Tier list

The Identities are actually decently balanced and you can make a lot of them work. This tier list tries to rate these IDs on their average performance in Railway content.

  • Ratings take into account potential team synergies, rated with only their base ego, and in their ideal team composition.
  • EGO synergies are mentioned in reviews and do not affect placement on the tier list.
  • Ratings are based on Tier 4 Identities. If any ID requires Uptie 4 to function, please check their tags on the tier list or check out our "Uptie 4 Priority" Guide.
  • Identities within a tier are placed in alphabetical order.

NOTE: We also added tags below each character to facilitate understanding their niche and help with team building. If you want to know more about each character, please check their page for full information and review.

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Categories
  • Damage Dealer: Group that ranks IDs that focus purely on doing damage. Even if they have any semblance of any status effect, supportive buff or debuffs, those are usually secondary additions in the kit and/or their damage scales with the amount of a certain status effect, making them synergetic to that team.
  • Status Specialist: Group focused on IDs whose main focus is status effect support, making them stronger, easier stacking or utilizing them more effectively.
  • Support: Group focused on IDs whose main purpose is to support the team with various buffs / effects or debuff enemies rather than damage or status effects.
  • Tank: Group focused on IDs whose main purpose is to redirect damage for the team and tank hits.

Some IDs could fall naturally into multiple categories, like Damage Dealer or Tank. While rating those IDs we will consider what is the main focus of such IDs.

Specialty Tags

There's mainly tags for what ID specializes in what, and none of them is a con. If Uptie 4 is a requirement for their kit to even function, it would be listed as a downside for that ID. Statuses that are already explained in the game (i.e Tremor, Charge, Sinking, Rupture, etc) will not be listed here.

  • AoE Skills - The ID has access to damage multiple enemies at once in their kit.
  • Coin Reuse - The ID has skills which reuses it's coins.
  • Nuker - The ID specializes in dealing a large amount of damage in a single turn.
  • Debuffer - The ID specializes in giving enemies negative status effects.
  • Buffer - The ID specializes in giving allies and/or themself positive status effects.
  • Discard - The ID's core gimmick is discarding skills.
  • Every Status - The ID has the ability to potentially inflict every status in the game.
  • Negative SP - The ID's core gimmick is that they use negative coin skills.
  • Counter - The ID specializes in their counter skill.
  • HP Gimmick - The ID's core gimmick lies in being above/below a certain HP threshold.
  • A-Reson/Reson - The ID's core gimmick lies in getting Sin Resonance or Absolute Sin Resonance.
  • Passive Provider - The ID has a pretty useful Support Passive.
  • Req. U4 - The ID needs Uptie 4 to work on an efficient level.

Criteria
  • All conditionals when ranking these are fulfilled
  • Using optimal team composition
  • Railway buffs and support passives are not taken into account
  • Other content, such as Mirror Dungeon and Story isn't taken into account
Roles

We compare characters within their role - so damage dealers are compared to other damage dealers and the ratings are adjusted based on their performance within the role.

  • Damage Dealer: Rating is heavily influenced based on the ID's damage and utility to both deal damage and amplify the damage of others, including their own.
  • Status Specialist: Rating is heavily influenced based on the ID's ability to stack the count and potency of every status or brings something unique to that status to make it overall effective and stronger.
  • Support: Rating is heavily influenced based on the ID's ability to give buffs to allies, debuffs to enemies, and overall utility to help defeat enemies quicker.
  • Tank: Rating is heavily influenced based on the ID's ability to take damage and their benefits to taking damage
Other criteria affecting ratings

Clashing and ability/capacity to deal damage is usually the biggest defining factor that differentiates many IDs compared to others. We consider:

  • Flexibility - How the ID's kit functions on its own and how difficult it is to play.
  • Clashing - How good the ID is at clashing. We consider 15-17 to be the exact average for clashes. Everything less than 14 is below average, while everything above 18 is above average.
  • Utility - There's a great number of IDs that possess abilities that lie beyond their defined role, for example Pequod Heathcliff scales in damage the lower HP he has, and gains buffs whenever allies or himself gets hit to deal even more damage. The more an ID helps the team outside of their role, the bigger positive impact on their rating it has.

