Last updated: 09/10/2025
Please keep in mind Wuthering Waves is a skill-based game and each character has a different playstyle, difficulty level and even special tricks and combos. Wuthering Waves is also a team based game and it’s only by combining both these factors to the highest level a character can reach optimal performance. Our Wuthering Waves tier lists were created with the help of various players who shared their thoughts about Wuthering Waves characters and their performance with us in both TOA and WW modes. If you want to learn more about the characters and why we rated them in that way, check their profiles - in the Review tab we have posted short reviews and pros & cons.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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:
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:
Additional specific criteria may be developed according to game updates/meta shifts.
Tags represent the most defining features of a character's kit.
Meta Lines categorize each section of the tier list into a power bracket. Here are the three brackets:
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):
Aside from that, we revamped some tags accordingly to the new Tier List ratings, and we’ll tackle what’s changed over on WhiWa:
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:
Now onto some quick tag changes:
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.
Tier List (Tower of Adversity)
You're currently viewing the Tower of Adversity tier list. It shows how the character performs in the Tower of Adversity endgame mode. Use the switcher below to view a different tier list.
Tower of Adversity
Tower of Adversity [With Signatures]
Whimpering Wastes
Whimpering Wastes [With Signatures]
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