Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ) Tier List

Shiyu Defense & Deadly Assault

This tier list assesses Agents (characters) based on their combat potential in Zenless Zone Zero’s most demanding contents -Deadly Assault (DA) and Shiyu Defense (SD).

SD is a similar mode to Genshin Impact’s Spiral Abyss or Honkai Star Rail’s Memory of Chaos and requires 2 teams of 3 Agents with good Disk Drives and W-Engines. This mode offers a reasonable mix of Boss encounters (single-target) and Elite packs (2-3 targets), allowing multiple characters to find a niche. With that being said, there is a bias towards single-target performance, which may reflect in select character ratings. Additionally, since this content’s goal is to kill all enemies within the shortest time frame possible, Agents who dish out lots of damage quickly instead of damage over time are favoured. This Tier List focuses on Agents’ ability to clear within 150s (2m30s) out of the 300s (5m) needed to obtain all rewards.

DA is a very unique mode in Zenless Zone Zero which offers Boss encounters exclusively, meaning other types of damage than single-target are rarely impactful (if ever). It requires a total of 3 teams to maximize all possible rewards, however only 2 well-geared teams are necessary to maximize Polychrome (premium pull currency) rewards (which are the most important and as a result are what we consider for this Tier List). The goal of this gamemode is to inflict as much damage to a boss as possible in a total time span of 3 minutes, meaning sustainable damage within long time windows is favoured. A maximum of 65000 score points can be obtained by fully depleting a boss’s HP, however this is unrealistic for the overwhelming majority of players while being unnecessary to maximize rewards. Only 20000 points is needed to maximize said rewards, with up to 5000 points being obtainable via Performance (obtained via performing certain actions on specific Boss enemies). Agents’ ability to reach this threshold of 20000 points is what the Tier List focuses upon.

Skill Ceilings

As an action-combat game, Zenless Zone Zero offers many combat options to players - some of which are not easily executed but boost certain Agents’ power budget substantially. Examples include Agents who benefit heavily from perfect timings, such as tight combo windows, or a substantial increase in performance based on certain actions such as Perfect Dodges, Perfect Assists, precise Anomaly applications and so on, or Agents who require additional techniques in order to reach higher ceilings (Quick Swap playstyles, Manual Chain Attacks, unique character mechanics, etc).

Such techniques won’t be for everyone, however a tier list must assess characters based on their maximum potential in their best teams, up to a reasonable standard. Our goal is therefore not to assess Agents based on speedrun-level performance as Zenless Zone Zero is a game played overwhelmingly by very casual players trying to max out on endgame rewards (these kinds of players making up for the majority of our audience). Our Tier List caters to this audience by focusing primarily on average ability to obtain full rewards in Shiyu Defense (<300s clear) and Deadly Assault (20000+ Score on 2 stages). As a result, only the most powerful techniques are considered, such as essential Swap Cancels, and favours combos that are easy in execution. Techniques that can be reasonably expected are efficient management of Perfect Assists, Stun windows (starting from Chain Attacks), and Perfect Dodges.

Agents will be assessed using the more simple Automatic Chain Attack mode (used by default in game) as efficient management of Manual Chain Attacks requires a much higher skill ceiling than what is necessary to clear. If Agents benefit heavily from techniques we do not consider for our base assessments, and using such techniques impacts their rating significantly relative to other Agents, special Tags illustrate this (Expert tag, Quick Swap tag to an extent).

About the ratings

To assess any Agent’s value on this combined Tier List, we proceed as follows:

• Step 1: Assessment of the Agent in Shiyu Defense and Deadly Assault, separately and following our Criteria.
• Step 2: Combination of the individual assessments by averaging it out if discrepancies are of an even number of tiers (example: T0 Shiyu Defense and T1 Deadly Assault = T0.5 placement). If discrepancies are of an odd number of tiers (example: T0 Deadly Assault and T0.5 Shiyu Defense), we proceed in this manner:
• If the Shiyu Defense rating is higher than the Deadly Assault rating, round the assessment to the lower tier;
• If the Shiyu Defense rating is lower than the Deadly Assault rating, round the assessment to the higher tier.
• In the second example used above, this means our hypothetical example Agent would be rated at T0. This creates a slight bias towards Deadly Assault, as we deem it is a greater challenge than Shiyu Defense to fully obtain rewards by achieving a score of 20000 or above in two stages.

