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).

Shiyu Defense:

• SD offers a reasonable mix of Elite encounters (single target) and normal enemy packs (multiple targets), increasing the value of characters with grouping and wide area-of-effect skills. With that being said, there is a bias towards single-target performance, which may reflect in select character ratings.
• Score is gained by dealing damage to enemies, with high multipliers early on that decay with time. Since this content’s goal is to kill all enemies within the shortest time frame possible, high burst damage tends to be a more favorable trait.
• This Tier List focuses primarily on Agents’ ability to attain an S+ Rank, with partial weighting given to even higher performing runs.

Deadly Assault:

• DA is a unique mode in Zenless Zone Zero, which offers Boss encounters exclusively, meaning other types of damage than single-target are rarely impactful (if ever).
• 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 sustained damage over a long period of time is favoured.
• Although a maximum score of 65000 can be obtained by fully depleting a boss’s HP, only 20000 is needed to maximize its rewards, with up to 5000 score being obtainable via “Performance Points” (obtained via performing certain actions on specific Boss enemies).
• This Tier List focuses primarily on Agents’ ability to attain 20000 Score, with partial weighting given to even higher performing runs.

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, have tight combo windows, or see a substantial increase in performance based on certain actions (such as Manual Chain Attacks, Assist Counters, mastering 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 make up for the majority of our audience). Placements will be evaluated with this in mind, with no expectation for players to make use of pre-planned routes or advanced techniques to get value out of characters.

At the same time, focusing exclusively on casual play can be a problem for a Tier List, as this runs the risk of unfairly inflating the rankings of easy-to-play characters in comparison to more complex ones. As a result, although the average player is always the priority when considering a character’s power budget, some degree of consideration is given to how well a character can perform regardless of their skill floor.

To the few characters who have steep technical requirements that were still considered as part of their evaluation, an “Expert” tag is given to indicate that their placement would change when far below their skill ceiling.

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).
• Step 3: If discrepancies do not average out to a decimal tier, a slight bias is given towards Deadly Assault.
• Example 1: T1 Shiyu Defence and T0.5 Deadly Assault = T0.5 placement.
• Example 2: T0.5 Shiyu Defence and T1 Deadly Assault = T1 placement.

This is done as it is often a greater challenge than Shiyu Defense to fully obtain rewards by achieving a score of 20000 or above in multiple 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, using our standards for performance (refer to the “About the Tier List” Skill Ceilings section for detailed info);
• All Agents are using their best Drive Disc sets with maximum level S-Rank Drive Discs;
• 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 substats 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 on a CRIT DPS would be 14 substats in CRIT Rate (2 + 12), 14 in CRIT DMG (2 + 12), and 6 in ATK % (2 + 4), for a total of 34 substats.
• This restriction is not lifted for Anomaly DPS, where an example build would be 14 substats in Anomaly Proficiency (2 + 12) and 14 substats in ATK % (2 + 12), for a total of 28 substats.
• S-Rank Agents are all rated at Mindscape 0;
• A-Rank Agents are all rated at Mindscape 6;
• The Tier List assumes agents make use of their best option among Limited or Standard P1 S-Rank W-Engine or any P5 A-Rank W-Engine.
• 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.
• Seasonal buffs and debuffs to Agents and enemies that change periodically are not immediately considered, but extended periods of favourable or unfavourable performance may inform placement changes.

Roles

We mostly compare characters within their role - so CRIT DPS are compared to other CRIT DPS, but there is a degree of expectation that each individual Tier is in part indicative of general power. Priority is given to adjustments based on an Agent’s performance within their role, but with ZZZ being a team-based game, it is inevitable that the presence of certain Agents can sometimes exert an influence across roles.

• Crit DPS - The CRIT DPS role covers Agents who deal most of their damage through CRITs and have limited Anomaly buildup needs.
• Anomaly DPS - The Anomaly DPS role covers Agents who are either highly dependent on, or deal most of their damage through Anomalies and Disorders.
• Support - The Support role covers Agents whose primary function is assisting others, be it through buffs/debuffs, Daze application, or any combination thereof.

