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 Primary DPS are compared to other Primary 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.

Primary DPS

Primary 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 Primary 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;
• [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).

Secondary DPS

Secondary DPS Agents cover a particular section of Attack & Anomaly Agents who play a role, as their name implies, as the secondary damage dealer in the team. They deal damage in short windows of time and leave the field quickly, often doing damage even while off-field to let the on-field DPS Agent shine. In any case, these Agents can be summed up to characters with the ability to provide supportive firepower for their teams, whether that is to act purely as a secondary source of damage, or to buff the on-field DPS Agent and apply Anomaly all the while if desirable.

Main criteria that impacts ratings for Secondary DPS:

• [Major Influence on Rating] Average Agent damage output within best possible team and (if applicable) Anomaly Application/Anomaly damage, all of this preferably within the shortest time span possible;
• [Medium Influence on Rating] Weight of damage enhancement capabilities (if applicable) 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;
• [Minor Influence on Rating - Shiyu Defense] Average Agent damage output within Burst windows, 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.
• 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.
• Stun - Agent belongs in the Stun category in-game, characterized by their shared ability to apply much more Daze than other Agents, generally focusing on Stun-related Disk Drives and stats.
• Anomaly - the character’s kit is focused on dealing damage through, relies on or buffs various Attribute Anomalies.
• Sheer - characters with this archetype tag possess an element of Sheer damage in their kit and/or synergize with characters that do. Characters with this tag are generally effective when played together.
• 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 or the 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.

05/08/2025

In this update we’re merging the Stun and Support categories into one category. The reason behind this is that both character types often filled the same supportive team slots in compositions interchangeably (albeit with slightly different flavors). With this change stunners and “old supports” will now be ranked against each other which we feel is closer to how players build teams in game.

With that said, to highlight the difference in style between “old supports” and stun units we are adding a new [Stun] tag to the old stun category units. This includes: Lighter, Lycaon, Trigger, Ju Fufu, Qingyi, Pulchra, Koleda and Anby. Stun Tag description: Agent belongs in the Stun category in-game, characterized by their shared ability to apply much more Daze than other Agents, generally focusing on Stun-related Disk Drives and stats.

We’re also cleaning up some tags that no longer make sense or aren’t needed in the current state of the game.

• Removed the following tags: Buff, Disorder, Hybrid (Stun)

In addition to this we’re also further clarifying which characters the partner tag refers to. This can be seen on:

• On Soldier 11: Partner (Lighter)
• On Ju Fufu: Partner (Yixuan)
• On Soukaku: Partner (Miyabi)
• On Anton: Partner (Astra Yao)

Note that Partner tags go one way, but not the other (Miyabi is not partner tagged with Soukaku, however Soukaku is partner tagged with Miyabi, due to needing her to reach her level of performance but not the other way around).

Now into the actual Tier List placement changes:

• We’re placing Alice in T0.5 Primary DPS as based on testing she performs a little better in the Physical Anomaly DPS department than Jane and Piper. With that said it’s worth noting upcoming endgame encounters are expected to favor her and characters with similar damage profiles heavily (Jane & Piper), meaning after this period it’s possible her rating will need to be re-evaluated. Also we want to highlight the difference between Alice with her signature and without is more pronounced than on other Agents.
• Jane Doe T1.5 —> T1. Speaking of the devil, with Alice’s release on top of the momentum from Yuzuha and the shift toward Physical anomaly in endgame, we find it time for Jane to rise once again back to T1.
• Piper T1.5 —> T1. Piper shares many similarities with Jane and has/is benefitting from many of the same boosts. Piper doesn’t have the Anomaly CRIT that Jane has, nor as much flexibility but we feel she is close enough in performance to Jane to raise her to T1 alongside her for now.
• Koleda T2 —> T3. We moved Koleda to the Niche character bracket since Koleda provides little buff in spite of her big ability to apply Daze. With more and more Stun Agent alternatives releasing recently such as Trigger, Ju Fufu and Pulchra as well as Lighter always being a stronger option in all the best teams Koleda is a part of, she finds herself easily replaced and belonging in the Niche character bracket much more than before.
• Anby (A-rank) T3 —> T4. Very similarly to Koleda, with way more Stun Agent options releasing over time, Anby has found herself at the bottom of the Stun category due to her lack of buffs, significantly behind other Agents — now the same goes for the Support category. Her inability to enhance other Agents’ damage on top of applying Daze, which is something all other Stun Agents are capable of, unfortunately lead her to be at the bottom of the Tier List as she is always outclassed by options above her.
• Ben moved to DPS. Ben has some of the lowest play rates among all Agents in endgame, but when he is played, right now it’s as a DPS, not a support. Based on this we’re moving him over to the DPS category for now instead of support.
• Soukaku Partner (Miyabi) Tag added. Soukaku’s place on the tier list is based off of her synergy with Miyabi and when played without her alongside other damage dealers her ranking falls significantly. Hugo would prefer to play with Daze based supports and Ellen isn’t powerful enough of a synergy to keep soukaku’s ranking in Apex. Based on this we’re giving Soukaku the partner tag to show her ranking is based on her being played with Miyabi.
• Lucy, Caesar and Rina added to the Watchlist. All three of these Support Agents are outliers on our current Tier List as they’re underperforming compared to their tier peers. We’re watch listing these characters for now to see how they perform in the upcoming phase before making adjustments to their placement.

