detail the ToA Tier List revamp in a similar format to how we did it for Whimpering Wastes by going over the brackets and the kind of characters we placed in them (again, keep in mind this only applies for the ToA Tier List):

• T0: Characters who can effortlessly clear the hardest contents in their best team. High damage, high flexibility, high buffs, often multiple of these at once. For Supports, Shorekeeper.
• T0.5: These characters still have no issues whatsoever in their best teams as they are Apex tier characters, but they simply have a lower damage ceiling than those above, or they lack flexibility despite being in some of the strongest teams, or they don’t contribute to the strongest teams in the game despite being highly flexible. For Supports, Verina lags behind Shorekeeper a solid amount in terms of buffing strength while Aero Rover is still only really worth including over Shorekeeper with Ciaccona on the team.
• T1: These characters are out of the Apex bracket because despite still being able to clear endgame contents with relative ease, they undeniably require more effort or more investment to perform to that level. Being taken out of favourable matchups or lacking team flexibility on the Hybrid side could also pose severe issues depending on circumstances. Spectro Rover is here on the Support side because Zani + Phoebe and Phoebe Absolution are still their only teams, and these teams don’t represent the highest damage ceiling anymore.
• T1.5: Basically T1 but slightly weaker (hence T1.5, probably makes sense so far). These characters remain fairly comparable to their above peers in the sense that they clear endgame contents given the right conditions, but have enough of a noticeable dropoff in power to be a tier below.
• T2: These characters need a very strong backing in order to be able to perform at the level demanded by endgame contents. Strong weapons, strong teammates and strong builds are necessities, but they’re still functional niche units that have some teams carved out for them where they’re viable.
• T3: It’ll be very difficult to clear the hardest floors with these characters, those clears being pretty much exclusively reserved for wheelchair teams and/or extremely highly skilled players. This is because their kits are often very outdated or simply aren’t cohesive, making them have no niche carved out for them. However, it’s not impossible to clear given lots of efforts from a build, team and playstyle perspective all at once.

Aside from that, we revamped some tags accordingly to the new Tier List ratings, and we’ll tackle what’s changed over on WhiWa:

• Galbrena: Added as T1 (Both Tier Lists). Galbrena’s high damage potential is quite reduced in multi-wave because her rotation revolves around a roughly 8-second long burst window where all of her damage is concentrated. As a result, the rest of the field time she takes is time she doesn’t spend clearing several waves of enemies and her performance dwindles compared to how much she shines in ToA (mostly being carried by Mono Fusion, but even still Changli has more consistent damage output so she ends up performing the same if not better here).
• Augusta: T1 > T0.5 (No Signatures). With Iuno’s release, Augusta has become super strong in Whimpering Wastes, as they have really high and constant damage output outside of Shorekeeper’s rotation. It makes for one of the best WhiWa teams in the game worthy of T0.5, signatures or not.
• Jiyan: T1.5 > T1 (Both Tier Lists) and Expert +1 added. Iuno’s release also buffed Jiyan’s WhiWa potential by quite a lot. He’s capable with strong baseline performance thanks to her and really high Expert performances provided his most optimal rotations are being performed, his quickswap team with Ciaccona + Shorekeeper is particularly noteworthy in this regard, taking his rating to new heights.
• Carlotta: T1 > T1.5 (Both Tier Lists). Carlotta’s WhiWa performance has not been up to par with current T1 units recently, which is mainly because her best teams don’t provide the constant damage output that is preferred in the mode, and also because making the most of her high-damaging attacks requires proper positioning and a good sense of wave control. As a result, we deem her performance to stand closer to the T1.5 units.
• Lingyang: T2 > T1.5 (No Signatures). Lingyang has a few key selling points, among which not needing any particularly difficult playstyle, being able to benefit from the Lingering Tunes echo set (which also buffs the Plunderer token’s damage), and the added benefit of not needing a limited weapon to perform (Abyss Surges is just fine!) so we made him enter T1.5 as a result (his performance with limited weapons in mind is definitely inferior to Carlotta’s though so he stays in T2 there).
• Roccia: T0.5 > T1 (Signatures) and T1 > T1.5 (No Signatures). Roccia is easily replaceable on the Phrolova team by Shorekeeper (and in some situations the Shorekeeper variant performs better outright as well). While she is still a strong pick in Phrolova teams, she isn’t anywhere near a necessity. Cantarella, on the other hand, is a great boost to Phrolova’s damage potential. We deem having them in the same tier not justifiable, and additionally Roccia performs downright worse than Sanhua at more budget investments on Camellya teams (again, she needs her Signature to stand out there). We lowered Roccia down to reflect this.
• Mortefi: T1 > T1.5 (No Signatures). In WhiWa, Mortefi is for all intents and purposes a worse version of Iuno who is already in T1, whether limited weapons are factored in or not. To reflect this, we lowered him down a tier.
• Zhezhi: T1.5 > T2 (Both Tier Lists). Zhezhi only exists in WhiWa to serve Carlotta who’s a T1.5 unit. Because of her being lowered down this update, we deem Zhezhi’s only use case less relevant so we moved her to the Niche character bracket.
• Rover-Havoc: T2 > T3 (Both Tier Lists). Havoc Rover is outclassed in Phrolova teams by Verina (for all intents and purposes, a “free character”). As a result, they don’t have a place in the meta and hence rank in T3.
• Phoebe: (DPS) Expert +1 Tag removed. Because Phoebe’s capabilities even at Expert level don’t match other T1 characrers.