Role Criteria

The main criteria that impact the placements of Agents in all roles are as follows:

• [Major Influence on Rating] Average Agent performance within the best possible team and ability to achieve max rewards in Shiyu Defence and Deadly Assault.
• [Medium Influence on Rating] Agent team flexibility - how many other Agents can they perform well with.
• [Medium Influence on Rating] Agent encounter flexibility - how many different enemies/bosses can they perform well against.
• [Minor Influence on Rating] Agent performance within the best possible team and ability to achieve the highest scores in Shiyu Defense and Deadly Assault.

These roles may overlap with in-game classes, but remain distinct from them. There are Anomaly DPS role Agents who can do most of their damage through CRITs, CRIT DPS role Agents that provide strong buffs, or Support role Agents whose value is in part judged by their personal damage contribution.

Discretion is given to shift Agents around depending on both their main purpose and other requirements that they may have to deliver value.

Special tags

• 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 singular teammate, the character may see a significant drop in performance, lowering their Tier List ranking by one or multiple tiers.
• Expert - Characters with this tag have an optimal playstyle and advanced technical requirements that must be mastered for them to be at their best. Skill and routing adjustments will always lead to significant discrepancies in score, but some Agents are more demanding of these than others. Without the necessary skills, the character may see a significant drop in performance, lowering their Tier List ranking by one or multiple tiers.
• Watchlist - Characters with this tag are in a state of close scrutiny by the team, with the potential to move up or down a tier in a future update.

06/02/2026

The 2.6 patch has just launched and here's the list of changes to the tier list:

• Sunna Added to T0 Partner (Ye Shunguang). As far as Supports go, Sunna is an incredibly strong unit in her niche, being among the best teammates for Ye Shunguang and finding herself a spot among many other Attackers. Unfortunately, her restrictive Additional Ability requirements and emphasis on Stun DMG Multiplier mean she isn’t necessarily the best for every Attacker, and unlike other T0 units, lacks the flexibility to be run across a variety of teams. We don’t think it will remain this way, however, with her ability to trigger Ether Veil being important for buffs and more characters on the horizon that she’s likely to fit in with. As it stands, she could be considered T0 with a Partner (Ye Shunguang) tag, or a T0.5 with potential for further improvements as the remaining Angels of Delusion characters come out. We’ve gone with the former and will evaluate how she does with a full team when available.
• Harumasa T1 → T1 (Watchlist Up). Harumasa’s Potential Awakening is not a weak one, and can result in a 35%+ increase to his damage output when played optimally, which is a significant buff considering his previous numbers. Unfortunately, it’s not quite evident whether or not he can perform on the same level as his competition, like Soldier 0 - Anby or Seed with Orphie. Yidhari has a much wider spread of encounters she’s strong for and both Banyue and Evelyn have the numbers to brute force content if properly played. Considering how hard it can be to push Harusama to his limits, we’re open to the idea that players will be able to showcase his ceiling in the coming weeks, so he’s being Watchlisted in case these changes are enough to bring him up. If not however, then he will remain in T1, albeit in a very comfortable position.
• Lycaon T1 → T1 (Watchlist Up). Lycaon’s Potential Awakening has opened him up to be played outside of Ice teams, with a universal DMG Bonus on top of his Stun DMG Multiplier, all the while improving his Daze application. Despite this, he is still likely to underperform when outside of Ice, and in the teams he is already being run in, the buffs do not appear to bring with it the ability to hit new stun breakpoints, unlock new combos or fundamentally change how they play. Lycaon has always been a top dog for Ice teams and holds his own, and his Potentials do not seem to meaningfully change this to the point he moves up a tier. Still, it is too early to tell how accessible these changes can make him to the average player, and there is still room for optimisation in Ice teams, especially with far easier upkeep of Blazing Laurel, so he is being Watchlisted as the extent to which the changes impact his placement is not yet clear.
• Grace T2 (Watchlist Up) → T2. Grace, despite seeing a decent improvement with her Potentials, has struggled to match up to the level of performance that the other revamped units have managed. While she can at times do well, this often demands very favourable buffs and encounters, with the limited Abloom triggers that she can get and lacklustre damage generally making it difficult to justify a T1 placement. Therefore her Watchlist has been removed and she remains at T2.
• Miyabi T0.5 → T0 (Expert). Miyabi has always been a difficult character to rate. She is undeniably a T0 unit, but tier lists are meant to reflect performance in recent content. In our previous assessment, it was clear that her results were held back by poor matchups, owing to frequent Ice and Freeze Anti-Shilling in a meta that often prevented her from executing optimized combos. These factors made it hard to justify placing her alongside the most consistently dominant characters even when played at the highest level, especially when compared to Yixuan and Ye Shunguang.
• However, as we revisit and evaluate Miyabi with more current data, our stance has shifted. While the range of encounters she can perform well in is narrower than that of other Void Hunter level characters, she remains the best Anomaly Agent when conditions allow. When played at a high level and given the right circumstances, Miyabi can still reach true T0 performance. Because of this, we are now giving her the Expert tag to better reflect her ceiling and potential, even if that level of play is only achievable in a dwindling proportion of encounters.

