Wuthering Waves Tier List

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.

Tower of Adversity

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.

Whimpering Wastes

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.

Skill Ceilings

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.

Criteria

• All characters are assumed to be utilized in their full best 3-man team, played with optimal rotations used as our baseline for calculations without input mistakes, using the best Echo main sets and correct Energy Regen values. This means the overwhelming majority of rotations will be executed in a simplistic, one character at a time manner (save for Expert tag performance if noteworthy);
• All characters are using maximum level gold rarity Echoes;
• All Echo main stats are considered to be best in slot for that character’s build;
• Each Echo used by characters is assumed to have 5 sub-stats with average roll values;
• 15 Echo sub-stats are designated as “good” sub-stats the character would desire where the remaining (10) are random. This represents fairly high quality endgame gear;
• 5★ characters are all rated at Sequence 0 unless otherwise stated such as the Rover (Spectro) who starts at Sequence 6. 4★ characters are rated at Sequence 6.
• All characters are assessed as if they have access to R5 of all 4 weapons, R5 of all 2 and 3 weapons, R1 of the standard 5 Winter Brume weapon series, any one of which is given to select for free at Union Level 45. Additionally, all characters have access to any weapons permanently accessible and given for free (such as the Bloodpact’s Pledge Sword) at the max rank that is permanently accessible. The best out of all these choices is used for their assessment.
• In Whimpering Wastes, all characters are assessed as if they have access to any “Exquisite Token” (purple rarity) except builds catered solely towards abusing “Plunderer’s Captain Seal” are banned. The best out of all these choices is used for their assessment;
• All characters are considered to be the maximum possible level with all Fortes upgraded to the maximum level with a maximum level Weapon.

Roles

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:

• Character rotation difficulty (potential for mistakes, or severe decrease in performance if their playstyle isn’t the absolute best possible);
• Character damage within best possible team;
• Character on-field flexibility and adaptability (Does being forced to dodge hurt them? Are they able to follow a scripted rotation easily? Can they adapt to different enemy mechanics?);
• Character ability to deal with different situations (AoE, Cleave, Single Target). This has a minor impact in ToA as single-target is favoured. In Whimpering Wastes, dealing AoE or Cleave damage is heavily favoured.

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:

• Character rotation difficulty (potential for mistakes, or severe decrease in performance if their playstyle isn’t the absolute best possible);
• Character performance within best possible team;
• How many effective teams the character is playable in;
• Impact of kit on a team’s performance (units that can carry teams a rank higher);
• Character on-field flexibility and adaptability (Does being forced to dodge hurt them? Are they able to follow a scripted rotation easily? Can they adapt to different enemy mechanics?);
• Character effective damage contribution after including their buffs on the team;
• Total on-field time required to perform rotation.

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:

• Character rotation difficulty (potential for mistakes, or severe decrease in performance if their playstyle isn’t the absolute best possible);
• Character performance within best possible teams;
• How many effective teams the character is playable in;
• Impact of kit on a team’s performance (units that can carry teams a rank higher);
• Character on-field flexibility and adaptability (Does being forced to dodge hurt them? Are they able to follow a scripted rotation easily? Can they adapt to different enemy mechanics?);
• Character effective damage contribution after including their buffs on the team;
• Total on-field time required to perform rotation.

Other criteria affecting the ratings

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:

• For certain Hybrids: ability to perform effectively at lower levels of investment (if applicable, this is only a slight bonus judged on a separate scale and never negatively impacts other character ratings);
• For Healing and Shielding Supports: how much sustain/defensive utility they provide to the team, how much they allow for mistakes during gameplay;
• For Whimpering Wastes characters: ability to gather enemies efficiently, ability to deal with multiple waves of enemies quickly.

Additional specific criteria may be developed according to game updates/meta shifts.

Special tags

Tags represent the most defining features of a character's kit.