Assessments are based, for every Agent, on all of the following indicators at once:

• Personal testing from the Prydwen staff team;
• Compilation of data curated by us (the Analytics that can be found in the left menu);
• Feedback from the community (Reddit, YouTube, Discord).

All of this information is filtered following our Criteria (detailed in the drop-down section right below this one).

Criteria

• All Agents are assumed to be utilized in their full best 3-man team, played without input mistakes using our standards for performance (refer to the About the Tier List Skill Ceilings section for detailed info);
• All Agents are using their best Disk Drive sets with maximum level S-Rank Disk drives;
• All Disk Drive main stats are considered to be best in slot for that Agent’s build;
• Agents are assessed with good but not perfect substats on Disk Drives. Out of the 48 total sub-stats possible on a fully built Agent’s Disk Drives, 20 will be evenly distributed between all 10 different substats (2 subs in each). The remaining 28 are assigned to the Agent’s best possible substats, with the restriction that no more than 12 can be allocated in a single stat (an example of such a build would be 12 substats in CRIT Rate, 12 in CRIT DMG, and 4 in ATK%).
• S-Rank Agents are all rated at Mindscape 0;
• A-Rank Agents are all rated at Mindscape 6;
• All Agents are assessed as if they have access to P5 of all A-Rank and B-Rank W-Engines and P1 of the standard S-Rank W-Engines (the ones that are purchasable for 600 Residual Signal once per month in the Signal Shop ingame). The best out of all these choices is used for their assessment;
• All Agents are considered to be the maximum possible level with all Core Skill Enhancements upgraded to maximum rank, with a maximum level W-Engine and all abilities levelled to level 11/12.
• Buffs and debuffs to Agents and enemies that change periodically are not considered whatsoever.

Roles

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

DPS

DPS Agents cover the Attack class that focuses on dealing direct and immediate damage (usually through CRIT scaling) and the Anomaly class that instead focuses on scaling Anomaly Proficiency and Anomaly Mastery to deal Attribute Anomaly damage. Their main goal is to kill stuff - as efficiently and quickly as possible.

Main criteria that impacts ratings for DPS:

• [Major Influence on Rating - All] Average Agent damage output within best possible team and ability to achieve max rewards in Shiyu Defense and Deadly Assault;
• [Medium Influence on Rating - SubDPS] Average Agent damage output and (if applicable) Anomaly Application/Anomaly damage, all of this in preferably short windows of time;
• [Minor Influence on Rating - Shiyu Defense] Average Agent damage output within Burst windows, ability to frontload damage, enter rotations and finish off enemies quickly;
• [Minor Influence on Rating - Shiyu Defense] Average Agent damage output against Elite packs (2-3 enemy situations) instead of single-target/Boss encounters (1 enemy situation).

Stun

Stun Agents directly support the entire team and are generally made up of the Stun class, sometimes joined by Defense characters. Their goal is to grant faster access to Stun windows where Agents deal significantly higher damage for a short period of time and can execute Chain Attacks. They may not synergize with all types of teams, being especially necessary in teams that want to deal damage in short burst windows and not fitting well with most Anomaly Agents, pairing with Attack Agents more often (exceptions can apply). They are desirable in a lot of teams because they bring tremendous amounts of Daze, often with secondary roles such as contributing to Anomaly Buildup, or granting buffs/debuffs to further increase team damage.

Main criteria that impacts ratings for Stun:

• [Major Influence on Rating] Average Agent performance within best possible team;
• [Major Influence on Rating] How much Daze the Agent can inflict in the shortest time windows possible;
• [Medium Influence on Rating] How much the weight of their buffs/debuffs enhances team performance;
• [Minor Influence on Rating] Agent team flexibility - how many teams are they effective in and performance of alternative teams.

Support

Support Agents directly buff the team or debuff the enemy in a major way, enough that bringing them equals or outweighs the benefit or bringing another DPS or Stun character. The best Support Agents take up as little time as possible while granting full access to their array of supportive capabilities, in order to boost your party quickly and effectively. Certain Support Agents may additionally provide Sustain abilities that allow your party to better resist enemy attacks by providing healing, shielding, etc.

