NTE Tier List

A tier ranks a character's ceiling when built and teamed correctly — it is not a promise of how they'll perform the moment you pull them at level 1 with no gear.

• Top tiers mean a character keeps delivering strong results across most content with reasonable investment, not just in one narrow scenario.
• Mid tiers often shine hardest in one specific reaction team or role and fall off outside it — that's a build-fit issue, not a weak character.
• Lower tiers usually need more support (a specific partner, a particular Suit, or heavier Awakening investment) to reach the same output that a top-tier character gets for less effort.

Filter the table by Element, Class, and Role rather than reading the letters alone — two S-tier characters in different elements are not interchangeable, and the tier only tells you the ceiling, not whether that ceiling fits the team you actually have.

Combat here runs on the Esper Cycle: pairing wheel-adjacent elements triggers a Duo reaction, and chaining two Duos from the same group escalates into a Trio. A character's tier score already assumes they're sitting in a working lane of that wheel.

• A top-tier character placed outside their natural reaction lane — no partner nearby on the element wheel — loses the reaction damage their tier score is built on, and plays noticeably worse than the table suggests.
• A mid-tier character slotted correctly into a Duo or Trio with the right partners often outperforms what its tier letter implies, because reaction damage compounds fast once the lane is complete.
• This is also why gacha board value and tier aren't the same question: a character can be tier S and still not worth pulling for you specifically if nothing in your current roster completes their reaction lane yet.

The tier table itself is revised on its own schedule shown at the top of the page — check that marker rather than assuming today's snapshot is permanent.

• What moves: a newly released character enters unranked until enough teams have been tested around them, and existing characters can shift a notch when a patch adjusts numbers or when a new reaction partner arrives and completes a lane that used to be empty.
• What stays the same: the reading method above — check Element/Class/Role filters, weigh reaction-lane fit over the raw letter, and remember the letter measures a built-and-teamed ceiling — holds true no matter how many times the table itself gets reshuffled.
• Because the character gacha board shares one soft/hard pity across every limited run, a character dropping off the current board doesn't erase their tier value for players who already built them — it just means fewer players can newly test that slot until the character returns.

A character's rarity — S-Class or A-Class — is decided by which gacha board they sit on, not by how the tier list ranks their combat ceiling; conflating the two is one of the most common misreadings of this table.

• An S-Class character sits on the limited or Standard board and typically comes with a larger kit, but rarity alone doesn't guarantee a top tier placement — an A-Class character with a tight kit that completes a popular reaction lane can out-rank an S-Class character that doesn't fit any lane cleanly.
• Likewise, being A-Class doesn't cap a character below S-Class characters in tier — A-Class units are pulled from the standard/permanent board or the shared 22.98%-per-roll mid-tier pool on limited boards, and several of them hold their own next to S-Class picks once teamed correctly.
• Practical rule: read rarity as an investment-cost signal (how you obtain the character and how deep their base kit runs) and read tier as a combat-ceiling signal (what they do once built) — they answer different questions, and a table that only sorts by rarity isn't a tier list at all.

Two characters can share the exact same tier letter and still need very different amounts of investment to reach it — the letter alone doesn't tell you how expensive that ceiling is.

• Awakening cost varies by design, not by tier: some top-tier characters reach their full rated ceiling at Awakening 0, using extra copies purely to shorten cooldowns or add small conveniences, while others are built around a specific Awakening milestone (often Awakening 3 or 6, where a Resonance bonus unlocks) that meaningfully changes their kit rather than just amplifying it.
• Suit dependency works the same way — a character whose kit already deals full reaction damage without a specific 2/4-piece Module suit bonus is cheaper to field at their rated tier than one whose score assumes a specific suit's set bonus (for example, a suit bonus keyed to a Nova or Scorch reaction) is already equipped.
• When two characters land in the same tier, treat the one with a lower Awakening/Suit floor as the better pull for a newer account, and save the steeper-investment pick for later, once spare materials and duplicates are easier to come by.

None of this changes where a character sits on the table — it changes how much of the listed ceiling you can expect to see on day one versus after weeks of investment.

Put the ideas above together with a concrete read-through, using the filters at the top of this page rather than picking blind off the letter column.

• Step 1 — filter by role first. If you need a Main DPS, ignore every Support and Healer in that tier regardless of how high their letter sits; a top-tier Support doesn't replace a mid-tier DPS in a damage-check fight.
• Step 2 — check element against your existing roster. A same-tier character whose element already has a working partner in your roster is worth more to you right now than one that would sit alone on the wheel until you pull a partner later.
• Step 3 — compare Awakening/Suit floors, not just the letter. Between two same-tier picks, the one that reaches its ceiling at Awakening 0 with a generic Suit is the safer investment on a limited materials budget.
• Step 4 — re-check after every patch, since a new reaction partner or a numbers pass can move a character up or down a notch without changing anything about how you built them.

Following these four steps in order turns a flat letter grade into an actual pull-priority decision specific to the roster you already have — which is the entire point of reading a tier list instead of just skimming it.