• Break - Tag given to characters who have special interactions with the Tune Break mechanic, such as Tune Rupture/Strain application and/or response, or who provide Tune Break-related buffs.
• Frazzle: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Spectro Frazzle to enemies.
• Erosion: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Aero Erosion to enemies.
• Bane: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Havoc Bane to enemies.
• Burst: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Fusion Burst to enemies.
• Chafe: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Glacio Chafe to enemies.
• Flare: Character's kit relies upon or is able to apply Electro Flare to enemies.
• Sustain - Character can provide effects that increase the team’s resistance to damage, such as Healing, Shielding or Damage Reduction. This tag is only given to characters who can provide these effects to party members other than themselves.
• Coord - Character can perform or benefit from Coordinated Attacks consistently, thanks to a major portion of their kit revolving around Coordinated Attacks or being able to execute Coordinated Attacks, providing damage and/or utility even when off-field.
• Control - Character has elements in their kit that can hinder enemy actions, such as freezing, slowing or stunning them.
• Gather - Character is effective at grouping clumps of small enemies together, allowing you to deal with several targets at once effectively.
• Partner - Character is graded based on their best team as normal, but is especially reliant on being partnered with one specific character in order to function at the highest level. Characters marked with this tag will perform at least one tier lower than their listed position on the tier list without those characters alongside them (sometimes even more).
• Expert - Character can be considered one placement higher than their default tier list ranking, but has an optimal playstyle that needs to be mastered to qualify for that higher rating. Characters only obtain this tag if the expert playstyle creates a significant discrepancy in power compared to their baseline playstyle, more so than characters without the tag.
• Watchlist - Represented by a blue eye icon in the top right corner of the character image on the Tier List, this tag is given to characters who are being temporarily looked into further by the Prydwen team in order to assess their Tier List placement more accurately. These characters’ placements are subject to change (or not depending on the situation). A tag in text form will be provided to specify whether they are on the Watchlist to go up or down the Tier List. Please provide us with your feedback for Watchlisted characters!
• S0 - Exclusive to 4-star characters. Characters with this tag have their performance noticeably lowered if they are at S0 (no duplicates) instead of S6 (max duplicates, which they are graded with on the Tier List). This tag provides precisions on how much being at S0 hurts them — for example, a character with the S0 -1 Tag will perform 1 tier lower at S0 compared to their rating on the actual Tier List.

Meta Lines

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

• Apex Characters - characters in this bracket are the cream of the crop. They’ll make clearing content a breeze, by doing some of the best damage numbers in the game, and/or providing massive buffs or debuffs quickly. Certain sustain characters even make dying practically impossible no matter how little you dodge enemy attacks. In their best teams, these characters make achieving the best results simple and consistent.
• Strong Characters - characters in this bracket still clear endgame contents easily, however they may need you to put more effort in your playstyle, or require higher levels of investment to perform comparatively to top tiers. This can be because they’re more restrictive in their builds, they’re mechanically intensive, they’re overshadowed by better options, or they possess a notable weakness or downside. Most often a mix of these reasons, they’ll regardless not disappoint if you give them the conditions they need to shine.
• Niche Characters - characters in this bracket are lacking in their respective roles. They have one fundamental flaw that makes them comparatively worse to higher tier characters, or they have multiple smaller flaws that add up together. More often than not, they cover a niche that’s filled by another unit that performs much easier than them. They’re played noticeably less and will require higher maintenance to perform.

30/04/2026

The Value Tier List has been re-introduced separately for the curious and players looking to determine what characters give the most bang for your buck on your account, feel free to check it out in its separate tab if you want!

Other than that, Hiyuki released and brought alongside her a wave of small meta changes, so let’s cover what changed in Tower of Adversity right away.

