Arknights: Endfield Tier List

Categories

• Main Damage: Characters who serve as the main driver of damage of their teams, where buffs, Inflictions, Reactions, and Vulnerability are often planned around in service of said unit.
• Support Damage: Characters capable of outputting damage, but who usually focus more on providing resources, buffs, or Inflictions/Vulnerability to the main damage dealer to enable their kit and maximize damage.
• Amplifier: Characters who forgo focusing damage on sets, stats, weapons, and rotation completely in favor of maximizing support capabilities.
• Survivalist: Characters with some supportive capabilities but outstanding healing or defensive abilities who specialise in keeping the team alive instead of raw damage output or amplification.

Special Tags

• [Expert]: Characters with this tag have an optimal playstyle that must be mastered for them to be at their best. Without the necessary skills, the character may see a significant drop in performance, lowering their ranking by at least one tier.
• [Watchlist]: Characters with this tag are marked as highly likely to move up or down a tier in a future update.

General Criteria

The general criteria are structured around the endgame mode Umbral Monument, not open-world encounters or farming stages like RE-Crisis.

Assessment assumes:

• Operators are at Level 90.
• Skills are at max Rank.
• All combat-related Talents (including Trust-locked Talents) are fully levelled.
• Operators are equipped with optimal Gear/Sets.
• All pieces set at artificing 3/9 (one in each stat).
• Operator Potentials assumed to be the following:
• P0 for 6★ and 5★ Star Operators.
• P5 for 4★ Star Operators and Endministrator.
• Best-in-slot weapon assumed to be the following:
• Any P0 6★ Star weapon.
• Any P5 5★, 4★ or 3★ weapon.
• Weapons have optimal essences, maxing out bonuses where possible.
• All Operators start at zero Ultimate Energy.
• No pre-casting of skills prior to combat start.
• Usables (e.g. food items, Tacticals) are not included.
• For the general tier list, evaluations are done primarily around optimal team compositions.

General Criteria

We compare characters within their role (e.g., Survivalists are compared to other Survivalists), and ratings are adjusted based on their performance in that role.

Characters should not be compared between roles, as their ratings are evaluated on a varying subset of criteria. If a category has no Operators who perform at the highest or lowest level within the meta, some tiers for that category may not have placements.

Main Damage

• Primary Influence: Personal damage contribution.
• Secondary Influence: Ability to handle different encounter types, ranging from bosses, multiple enemies/targets and intermission phases.

Support Damage

• Primary Influence: Ability to amplify team damage, provide resources or buffs, and apply Inflictions/Vulnerability to enemies.
• Secondary Influence: Personal damage contribution.

Amplifier

• Primary Influence: Ability to amplify team damage.
• Secondary Influence: Ability to provide the team with resources or buffs, and apply Inflictions / Vulnerability to enemies.

Survivalist

• Primary Influence: Ability to sustain the team through either healing, shielding or damage mitigation.
• Secondary Influence: Ability to provide the team with resources or buffs, and apply Inflictions / Vulnerability to enemies.

02.02.2026

Now that Endfield has been out for almost 2 weeks and millions of players have had a chance to sink their teeth into 1.0, many new team compositions and optimizations for characters have been found. This, in addition to a few balance changes that Hypergryph slipped in at the last second have all led to assessments of characters within the game's very early meta shifting. Based on that, and now that things have settled somewhat with people reaching max level, characters were updating both tier lists.

Here's the list of changes:

• 
  Yvonne added in T1 and added [Watchlist Up]: As mentioned in the team tier list update, Yvonne is currently not performing quite as well as Last Rite in the hands of most players with currently established rotations, set-ups, and encounters. Because of this, we’re starting her a tier below Last Rite. However, we’re also watch-listing her. Most players haven’t had a chance to play with Yvonne yet, as this version of her wasn’t available for testing in beta. She also hasn’t been tried in Umbral Monument either, so it’s possible new comps, rotations, encounter design, or energy breakpoints could elevate her performance.
• 
  Fluorite T2 → T1.5: Fluorite received a major buff in 1.0 with an extra Infliction being added to her Ultimate, positioning her as a strong Infliction spammer for Nature or Cryo teams, which currently makes her an option for either Yvonne or Last Rite. While she’s playable with both, Fluorite still suffers from long cooldowns, a lack of buffing options, and a perfect home as Yvonne and Last Rite can either sub out Fluorite for alternatives or straight up prefer other options over her. With that said, she’s in a much better state than Beta and has her place in certain scenarios, so we're moving her out of the bottom tier.
• 
  Xaihi T1 → T0.5: Xaihi is a mainstay in both Last Rite and Yvonne teams and, in general, is a very high-quality unit offering a ton of Amp, solid healing, and good weapon and set choices. She also possesses two modes of play: Ultimate Gain, with Xiranite for consistent buffing or with Frontier Intellect stacking for maximizing burst. This flexibility on top of her kit and already solid place among top teams is enough that we feel she can sit alongside Antal, who fills a similar role for Electric and Heat.
• 
  Gilberta T1 → T0.5: Pre 1.0 Gilberta was overshadowed somewhat by Ardelia who can easily slot into most team compositions, and because Gil conflicts with Ardelia’s playstyle, as she can’t help but apply Vulnerability, which locks out Ardelia’s combo unless carefully played around.Now, with many more people approaching team building, Gil has found strong niches where she can be a best pick for, on top of her already strong generalist role as a gather/CC character who is comfortably used for clearing farming content Gil has a strong position in Electric teams, and as speculated prior to release, is one of Yvonne’s current best options. This on top of players feeling out where and where not to use her in Laevatain teams is enough that we’re following through with our watch list of her and moving her to T0.5.
• 
  Akekuri T1 → T0.5: Akekuri is a character who received multiple nerfs moving into 1.0, with one of them being a major hit to her Ultimate accessibility. This change is a big deal, but Akekuri is still proving to be a popular, and most importantly, supremely flexible choice within the meta. She doesn’t provide the same raw buff potential as Antal or Xaihi, but her mix of SP generation, strong weapons, set effects, and spammable combo makes her an easy slot in across multiple archetypes. With Umbral Monument having multiple stages where AoE is valuable, even though Akekuri may lose some steam from having to start each fight at 0 energy every time, the wide range of her Battle Skill means she's likely to be a competitive pick there, being positioned well enough to sit within T0.5 for now.

20.01.2026

The initial release of the tier list.

We also prepared a set of explanations for some characters:

• 
  Yvonne [Missing]: Based on the 1.0 pre-release live stream, Yvonne has received a major rework, which we know will alter her teams, rotation, guide, and power level compared to what we tested in the last beta. Because of this, we’re holding off on ranking her on release and will add her as soon as we’re confident in her new power level.
• 
  Avywenna [Expert]: Avywenna has high damage potential but requires correct deployment and positioning around her Thunderlances in order to be able to recall them in a way that hits most enemies. If you fail to do this, her damage, stagger, and energy recovery will suffer, affecting her performance significantly.
• 
  Arclight [Expert]: Arclight is a high APM character who’ll have her combo available constantly throughout a fight when played in teams that synergize with her. What earns her the Expert tag, however, is the decision-making involved in knowing when to consume Electrification to trigger her combo skill and when to keep it on enemies in order to take advantage of the damage taken debuff it provides. This is on top of juggling recurring sources of Electrification, which cannot stack, making it so that knowing when and when not to take certain actions on her and her teams is more challenging than most characters.
• 
  Fluorite [Watchlist UP]: During the final beta, Fluorite had suffered from a lack of teams in which she could be considered strong. As an Infliction-based support Operator, she is designed to be played in either Nature or Cryo Infliction teams, but there were no Nature-focused teams, and both Cryo teams had better options. This seems to be changing as we move into 1.0, with the reworked Yvonne appearing to be able to work with either Cryo or Nature, and outside of Gilberta (who has a channeled Nature Infliction that takes a significant amount of time to activate), there are no other Operators capable of applying Nature Infliction. This potentially gives Fluorite a new niche in Nature Yvonne teams, so if this comes to pass, we’ll be moving her up on the tier list.
• 
  Gilberta [Watchlist UP]: Gilberta’s main meta team in the last beta was alongside Yvonne, whose teams are up in the air after her rework. Outside of Yvonne, Gilberta doesn’t have a clear team she excels in over Ardelia. Her kit focuses on boosting Arts Damage and the other three main elemental carries - Laevatain, Avywenna and Last Rite - usually all prefer to focus more on mono elemental infliction of Heat, Electric and Cryo respectively, making Gilberta’s Nature infliction and Combo Skill (which requires Arts Reactions) a little awkward compared to the more flexible Ardelia. Laevatain can be run alongside Gilbeta, but when fighting multiple enemies, Nature Inflictions can interfere with AoE Heat absorption, which can cost Laevatain multiple Melting Flame stacks. Because of all this, we’re placing Gilberta in T1 initially, but based on Yvonne’s rework, Gilberta’s potential in Nature variant teams looks promising; therefore, we’ve watchlisted her to go up pending how she performs.