Criteria that impact ratings for Supports:

• [Major Influence on Rating] Weight of damage enhancement capabilities (buffs, debuffs, Anomaly Application if relevant etc.) relative to average team performance and contribution to highest-performing teams;
• [Medium Influence on Rating] Agent team flexibility - how many teams are they effective in and performance of alternative teams;
• [Medium Influence on Rating] Agent field time - how much time the Agent needs to fully perform their role, the lower the better;
• [Minor Influence on Rating] Weight of personal damage (if applicable, rare cases) and weight of Sustain abilities (healing, shielding, interruption resistance etc.) relative to average team performance.

Special tags

Tags represent the most defining features of a character's kit and what archetype they may belong to.

• Aftershock - Characters with this archetype tag possess an element of Aftershock damage in their kit and or synergize with characters that do. Characters with this tag are generally effective when played together.
• Combo - the character's gameplay contains one or multiple combos outside of the usual button mashing playstyle that should be followed in order to maximize their contributions in combat.
• Charge - the character's kit contains one or many Charged Attacks they must perform in order to unlock their kit’s full potential.
• Minion - the character's kit contains minions that linger on the field and apply debuffs, buffs or deal damage and Daze. Minions may or may not need to be resummoned periodically.
• Sub-DPS - the character's kit does not lend itself toward being the sole damage dealer of the team or are much stronger when paired with another damaging character. These characters are usually capable of fully utilizing their kit with very little field time needing another character to fill in the blank spot.
• Quick Swap - Character’s kit benefits from swapping in and out of the field during their or other character’s rotations to maximize their potential and/or potentially mitigate long animations. Characters with this tag may feel clunkier and/or perform worse without doing so.
• Hybrid (Stun) - the character's kit allows them to fulfill multiple roles in the team. In this tag's case, the additional role the character can perform well at is Stun.
• Hybrid (Support) - the character's kit allows them to fulfill multiple roles in the team. In this tag's case, the additional role the character can perform well at is Support.
• Shock - the character's kit is focused on dealing damage through, relies on or buffs Shock damage. The characters with this tag require Shock to be present on enemies in order for their kit to be fully utilized.
• Assault - the character's kit is focused on dealing damage through, relies on or buffs Assault damage. The characters with this tag are focused on inflicting Assault on enemies as often as possible.
• Burn - the character's kit is focused on dealing damage through, relies on or buffs Burn damage.
• Shatter - the character's kit is focused on dealing damage through, relies on or buffs Shatter damage.
• Disorder - the character's kit is focused on dealing damage through, relies on or buffs Disorder damage.
• Buff - the character can apply various Buffs to help their teammates.
• Debuff - Character can inflict debuffs to enemies, causing a variety of effects that can benefit your party. Debuffs that only benefit the applier of the debuff and not the full squad are not considered.
• Heal - Character can restore HP to themselves and/or the team, contributing to sustaining your party, particularly over longer and more difficult fights.
• Shield - the Character can apply Shields to themselves and or teammates to absorb damage.
• Partner - Characters with this tag are assessed within their best team as normal, but have a necessity to include a specific limited S-rank Agent in that team that makes them perform much better than any other options. Without this specific teammate, the character may see a significant drop in performance, lowering their Tier List ranking by one or multiple tiers.
• 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. This tag is only applied to characters where the harder play style creates a significant discrepancy in performance compared to the baseline playstyle.

23/04/2025

The updates to the Tier List in Patch 1.7 (and possibly 2.0) will have a big focus on improving the Tier List's design & criteria to make sure every character is assessed as properly as possible. With Vivian's release, we are introducing a new tag in the form of the Partner tag (that we took from HSR) and we may also review the rest of the tags in place later on with the goal of portraying the essential points of a character's kit with a few keywords in mind. Stay tuned for more updates as usual!

The biggest change aside from the introduction of the Partner tag is that our Tier List is going from being solely based on Shiyu Defense to Shiyu Defense and Deadly Assault combined. This change will lead to the placement of certain characters fluctuating as we reevaluated how our characters are assessed.