16/07/2025

We’ll be forward and say this Tier List update won’t shake up the meta too much — Yuzuha’s arrival has changed a lot to the max potential of a number of Anomaly teams, and spoiler alert, she’s definitely cementing herself as a top meta Support. However, we deemed her impact on the teams she’s best in does not change most characters’ positions on the Tier List. Nonetheless, we welcome all feedback and will take your feedback into account for our next Tier List update!

• Yuzuha added as T0 Support. Yuzuha is one of the best Agents to have released at this point in time. Best in slot for basically every Anomaly Agent but Miyabi - and even that one’s debatable - on top of being very close to Astra Yao in any and every team possible, if not outright better than her in niche non-Anomaly teams, or even working alongside Astra in Double Support teams if she wants to, Yuzuha does it all. All of this without her W-Engine required, Yuzuha shines just as bright as Astra, cementing her position at the top.
• Caesar T0.5 —> T1. This was warranted since we watchlisted her last update, but while Caesar retains amazing ease of use thanks to her ability to provide Interruption Resistance to the active party member, her buffs in terms of damage - while still good - have undeniably been falling behind those above her, particularly with Yuzuha’s release. Caesar remains more than usable, particularly for those of you who don’t want to overthink things when clearing endgame content. Nonetheless, her lack in damage buffs compared to the Agents above her warranted her drop.

Without further ado, below are the 2 changes we’re doing:

25/06/2025

Along with Ju Fufu’s release, we did some further testing with Yixuan to finalize her placement along with a good chunk of other Stun and Support Agents. The changes are as follows:

• Ju Fufu —> Added as T0.5 Stun with the Partner tag. Ju Fufu finds a niche specifically in Yixuan, who she buffs way better than anyone else via off-field Aftershock damage and Daze, but most importantly buffs to all of her top stats: CRIT, Ultimate, and Chain Attack DMG. All of this without any limited W-Engines needed. Ju Fufu’s ability to give extra Ultimates over time via her Decibel increase and Decibel refund mechanics are also very strong in particular with Yixuan. While Ju Fufu has flexibility outside of these teams, compared to Lighter and Lycaon who perform the best of any Agent with some of the best DPS in the game, as well as Trigger who has more universally strong buffs, Ju Fufu would find herself somewhere in between T1 and T1.5 depending on her teammates outside of Yixuan teams (mostly having a good synergy with S0 Anby but even there Trigger holds more value). For this reason we decided to go with a ranking that reflects her top performance with one of the best DPS in the game (being Yixuan), while giving her the Partner tag to reflect her tendency to be outclassed outside of these teams.
• Yixuan T0.5 —> T0 and Expert and Watchlist removed. Yixuan was already the second best DPS in the game on her release, now with Ju Fufu in the mix she approaches Miyabi closer than ever. Mostly depending on the enemy and player skill (which impacts what team Miyabi is best used in), they go back and forth in terms of power level, which makes Yixuan our second ever DPS to enter T0 since the Void Hunter’s release.
• Trigger T0 —> T0.5. Trigger’s position in the meta is too dependent on her Signature W-Engine, which our Tier List doesn’t factor in. She has great team flexibility, but the DEF Shred her Signature W-Engine makes her provide is a good chunk of the reason why she’s so efficient. Without her Signature, she’s not worth considering in nearly as many teams and S0 Anby is her best bet, but she’s only in T1. Additionally, with Ju Fufu’s release, she lost one of her top use cases in the form of Yixuan teams where she’s now outclassed. Lighter, who stood in the same tier as her up until now, has no reliance on his Signature W-Engine to perform (even though it’s a small boost to his performance), and he has retained top tier synergies with some of the strongest DPS such as Evelyn and Hugo making him way more desired. For these reasons, we deem Trigger is best fit alongside Ju Fufu and Lycaon, but she is comfortably in that spot and gains a lot of value with her Signature in mind.
• Anton - partner tag added. Anton needs Astra Yao to play at his best, as his optimal playstyle is doing damage solely via Quick Assists, which keeps him permanently in Burst Mode thanks to his M1 effect provided you don’t do any other attacks with him (which is pretty easy to keep in mind). Anton is undeniably a bottom tier character without Astra Yao, but he can dish out some surprisingly good performances alongside her so we are adding the Partner tag to him for this reason.
• Caesar - watchlist added. She retains amazing comfort of play thanks to her big Shield and ability to provide Interruption Resistance, but she contributes less to the party’s damage than other buffers in the current meta, so we're watchlisting her with the potential to move to T1 next update. Her main issue is that her Shield only buffs the active Agent. This is severely impactful as lots of Agents operate from off-field and she cannot give the ATK buff to them. By extension, can’t apply the ATK buff to any Swap Cancelled abilities. This severely impacts her value in the meta as a damage buffer, not to mention recent Stun Agents also started providing strong party-wide buffs as well while simply inflicting higher Daze than Caesar.