30/12/2025

For 2.5, the Prydwen ZZZ team has gone for a complete overhaul of how the Tier List functions, amending our Criterias, Roles, Tags, and multiple placements as a result.

About the tier list

This section outlines the general approach that the team took to Tier List placements. Parts have been rewritten, with standout changes being:

• The Tier List will continue to primarily focus on a character’s ability to hit all rewards for endgame modes, but going forward, there will be partial weighting to potential for high-performing runs.
• It’s important for Prydwen to prioritise the average player; however, it is not a fair assessment to evaluate an Agent on their skill floor alone.
• To avoid unfairly judging characters whose ease of play may inflate or deflate their scores, future evaluations will also take into account how well one can perform.
• Skill Ceilings will be more accepting of more advanced techniques.
• Assessment will retain a focus on a casual playerbase, but there will now be an added consideration of skillful play as a factor in our evaluation.

Criteria and Roles

This section established ground rules for how the Tier List was organized, as well as certain weights for character evaluation within a given role. Major changes are:

• Drive Disc incorrectly listed a 12/12/4 split for fluid substats. Example has been corrected to 14/14/6.
• This is not a change in criteria, but a correction to how it was presented. Previously, fluid substats did not account for the 2 fixed substats that must have been distributed.
• The result was that it suggested 28 substat rolls for CRIT Agents and 24 substat rolls for Anomaly Agents, as opposed to the 34/28 standard it should have been.
• Roles have been altered to reflect CRIT DPS | Anomaly DPS | Support,
• After a lot of internal debate, we have removed the Secondary DPS column and instead converted it to Anomaly DPS. Only 4 Agents landed in the Secondary DPS column, and recent Agent releases made this more complicated to evaluate.
• Is Seed a Primary DPS or a Secondary DPS? Or both? How about characters that would run with her, like Soldier 0 - Anby? Is Jane another character that would fit in both columns, considering her presence in Alice and Piper teams? Piper was also run as a Secondary DPS for Miyabi. How about Grace?
• Determining if a character is a Primary or a Secondary DPS isn’t easy at times and makes things more complicated, excessively crowding 1 column while leaving another barren. While there is a case to be made to simply split characters per role, this seemed far too excessive, especially when considering the Supports.
• As a result, CRIT DPS and Anomaly DPS are the new split, with Support remaining unchanged.
• Influence on rating now also considers performance beyond only max rewards. Agent team flexibility has been added to all roles, plus a few more tweaks.
• This is to keep the Criteria and Roles aligned with the About the Tier List section. Primary focus remains on clearing, but weighting will be given to runs and characters that can perform beyond this in terms of scores or clear times.
• In addition, Agent team flexibility has been extended to apply to every role, alongside some normalisation between Stun and Support, as well as CRIT DPS and Anomaly.

Tags

Tags had been getting excessively crowded and could be confusing. To remedy this:

• All tags, with the exception of "Partner" and "Expert," have been removed.
• Why have "Sheer" and "Anomaly" tags but not "Attacker"? There was "Stun", but Daze-building Defence Agents like Caesar could not get it. "Buff" was a tag, but a significant portion of Agents (yes, even Damage Dealers!) offered team-wide buffs, Almost every Agent is optimally played with a "Quick Swap" playstyle, yet only some were given it. Should “Heal” be applied to most of the Rupture cast?
• For the moment, only tags that have a measurable influence on the Tier List placement have survived the purge.
• Expert has changed so that if you are not playing a character well, their placement may go down one or multiple tiers.
• To this day, many people still seem to be confused about the functionality of the Expert tag, leading to misleading first impressions of a character's performance.
• There was also an inconsistency with tier list placement change tags; a character not played by an "Expert" would remain in their assigned position, whereas a character not played with their "Partner" would have dropped 1 or multiple positions.
• So as to normalise this, all characters now would move down 1 or multiple positions if their tag requirement was not followed.