17/09/2025

With Iuno’s release and a new iteration of Whimpering Wastes, the promised big Whimpering Wastes Tier List rework has come.

We additionally revamped our criteria to account for the big changes the Whimpering Wastes meta faced recently. That part is a lot of obvious justification for how we grade our characters though, so you’re free to skip this if you aren’t too interested in having a deep understanding of where we’re coming from on the Tier List.

Let’s for now focus on ToA. What is important to keep in mind here is that due to how closely this Tier List update was done compared to the new Tower of Adversity Hazard Tower floors 3 & 4 release, we haven’t had enough time to conduct properly detailed testing in order to form a fully accurate opinion on how the meta has evolved. Hence, this Tier List update will only be representative of the meta with the first 2 floors of Hazard Tower (middle tower) in mind. Expect some placements to change and feel free to discuss how you think placements should evolve due to the new floor releases — we gladly welcome your impressions & feedback!

ToA changes:

• Iuno is getting added in two roles where she’s extremely competent: DPS and Hybrid.
• Iuno (Hybrid) — added as T0.5 (No Signatures) and T0 (Signatures). While Iuno’s reliance on having a proper weapon is definitely noteworthy due to her personal damage focus, which does tank her performance on the non-Signature Tier List where she’s only a very slight upgrade from an S6 Mortefi, rest assured that she’s easily the best buffer for two characters, being Jiyan and particularly Augusta. She has healing, personal damage, and strong DMG Amplify buffs for those two, and since Augusta is a top tier DPS, naturally Iuno will rank very high as a Hybrid as Iuno’s her best partner. On top of this, she has some extra team flexibility with Jiyan, or even Phoebe, which are all strong DPS contenders. Great character overall.
• Iuno (DPS) — added as T0.5 (both Tier Lists). Remember we said Iuno has a damage focus? Kuro chose to give her enough to where she’s an Apex tier Main DPS as well, which is ridiculous — not even Brant is reaching her hypercarry potential. Iuno is a great main carry and a great buffer, hence she ranks high as both a DPS and a Hybrid. She does however remain overshadowed by Cartethyia in the Aero DPS department (expectedly so).
• Jiyan — placed on Watchlist (both Tier Lists). The funniest part about DPS Iuno is that we’re conflicted on saying Jiyan is equal to her Aero main DPS potential, even when Iuno is the one buffing Jiyan (and yes, she’s his new best partner). Jiyan’s total damage in one rotation cannot keep up with Iuno’s, and as a result they end up acting as more of a dual carry team than Jiyan being a true Main DPS like he is with Mortefi. We’re still willing to watchlist Jiyan to go up in T0.5 on the basis that he is much better than he used to be with Iuno’s release, but further testing will be conducted between DPS Iuno and Jiyan to see who’s performing better (or at least if they’re equals) — for now we’re on team Iuno, but we’ll test and see how the situation evolves.
• Danjin (DPS) - removed from the Tier List. This change was made because Danjin fits the bill for the Hybrid category significantly more, as she either shares field time with Havoc Rover in Quickswap compositions (which isn’t really used anymore over Roccia) and her Main DPS playstyle with a character like Cantarella does not keep up compared to her Hybrid role alongside Phrolova or Camellya which is comparatively much stronger.
• Jianxin — T3 -> T2 (both Tier Lists). Again we’re on a Main DPS Iuno change; while Jianxin is not DPS Iuno’s best Hybrid (that would be Ciaccona), she’s her second best and honestly? She could be worth learning if you want to make DPS Iuno work since the team functions perfectly fine. She stays in the niche character bracket due to only being a replacement option at best, but Jianxin is at least good in that role.
• Rover-Aero — T1 -> T0.5 (both Tier Lists). Now that they have access to their S4 and most importantly R5 of their Signature weapon Bloodpact’s Pledge, Aero Rover has a legitimate 26% team-wide Aero DMG Amplify Outro which is easily upkept throughout a whole fight. This makes them a top pick for every Aero team from Cartethyia to DPS Iuno to even Jiyan, and since they’re a top pick for every team in their niche including the literal best team in the game, they’re joining the top ranks as an Apex-tier Support.
• Phoebe (Hybrid) — T0 -> T0.5 (both Tier Lists). Confession Phoebe, even in her best team where she’s needed by Zani to perform, is still going down to T0.5. Why? Because team flexibility is a factor for the criteria on which we rate Hybrids, and Confession Phoebe has Zani and no one else. Additionally, unlike in her release period, Zani isn’t the best DPS in the game since that’s now Cartethyia. As a result, we took Confession Phoebe out of T0.
• Rover-Spectro (Hybrid) — T1 -> T1.5 (both Tier Lists). Phoebe is the only team Spectro Rover really works with to an effective degree as a Hybrid, else they’re most often relegated to the Support role in their best team with Zani. We don’t think only being a top performer in one team warrants their Hybrid placement to be the same as their Support placement so we lowered them.
• Verina — T0 -> T0.5 (both Tier Lists). This is the big one. Yep, we’re taking Verina out of T0 after a long reign of 1.5 years. Kuro has definitely done a good job of replacing her out of literally every meta team imaginable since her release, and while she’s still a top generalist pick at S2 close to S0 Shorekeeper, our tier list only grades her at S0 where she’s objectively quite a bit worse. The truth is, more and more top teams (like mono Havoc, mono Fusion, Aero teams) want to stop using Verina and either have their dedicated third slot teammate (Roccia, Lupa, Aero Rover) or at most want to use Shorekeeper because her buffing strength is much higher. Hence, we dropped Verina to T0.5 — but she of course still remains one of the top Support picks available.