Tower of Adversity changes:

• Hiyuki: Added as T0. To put it simply, Hiyuki does a lot of damage in her best team. Enough to match up with meta powerhouses like Aemeath and Sigrika, which warrants her being put on the same tier - and that’s without a Glacio Chafe support released for her. While she’s currently restricted on teammate choices, requiring at least Lynae or Chisa to perform, her damage numbers in her best team speak for themselves.
• Rover-Aero: T0.5 → T1. With Hiyuki’s release and Chisa gaining relevancy but not quite being T0 yet, Aero Rover gets pushed out of their best team, the Cartethyia team, due to lacking in performance compared to Chisa with her Signature included in her rating. They were lowered for this reason - they don’t belong in the same tier as her anymore (not to mention Cartethyia isn’t quite the ceiling of damage dealers like she used to be nowadays).
• Chisa: Put on Watchlist (Up). Chisa isn’t quite T0 yet; but with Denia being the future Fusion Burst Support for Aemeath, this would give Chisa multiple teams where she’s top tier and the best in slot (or at least highly likely to be), meaning that she may join the other Supports in T0 were that to be the case. She was put on the Watchlist for this reason - wait for Denia’s release for further confirmation.
• Lingyang: T4 → T3. Lingyang’s performance in Tower of Adversity sits closer to Xiangli Yao than Calcharo with the release of Lynae and Mornye featuring additional techniques that allow him to deal more Skill and Diligent Practice damage boosting his performance out of T3 (the new rotation is being added on the site very shortly, we just couldn’t squeeze that update in this patch - expect it soon!)

Whimpering Wastes changes:

• Hiyuki: Added as T1 and put on Watchlist (Up). In WhiWa, Hiyuki’s damage sure comes in handy to nuke enemy waves down progressively as her rotation goes by. She essentially works like Aemeath on Rupture mode currently, just getting a bit better results warranting her to be in T1 for now. She’s put on the Watchlist due to the very high likelihood of a Glacio Chafe support releasing for her shortly (as hinted by her passives and Echo set effects) to signal that her meta position may change as her best team gets expanded upon with time.
• Aemeath: Put on Watchlist (Up). As Fusion Burst is the intended AoE-centric Resonance Mode for Aemeath, she was put on the Watchlist awaiting Denia’s release for her performance to potentially increase alongside her arrival.
• Chisa: T2 → T1.5, Expert +1 Tag removed and put on Watchlist (Up). Chisa’s value is increased by her new Best in Slot DPS being Hiyuki, which she can’t really play much quickswap with for now as she typically plays Lynae making her Expert tag not worth keeping anymore. For the Watchlist placement, it’s a similar reasoning to Aemeath, Chisa’s awaiting Denia for potential future performance boosts.
• Finally, we’re changing the placements of 3 previously Top Tier Supports, being Shorekeeper, Mornye and Verina.
• The reason for this is because less and less characters at the top are relying on them to perform (there’s only T1 and below teams really, with Sigrika being able to use Shorekeeper to an extent but Ciaccona’s better there and Phrolova leads to higher scores overall). Hence, we put them all down a tier each, landing Shorekeeper in T0.5 and Verina and Mornye in T1 with no T0 Supports (since we don’t deem any Support worthy of T0 in the current meta, though this will change with future releases eventually).

11/04/2026

While the Value Tier List is still being prepared to re-release separately, we brought some minor fixes to the current individual performance Tier List as follows:

ToA Tier List:

• Danjin: S0 -1 Tag added.

WhiWa Tier List:

• Xiangli Yao: T2 → T3. To match his performance rating on the Team Tier List (as well as his actual performance in the mode).
• Danjin: T2 → T3 and S0 -1 Tag removed. Danjin isn’t as reliant on her S6 to perform in Phrolova’s team in Whimpering Wastes since her single-target focused damage is quite negligible, and though her extra buffs matter, it doesn’t warrant her being put in the bottom tier if she doesn’t have access to them. She was lowered because Roccia is strictly superior to her in her available teams, and they shared a tier beforehand.
• Sanhua: T1.5 → T2. Following the significant drop of Luuk Herssen’s performance rating in Whimpering Wastes, Sanhua, one of his main buffers, also drops as her main relevant use case remains the Camellya team, which isn’t as strong as it used to be in the mode.
• Chisa: T2 → T1.5 and Expert +1 Tag added. Chisa is a character with high quickswap potential who can raise teams like Cartethyia and DPS Phoebe to a higher potential if the team is played to perfection. Additionally, since there was a tier gap between Spectro Rover and Chisa that did not really exist, they were elevated to an equal tier.
• Aero Rover: T2 → T1.5. Same reasoning as Chisa, elevated to the same tier as Spectro Rover.
• Buling: T3 → T2 and S0 -1 Tag Added. Buling’s rating was elevated since at S6, she undeniably displays better performance than her competitor Baizhi. The S0 -1 Tag was added to reflect her lack of additional buffing and Energy issues to distinguish her from Baizhi at lower Sequence levels.