Tier List Placements

Many characters have been shifted on the Tier List with this update. In addition to all of the previous changes, the “T1.5” tier has been removed for the time being. This will require an adjustment period, as the removal of a whole tier translates to each remaining tier having a broader span of power to cover. Two characters being in the same Tier does not make them directly equal in power; it just means that they are more equal to each other than they are to those above or below.

Note that the order of characters in a row does not reflect strength or higher performance.

With large changes done to the Tier List and its Criteria, the team needs time to get used to the new methodology. This will likely result in some more aggressive Tier List movements during or after this patch, with everything heavily subject to change. Please keep all the above in mind when considering updated placements.

New Arrivals

• Ye Shunguang - T0. The “Void Hunter” title is well deserved. So strong is Ye Shunguang that one could argue she’d deserve to debut in a Tier of her own: her raw numbers are absurdly high, and she is able to demolish any encounter in the game (even element-neutral or resistant enemies). Ether Veil: Verdict’s vulnerability combined with the high Miasma Purification value on Honed Edge allows her to brute force through enemy mechanics, and she isn’t particularly hard to pick up. It’s difficult to overstate how universally good this character is, regardless of shill, firmly securing her position at T0.
• Zhao - T0.5. Despite being a free Agent (and a Defender to boot), Zhao is surprisingly strong. She has a decent buff lineup, can slot in most Attacker and Anomaly teams, and is relatively easy to do well with. A sizable portion of her power budget is in her Signature W-Engine, and this has to be acknowledged, but with the full package, she is at the very least competitive with the other T0.5 Agents. Not to mention, she’ll be a mainstay in Ye Shunguang’s team, further inflating her performance.

Upgrades

• Ellen T1.5 → T1. Ellen may not be receiving any additional skills or kit changes with her full Potential Awakening, but 48% CRIT DMG and 10% Ice RES Shred are no small numbers. With the removal of a T1.5, she would be closer to T1 than T2 Agents even without being at Potential 6, making for a decisive move to T1.
• Soldier 11 T2 → T1. With no T1.5 and the arrival of Potential Awakening, Soldier 11 moves up a tier. Even without the Tier List change, however, there is merit in having her be here. In theory, her changes put her on par with Ellen, and being a Fire Attacker, she doesn’t have to struggle with Ice Resistance anti-shill. Time will tell how much of an impact these buffs have on her scores, but she’s well placed to perform.
• Ben & Anby T4 → T3. Both Ben and Anby move up a tier, not for being any better, but in riding the waves of structural change to the Tier List. Rather than those 2, Seth remaining static is likely to be the standout placement.
• Putting Seth at the same tier as Anby feels very harsh, as he does have buff value and can work in hypercarry Anomaly teams, but even in those teams, he can’t quite match the now T2 Agents in performance. His Anomaly Buildup RES Shred should be a strong bonus in the current environment, but he still fails to keep up. This could very well be a result of his abysmal pick rate in all levels of play, but that, too, is telling.
• The fact that no movement demands such justification should show that it was no easy decision, but for now, Ben, Anby, and Seth all share the T3 seat.