With that being said, as the metas for both gamemodes remain very similar, we deemed combining the two modes makes the most sense instead of doing separate tier lists for both. This way, our Tier List serves as a means to assess how good a character's endgame performance is for an account as a whole.

• About the Tier List and Criteria and Roles sections have been revised & updated to include both Deadly Assault and Shiyu Defense.
• Partner tag was added to the Tags list as follows: "Characters with this tag are assessed within their best team as normal, but have a necessity to include a specific limited S-rank Agent in that team that makes them perform much better than any other options. Without this specific teammate, the character may see a significant drop in performance, lowering their Tier List ranking by one or multiple tiers."

Now let's get into the actual Tier List changes:

• [Vivian] added to the tier list (T0.5 DPS),
• [Soldier 0 - Anby] watchlist removed. After further testing and compilation of data, we've concluded S0 Anby's performance, even with Trigger on the team, does not get her to approach Miyabi's power level, therefore she wont be moving for now.
• [Caesar] T0 T0.5. Caesar's placement has been in flux for multiple phases now with many questioning her place at the top of the meta (us included), so this patch we're making a change. Caesar's scores unfortunately do not get to Astra Yao's level and the discrepancy is enough where dropping her to T0.5 is unfortunately warranted. However, note that she remains the most comfortable Support character to use in any teams thanks to her huge sustain abilities and interruption resistance, even over Astra Yao.
• [Ellen] T1.5 T2. Ellen's performance in recent Shiyu Defense and especially Deadly Assault cycles have lowered compared to a few months ago. Over time this has accumulated to where her average performance is closer to that of Soldier 11's than Harumasa. For this reason, she is unfortunately joining her in that tier, but know that neither are unviable and can perform well as they are still in the Meta Characters bracket.
• [Soldier 11] Partner tag added. We deemed Soldier 11 to be the first proper character to deserve the Partner Tag in relation to Lighter, who gives her quick access to extended Stun windows and huge damage boosts which improve her performance significantly. Without Lighter, Soldier 11 can be considered as joining the Niche Character bracket in T3, but note that with his aid she will perform very well.

02/04/2025

ZZZ's meta has been shifting quite a bit in recent times, and with Trigger's release Stun units are finally getting a shake up as well. Outside of a few exceptions, most DPS and Support Agents tier list placements aren’t moving as a result of Triggers release.

In addition to Trigger’s addition and the adjustment of the Stun category we’re adding a new unit tags and revising some old ones. The new addition is:

• Heal: Character can restore HP to themselves and/or the team, contributing to sustaining your party, particularly over longer and more difficult fights.

The updated tags are:

• Debuff: Character can inflict debuffs to enemies, causing a variety of effects that can benefit your party. Debuffs that only benefit the applier of the debuff and not the full squad are not considered.
• 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. This tag is only applied to characters where the harder play style creates a significant discrepancy in performance compared to the baseline playstyle.
• Quickswap: Character’s kit benefits from swapping in and out of the field during their or other character’s rotations to maximize their potential and/or potentially mitigate long animations. Characters with this tag may feel clunkier and/or perform worse without doing so.

And here are the changes to the tier list:

• [Trigger] added as T0 Stun. Trigger is one of the most impressive Stun Agents the game has yet seen - possibly the most impressive. She has universal Support potential via a 35% Stun DMG Multiplier increase that has permanent uptime and operates off-field which gives freedom to a bunch of DPS characters she can pair with, not to mention her ease of use — possibly the easiest Stun Agent we've had yet. Even without big vertical upgrades involved, Trigger is undoubtedly T0 because her kit gives her a lot of team versatility, Daze and buffing potential, possibly the most of any Stun Agent which is impressive.
• [Anby: Soldier 0] added to Watchlist. SAnby gains more than most through the inclusion of Trigger in her teams, giving her enough of a boost we’re now considering her for T0. With that said Miyabi continues to put up one of the most dominating performances of any character in a Gacha game, for this reason we’re watchlisting her first and will see how she performs moving forward before raising her.
• [Harumasa] T2 T1.5. Based on most recent performances and how players are playing him, Harumasa's baseline rating is too low compared to units he shares a tier with and who are directly above him after the recent DPS category adjustment. We’re raising his baseline rating to T1.5 and as a result his new expert rating will be T1 putting him on equal footing with Zhu Yuan and Jane doe in the hands of experienced players.
• [Qingyi] T0 T0.5. Qingyi is our first character to get out of T0 in a very long time, however enough time has passed, and enough DPS characters that don't synergize particularly well with her as well as stronger Stun Agent options have taken the spot she usually takes. Don't get us wrong, it's not because Qingyi isn't in T0 that she's by any accounts a bad Agent — she retains big team flexibility and performs notably well in S0 Anby teams more recently, plus she's still the most desirable with Harumasa and Zhu Yuan over any other Stun options. She's comfortably in T0.5, no questions asked. However, Qingyi doesn't synergize with any of the top DPS Agents anymore other than S0 Anby somewhat (and S0 Anby has Trigger and Pulchra to outperform Qingyi in most cases anyway). Miyabi, Evelyn, Yanagi and Burnice don't make particularly good use of her and that's all our T0-T0.5 DPS agents other than S0 Anby who we already discussed, so we believe Qingyi moving down to T0.5 is warranted. However with her dropping down, a lot of Stun Agents will drop down a tier as well to illustrate how much more powerful Qingyi is than them. This starts with:
• [Lycaon] T0.5 T1. Not much to say here that wasn't already said in Qingyi's entry, however we'll add part of this change is warranted because Lycaon only really serves as the best F2P option to Miyabi and Ellen which doesn't make him particularly flexible, due to Miyabi's insane variety of team options and Ellen being nowadays quite a few tiers down the top contenders. This justifies him moving to T1 further, however he's still a very good Agent to own and build no matter what, and with future Ice agents that want a Stun character on the team you can rest assured Lycaon will always be a good choice for them.
• [Koleda] T1 T1.5. Koleda has one main saving grace and that is that she's the best F2P Stun choice for Evelyn, as she increases her Chain Attack damage so she should be stable in T1.5 because Evelyn is an amazing DPS Agent, however she dropped down due to Lycaon's presence in T1 being much more felt in the current meta than Koleda.
• [Anby] T1.5 T2. Let's make something very clear: Anby's performance, for a free A-rank Stun Agent you get at the start of the game that doesn't have any special qualities, is actually impressive. Even though her kit is pure damage and Daze and nothing else, she's really good at those two things when paired with characters with downtimes such as Zhu Yuan and Harumasa, so she doesn't warrant anything below T2. However, she's overall weaker than the choices above her as they all provide something special to the team and Anby does not.
• [Pulchra] is receiving no changes in placement. We did consider her dropping down along with Koleda, however at M6 she has a very desirable all-type 30% DMG debuff which boosts the whole team's damage by a good amount on top of her off-field damage and Daze, which gives her good synergies (especially with S0 Anby). This warrants her staying in T1.

Now let's tackle the Tag Changes:

• [Anby: Soldier 0] Debuff tag added. Pertaining to her Additional Ability effect (her Core Passive isn't a team-applicable debuff so it doesn't warrant the tag).
• [Piper] Buff tag added. Pertaining to her Additional Ability effect.
• [Grace] Debuff tag added. Pertaining to her Additional Ability effect.
• [Corin] Debuff tag added. Pertaining to her M2.
• [Anton] Shield, Buff tags added. Pertaining to his M2 and M4.
• [Lighter] Buff tag added. Pertaining to his Additional Ability effect.
• [Pulchra] Debuff tag added. Pertaining to her M6.
• [Koleda] Debuff tag added. Pertaining to her Additional Ability effect.
• [Astra Yao] Heal tag added. Pertaining to her Ultimate. We judged it an essential part of her kit to where the tag is worth making just for her, as well as any future characters if they do provide healing as well.
• [Nicole] Buff, Quickswap tags added. Pertaining to her Additional Ability effect, her M6 and her playstyle. Nicole enjoys switching in and out in the middle of battle, including during a Stun window, to fully capitalize on her DEF shred effect for your DPS Agents, which forces you to alter your rotation and warrants the tag.
• [Soukaku] Debuff tag added. Pertaining to her M4.
• [Seth] Debuff tag added. Pertaining to his Additional Ability effect.
• [Ben] Debuff tag added. Pertaining to his M1.