Our philosophy
While we worked on the new tier list we prepared a list of criteria by which we judged all the characters:
we included the bugged mechanics such as:
charge bug that massively inflates the damage done by SR and RL characters,
reload bug that allows your characters to never reload and improve the overall DPS of the team,
buff stacking bug that refreshes the remaining time on non-stackable buffs.
we included the findings made by CN players about the damage formula which basically confirmed that stacking ATK buffs in any form is superior to stacking Crit and Crit Damage,
also they found out that when attacking a stage below the recommended power, there's an additional penalty to Crit DMG which makes critical hits do less damage than normal attacks under certain conditions,
we included the new mechanic related to shields. Mainly that the damage doesn't overflow - which means that even a 1 HP shield will stop a 100k hit and just absorb the rest of the damage. This makes shield users good for cheesing and pushing,
we included the fact that the majority of players play the game only on auto. While the charge bug happens both on auto and manual, the reload one mainly works when you play the character manually. This means that reload bug users won't receive as high a rating as in tier lists in other regions.
Also, we suggest using the Burst filter in the tier list and only comparing characters within the same Burst category. By default, the tier list displays all Burst Types.
Tier list
By default, when you check the tier list page, you will be welcomed by the new, updated, tier list that better reflects the current state of the game. Still, if you would like to check the previous tier list, you can simply use the dropdown in the Configuration section to change back to it. Also, both in the popover that appears when you hover over the character and on the profiles, we will show both ratings.
Please be aware that the bugs will be fixed - we don't know when, but it will happen. So while now some of the characters are really strong or really weak, once their skill will be fixed, their rating will change also. So before you decide to invest in someone, compare the ratings in the current and non-bugged tier lists.
List of bugs
Here's a list of currently known bugged characters:
Harran (↑) - the charge bug makes her do way more damage than she should (both on auto and manual, but on auto it happens rarely),
Exia (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran,
Dolla (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran,
Milk (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran,
Frima (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran,
Yulha (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran,
Eunwha (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran,
Yan (↑ ↓) - same charge bug as with Harran + her Burst sometimes moves enemies behind terrain or outside the map, forcing you to restart the stage,
Centi (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran,
Anis (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran,
Belorta (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran,
Helm (↑) - same charge bug as with Harran + her Burst skill description is wrong in-game (she only attacks one target),
Yuni (↑) - sometimes her skills may cause other characters to have unlimited magazines (only happens in manual play) + same charge bug as with Harran,
Liter (↑) - same unlimited magazine bug as with Yuni,
Privaty (↑) - same unlimited magazine bug as with Yuni,
Neon (↑) - same unlimited magazine bug as with Yuni,
N102 (↑) - same unlimited magazine bug as with Yuni,
Mica (↑) - same unlimited magazine bug as with Yuni,
Drake (↑) - same unlimited magazine bug as with Yuni, but it only affects her not the team,
Sugar (↑ ↓) - same unlimited magazine bug as with Yuni + her ASPD buff doesn't work at all,
Snow White (↑) - in rare occasions she can use her Burst skill two or three times in a row (the bug is related to the magazine capacity bug),
Maxwell (↑) - in rare occasions she can use her Burst skill two or three times in a row (the bug is related to the magazine capacity bug) + the same charge bug as with Harran can further increase the Burst skill damage,
Rupee (↑) - she makes non-stackable buffs permanent basically, making her super strong in teams that use a lot of buffs,
Alice (↑) - while she isn't affected by the charge bug as her Burst only gives her buffs, we think that Pierce somehow affects the Damage Formula and inflates her damage,
Noise (↑) - her S2 instead of increasing her Max HP gives her a massive drain that constantly heals her as she is taunting the enemy she attacks, making her basically immortal,
Ludmilla (↓) - her Taunt doesn't work, making her useless,
Pepper (↓) - has issue stacking buffs which affects her healing output (but you can play her on manual to partially avoid this bug),
Vesti (↓) - she deals 1 damage with her burst, so she's even worse than she was on the test server,
Maiden (↓) - her S2 Crit Buff doesn't work,
Soline (↓) - when she bursts there's a low chance the aim reticle will vanish and when it does happen, a random character on your team can die,
Poli (↓) - in some cases her S2 won't affect the number of allies it should.
Other known bugs:
Leveling Burst skill does nothing - you will always receive the level 1 modifier.
Outliers
In this section we will talk about some of the outliers on our tier list and why we rated the characters in such a way.
Pepper - she's only rated C, because on auto, she deals terrible damage and can't stack her buffs to do any proper healing. If you play her on manual though, you can consider her SS tier as she deals massive damage and also keeps the whole team alive and healthy. Just make sure to don't let her reload her whole mag as this is required for her to work well,
Ludmilla - without her Taunt she is basically dead weight,
Miranda - yes, she has an ATK buff tied to her Burst, but it only affects one character. Her other, team-wide buffs give Crit Damage and Hit and both are simply inferior to a buffer that gives ATK to the whole team,
Rupee - her damage is the best in the Burst II category and on top of having an ATK buff on her Burst, she also can abuse the buff refresh bug. Currently, she's the best Burst II in the game,
Yulha - her ATK buff is massive, but there are a lot of issues with it. First, it has a very weird 30s cooldown which means pairing it with a burst window that happens every 20s is really hard and you rarely will use her to her full potential. She's a great RNG character though if you want to keep repeating a stage, hoping that her ATK buff lines up with your Full Burst,
Centi, Aria, Folkwang - they all can abuse the shield mechanics, but Centi does it best as her shields are spammable,
N102 - her ATK buff is simply too good and if you don't have Liter, she's your best alternative,
Volume - the damage formula victim. Her Crit buffs simply are useless,
Mica - besides Yuni, she's the best choice to abuse the reload bug and on top of that she provides DEF debuff (but you will rarely use that as usual, you will run Mica in 2-1-2 formation paired with Liter or N102 as their ATK buff is hard to replace),
Novel - while she isn't affected by the formula or bugs, she isn't that good in general stages and only shines on bosses past chapter 10. This is why we lowered her rating by one tier,
Signal - while she can decrease the DEF quite easily, the values on the debuffs are so low, you barely feel them,
Julia - being a crit-based character makes her the biggest victim of the damage formula,
Harran - she deals so much damage, especially if you abuse not only her charge bug but also buff stacking, we think she deserves the fabled SSS rating,
Admi - her stocks rose as she pairs really well with Scarlet, giving her Reload speed and also making her safer while she's on low life,
Noise - the HP drain bug turns her into an immortal vampire that constantly heals herself while she taunts an enemy, saving the team in the process. Be aware that her Health Bar is also bugged and you won't see the self-heal sometimes - you need to pause the game for her HP to catch up to all the HP draining going on.
We won't be updating the reviews of characters, because we are still hoping all the bugs will be fixed sooner rather than later.
Next steps
Well. We wait. That's the next step. Without fixes, we can't do anything.
But when they will finally arrive, the tier list will be remade from scratch and each character will receive ratings that show how good she is in various game modes (Campaign, Interception, Coop) and situations (normal stage and boss stage).