Downgrades

• Caesar, Lucy & Rina T1.5 → T2. Although these three characters have technically been downgraded this is more a result of the removal of T1.5 than due to any movement in the meta. The question was “were they closer to T1 than T2?” and when compared to the likes of Lycaon, Pan, and Qingyi, who all have niches they can excel in, the answer became apparent.
• Soukaku T0.5 → T1. For Mono Ice and in particular Yuzu Ice, Soukaku is still a powerhouse of a unit, being a difficult slot to replace in all advanced Miyabi teams. Even with the Partner tag though, suggesting that she and Miyabi would do as well as Zhao with Ye Shunguang for example isn’t quite right. With most Agents in T0.5 having either a wide variety of teams and content they can perform in or are standouts in their own niches, Soukaku struggles to hold onto her placement and drops to T1.
• Yanagi T0.5 → T1. Yanagi as the carry in an Anomaly team has struggled to perform up to par, with limited lineups in which she can do well. Her Polarity Disorder and general team flexibility held up her scores but this is often a result of her being held up by her partner rather than being a significant value add. To be clear, she is still a decent character and arguably deserves a place in a hypothetical T0.75, but has fallen behind to a T1 placement.
• Nicole T0 (Expert) → T0.5 (Expert). Visually, Nicole appears to remain in T0.5 but attention should be given to the change in how the Expert tag is evaluated. Rather than being a T0 Agent when played at her best she drops to T0.5, with her still being a remarkably strong Support if properly managed but falling short of the likes of Dialyn and the 3 dedicated Limited Supports
• Vivian T0 → T0.5. Vivian remains the premier Anomaly partner, able to slot in any Anomaly team and do well. Given the lack of Ether-resistant bosses and universal value of Abloom, she continues to manage strong scores, but as with most Anomaly units, has fallen short in comparison to CRIT DPS units. Yuzuha can, and does, make up for the difference, but this still means Vivian is losing overall power
• With Ye Shunguang’s presence and Yixuan’s widespread dominance, Vivian isn’t quite at T0, so she suffers a half-tier drop to T0.5
• Orphie T0 → T0.5. Orphie was released during a Strong Attack shill, with multiple double Attacker buffs and Agent releases/Potentials she could excel with. Her general ease of use meant that most players could put her on any team and succeed with little effort, where she would consistently top the average charts.
• Times have changed, however, with her now at best matching or often even falling behind T0.5 characters in all levels of play. None of this takes away from her qualities, but it isn’t quite right to imply Orphie is Ye Shunguang tier, so a drop to T0.5 is warranted.
• Miyabi T0 → T0.5. If we were to evaluate Miyabi's power in isolation she'd be an undisputable T0 character, however the excessive amounts of anti-shill enemies, often lacklustre (or entirely absent) Anomaly buff selection and ever increasing Anomaly thresholds means that she has consistently underperformed in comparison to Yixuan - to the point Miyabi at times can't even keep up on some Anomaly-oriented bosses, like Miasmic Fiend.
• In the past, she had been Watch Listed but survived owing to still managing to do well in Shiyu and being able to brute force content, which itself is a testament of her strength. At the same time it'd be misleading to imply that she can do as well as the other 2 Void Hunter level characters in the current environment. Technically, each role is mostly evaluated as being distinct from one another, but the lack of content in which she can perform well in means she drops half a tier.
• Although well executed Mono Ice or Yuzu Ice rotations with 4EBA3 combos do invite a potential Expert tag, the constant lack of freezable bosses mean that even with the necessary skill to pull it off, the game does not give much of an opportunity to do so, gimping her potential and making it hard to justify a T0 Expert placement despite the unquestionable level of skill it demands.
• Evelyn T0 (Expert) → T0.5 (Expert). Evelyn may not appear to have moved, but this is a result of changes to how the Expert tag is evaluated. While she has continued to do well across a variety of content regardless of weakness matching, she tends to find herself as a secondary option when a more fitting Agent isn't available. Certainly very dominant, but when compared to Ye Shunguang or even Yixuan, Evelyn is not quite in T0 and is more in line with the T0.5 character.

Tagged

• Yixuan T0 → T0 (Expert). For a long while, Yixuan has proved time and time again to be among the strongest Agents in the game, doing very well in most encounters. The lack of Ether-resistant bosses, frequency of Rupture shill buffs, and highly synergistic Agent pairings releasing (Lucia and Dialyn especially) have maintained her as a universally good pick in almost all recent seasons.
• Even with all that, there is a strong case to be made that Yixuan should move down, and Ye Shunguang should be the sole T0 CRIT DPS due to how both absurdly strong and absurdly easy she is to perform with.
• Yet to drop Yixuan immediately despite her dominance would be too hasty, and since her release, it has become clear that there are techs that both increase her scores and skill ceiling (e.g. Cloud-Shaper with Talisman Ultimate Chain in combos). To balance both of these, she has tentatively received the Expert tag, with a close eye to be kept on her performance relative to Ye Shunguang to determine whether she is deserving of a tier rating decrease or not.
• Grace T3 → T3 (Watchlist). As one of the characters that has received a Potential Awakening, she is undeniably due to perform better than before. Unfortunately, though, even with these changes, her damage seems underwhelming. It’s too early to make a full judgment call on her power budget, so for the moment, she is being Watchlisted with a chance to move up if she does better than expected.