20/03/2026

Hi! So you guys didn’t really appreciate the idea of a value Tier List as much as we had anticipated. We heard your voice and are, as a result, reverting the Tier List back to how it used to be, with some minor tweaks to be more in line with the Team Tier List instead of being opposite to it.

While the criteria for Hybrids and Supports were not changed back from how they were in the previous individual Tier List iteration (not the value-based one), we made the DPS category perfectly line up with the Team Tier List, both in terms of baseline rating as well as Expert tags.

So here’s what changed from the previous iteration of the individual Tier List:

General Changes:

• All DPS ratings adjusted to match Team Tier List placements (and Expert tags too).

ToA Changes:

• Qiuyuan T0.5 → T0

WhiWa Changes:

• Sanhua T2 → T1.5
• Roccia T1.5 → T2

The Value Tier List may resurface as a brand new, separate thing (not a revamp of this Tier List) sometime in the future, with proper time and care given to make its entrance onto the website alongside what’s currently there. Thank you for understanding.

19/03/2026

Major changes again today. For Sigrika’s release, we decided to clarify the blurry line drawn between the Individual Tier List and the Team Tier List. It was difficult to explain the purpose of keeping both Tier Lists, when the Team Tier List made more sense to paint the picture of the WuWa meta in terms of team-based performance. Since the Individual Tier List was also performance-focused, but had less precision than the Team Tier List, it was essentially useless in comparison. The Team Tier List still being an experimental project and only seen on the Endfield section aside from here on all of Prydwen, we decided to take the leap and essentially rework the very criteria of the Individual Tier List from scratch.

TLDR: The Individual Tier List is now value-focused, not performance-focused. We have a very precise definition of what makes the “value” of a character, and we updated all of our Tier List information and criteria to fit this definition accordingly. If you disagree with this change or the criteria we use, we strongly recommend you to refer to the Team Tier List which is solely performance-focused as the Individual Tier List was before this.

Now that these major changes have gone through, the Tier List below essentially looks nothing like it used to be, and we recommend if you want more details on how exactly we graded characters to read the (albeit very nerdy and lengthy) updated information and criteria sections.

Once again, please note this is highly experimental, and we likely didn’t get a perfect result on the first try. Please provide feedback to help us make this idea insightful for players who are confused on what’s most worth their Astrites for them to progress smoothly and quickly into endgame content. We, of course, added Sigrika according to the new criteria as well. Thanks for reading!

28/02/2026

This update only brings one hotfix that was necessary to properly depict Luuk Herssen’s Tier List placement. More changes will occur alongside the next character release as usual.

Adjusted placement:

• Luuk Herssen (Whimpering Wastes): T1.5 → T3. Luuk has a lot of issues that make him really underperform in WhiWa compared to what we initially expected given his ToA performance. This is firstly because Tune Strain stacks clear out when enemies are killed so his damage is significantly reduced in multi-wave content; secondly, his midair-focused combat style often makes him only hit one or two targets at once and enemies tend to scatter before he has a chance to deal with them due to his unimpressive attack range on the majority of his attacks; lastly, Luuk’s plunge into Ultimate combo deals way too much damage to enemies at once and causes overkills which could’ve been spread across the rest of his rotation. It also doesn’t help that all of Luuk’s best traditional compositions are Hypercarry compositions and that very similarly to Carlotta, his limited range and damage windows with big end-of-rotation nukes just don’t help his case to perform in the mode. While he is easily one of the top meta contenders in single-target content, his performance in Whimpering Wastes falls off a cliff, and his new Tier List placement should help reflect that.