Meta Lines

Meta Lines categorize each section of the tier list into a power bracket. Here are the four brackets:

  • Best in Role Characters (SS & S+) - IDs in this bracket are the best of the best. They can dish out outrageous damage, enables a ton of synergy with other IDs, and provide massive buffs or debuffs with their kits. They are, most of the time, essential to achieving the lowest turn counts for Railway content, while also making all other content in this game a complete pushover.
  • Meta Characters (S & A) - Characters in this bracket perform extremely well in content, but compared to the tier above them, they don't perform as well or more work is required for them to operate. They'll still be able to consistently clear all forms of content though.
  • Niche Characters (B) - Characters in this bracket have the really short end of the stick, either extremely reliant on the team they're put in, requires a bunch of effort to get working, or just overall does not perform as good as the characters in the higher tiers.
  • Bad Characters (C & D) - Characters in this bracket are just not good. Even in their best conditions they have absolutely nothing that makes them even remotely useful to the team. You'd actively be crippling yourself by using them.
Ratings
  • SS - Absolute best in their respective category. Offers more than Identities in tiers below or an unique / core part of the kit makes them stand out.
  • S+ - Extremely exceptional IDs with really solid kits, although held back by their versatility or lack of utility that SS IDs have.
  • S - Extremely viable IDs that perform well and still have a place in the meta, but requires a bit more work to truly shine.
  • A - Still good and viable, although has a good number of issues or their drawbacks hold them down.
  • B - Only viable in certain scenarios. These IDs has certain niches that are not good and requires more investment to make them work.
  • C - Average characters that have big flaws and struggle very hard to even play their own role.
  • D - Detrimental, passive providers only or completely overshadowed by other IDs. Avoid at all costs.

10.09.2024

Added recently released Identities.

Other changes:

  • [W Corp. L3 Cleanup Captain] Outis - A Tier Support > S Tier Status Specialist - In the category of Status Specialist, W Outis' spread of Charge Barrier is extremely helpful for Charge IDs who struggle with maintaining their count.
  • [Seven Assoc. South Section 4] Faust - S Tier Damage Dealer > A Tier Damage Dealer - While 7 Faust works pretty well on a Rupture team, without one she struggles to pull her own weight, especially with her average clashes and mediocre passive.
  • [Lobotomy E.G.O::Regret] Faust - S Tier Damage Dealer > S+ Tier Damage Dealer - Outside of just dealing damage, Regret Faust's passive is just really incredible for Tremor teams, alongside the Plus Coin Drop from her S2 just generally being nice to have, especially for the units on a Tremor Team who has lower numbers.
  • [The One Who Shall Grip] Sinclair - SS Tier Damage Dealer > S+ Tier Damage Dealer - N Sinclair sports incredible consistency in fights, however in the new style of battles, he doesn't offer much besides just being consistent.
  • [Cinq South Section 4 Director] Sinclair - SS Tier Damage Dealer > S+ Tier Damage Dealer - Mostly the same case as N Sinclair, however his S3 fragility is tied to whether or not it's the only skill targeting the enemy slot it's on, and in the case of staggered abnormalities or mob fights, you can practically kiss that fragility goodbye.
  • [Blade Lineage Salsu] Yi Sang - A Tier Damage Dealer > S Tier Damage Dealer - Due to the longer form of battles with Chain Battles, BL Yi Sang can properly scale with his poise generation.
  • [Lobotomy E.G.O::Red Sheet] Sinclair - S Tier Status Specialist > B Tier Status Specialist - WAY, WAY too rng dependant to work properly. Assuming we do get single boss battles in the future, he still has his niche of best Rupture application in the game, but only if you get the stars to align. In any mob fight, or fights with multiple waves, this ID will almost always be straight up useless or just not worth the effort of setting up.
  • [Rosespanner Workshop Fixer] Meursault - B Tier Status Specialist > C Tier Status Specialist - Severely powercrept by every other Tremor ID in the game. Combined with the awful clashes and Tremor application, this ID does not have a spot in any future content at all.
  • [N Corp. Mittelhammer] Rodion - B Tier Status Specialist > C Tier Status Specialist - Extremely bad clashes, damage and bleed application.
  • [Dieci Assoc. South Section 4] Yi Sang - A Tier Tank > B Tier Tank - Clashes are straight up just awful without conditionals, and even with them they're pretty average. As a tank ID I can see it being very competent but you're just never going to win clashes with this guy and sinking infliction is pretty whack at best.
28.08.2024

Added [Wild Hunt] Heathcliff

15.08.2024

Added new Identities.

05.08.2024

Fully reworked the tier list.

Tier list settings
Show tags instead of names
 
Damage dealer
Status Specialist
Support
Tank
Best in Role
SS
Damage Dealer
Status Specialist
Support
Tank
S+
Damage Dealer
Status Specialist
Support
Tank
Meta
S
Damage Dealer
Status Specialist
Support
Tank
A
Damage Dealer
Status Specialist
Support
Tank
Niche
B
Damage Dealer
Status Specialist
Support
Tank
Bad
C
Damage Dealer
Status Specialist
Support
Tank
D
Damage Dealer
Status Specialist
Support
Tank