Now onto some quick tag changes:

• Lupa — Gather Tag added. Because her joint attacks with other characters’ Ultimates gather enemies in its center.
• Rover-Aero — Partner Tag removed. They’re amazing on more than just Cartethyia’s team now that their weapon has gotten its duplicates, so we removed this tag.
• Augusta — Sustain Tag removed. Because Augusta’s Shielding capabilities are next to nonexistent.
• Jinhsi — Expert +1 removed. Her expert performance doesn’t live up to the strength of the current T0 DPS anymore.
• Danjin (Hybrid) — S0 -1 added. Danjin’s best use case alongside Phrolova has her Hybrid personal damage mattering more than before, because Phrolova’s outro buffs two of Danjin’s biggest damage types. Since her Sequences make her damage scale much higher than her S0 potential we added the tag to reflect this.

WhiWa changes:

Now, it’s time for the big part of today’s Changelog: we completely revamped the Whimpering Wastes Tier List. The HP pools of every enemy more than doubled since the gamemode’s release, and that happened very quickly as well. So much so, we thought Kuro made a mistake by increasing the difficulty too much, hence we waited for another cycle before literally flipping the Tier List on its head. However, guess what: HP pools haven’t reduced one bit, they’re at least equal to the last cycle. As a result, we have to make big changes to reflect the real meta of the recent iterations of Whimpering Wastes. Were the HP pools to lower back to what they used to be, then we will adjust the Tier List to something similar to how it looked beforehand. But for now, we completely revamped it, and it looks very different.

Instead of detailing every change (because literally 90% of the character positions shifted), we’ll instead explain why the characters are in the power brackets that they are currently in.

As usual, please remember gold tokens are not considered when judging character performance. Additionally, Plunderer abuse builds (if you know, you know) are not considered because Kuro can choose to nerf that in a heartbeat and we’d need to revamp the whole Tier List just off of that alone.

• T0: We only have 2 characters in T0 because these two make the gamemode much easier than if you don’t use them. Phrolova makes scoring high a joke because her damage potential in the gamemode is ridiculous, and Shorekeeper is the best third slot teammate to almost every top tier (including Phrolova herself where she is the 2nd best very close to Roccia, ironically enough).
• T0.5: These characters are still in a sufficient power bracket to where they make getting a SSS score (5500+ points) easy if you’re using two of their best teams, one on each side. Or, they are the best partners for the T0 characters.
• Also, yes, Augusta being in that tier even though her timestop mechanic prevents enemy waves from spawning in WhiWa may surprise some — please test her out, she does score really well even without her dedicated token.
• T1: These characters can definitely get a SSS score if you play their best teams well on both sides. However, they can still get an S score (4500+ points) without much trouble at all, sometimes even if they’re out of their best teams.
• T1.5: These characters will definitely require their best teams to have an easy time clearing with an S score, but provided they are in those best teams, then they should have no issues either.
• Jiyan will get a special mention here as he is in this tier — he used to be T0 before, but HP pools increasing by so much have definitely affected him the hardest. His grouping is great but isn’t effective on a lot of Elites; he requires several attacks before even clearing a wave of small enemies; his damage per rotation is just too low to keep up with the HP pools of the mode as effectively as he could before.
• T2: A lot of characters are here because this is the power bracket where we consider scoring high enough to clear to be genuinely high-maintenance compared to the characters above. They’ll still be able to get S if you’re good at the game and are playing them in a proper team, but it won’t be without effort.
• T3: These characters will not be able to clear for casual players unless they’re not doing anything alongside the Apex units and are just present on the team to be there and nothing else. Only the most dedicated players will be able to get good scores with these characters — and honestly, if you do, respect!