Tribe Nine Character Tier List

Hina is the strongest character in the game right now by far, capable of doing every role extremely well. She literally forced the creation of her own tier by existing. Her sheer versatility in team comps on top of her massive damage make her uncontested in any role, with only a few DPS/breakers capable of technically outdamaging her.

Miu currently sits uncontested in sheer raw DPS, with only Enoki capable of matching her. However, we're rating her slightly higher if only due to Miu's build versatility and AI friendliness, allowing the player to use other characters who benefit from manual play more.

While Hina is technically a stronger debuffer than Jio, Jio continues to remain relevant thanks to multiple sources of defense shred being extremely good for damage output. Jio is also insanely useful vs Red Limit bosses and can easily farm petals for Full-Bloomed Cherry Blossoms for your main DPS.

The best breaker in the game hasn't changed his overall tier position, but new substats have changed his overall performance. Sword and Spear provides a very nice damage boost to him, while Shield Expansion lets anyone activate his powerful signature card, Things to Hold On To. This patch has improved his damage output and made him the premiere speedrun breaker, but for longer fights T3 is needed and we're not considering dupes.

Enoki's damage output has only gotten more absurd with Sword and Spear+, allowing her strategy skill to have an additional 180% damage mult boost. However, Hina’s existence throws a bit of a wrench into her gameplay. As a character that greatly benefits from player operation, running both can be very awkward. While her damage output and clear times can still be just as good as Miu's, she lacks her versatility and AI friendliness which represents a (minor) flaw.

With the addition of Shield Expansion and his buffs, Senju is significantly better than he was last patch (which is hilarious, since he was already the second best breaker). Senju finds himself in a unique place as a true alternative to Kazuki, trading raw damage for superior performance in long battles and a cheaper ultimate for Bombard. His AI is also much safer now, albeit still not optimal with his gameplay. A well deserved tier increase.

A unique hybrid of both damage and healing, Tsuruko is a solid generalist with a few issues that can be overcome with optimal play. Her high damage output hasn't really changed, but the new substat Sword and Spear has driven a wedge in her damage output compared to characters who have deflect counterattacks. Combined with a lack of any new Support stat cards, and the Support stat not scaling with levels, Tsuruko feels a bit abandoned at the moment.

Saigo is the best pure tank in the game at the moment. With high natural survivability and good break values, Saigo's only real flaws are his somewhat low damage (although this can absolutely be fixed with a proper build) and his long animations.

Todoroki is the best pure support in the game, offering powerful buffs that greatly help out the damage of almost every other character. His ability to apply Attention is also important for a number of card synergies. His ultimate can effectively cost nothing and he can act as a pseudo tension battery, a utility that simply cannot be compared to at the moment.

Despite being a freely distributed character, Iroha is a solid DPS and for most people the only DPS you'll ever need. Despite scaling primarily off support for her biggest damage output, Iroha is capable of outputting more than enough damage to clear out most, if not all, currently available end-game content. However, as yet another character who does not have a deflect counterattack, combined with her heavy reliance on tension to do damage, her tier placement has been dropped. Note: Iroha can clear almost all currently available content—don't let the letter make you feel like she's unviable.

Yo is a true generalist, capable of filling nearly every role in the game in some way. He also deals insane damage for his breaker role, even able to beat out some dedicated DPS characters. Yo's only true flaw is opportunity cost; while he might be able to do everything well, characters who do certain roles specifically can outdo him in that role. Also, Hina sort of stole his thunder.

Despite being a 3 stars character, Q is in a very awkward place. Similar to Yo and Hina, he's a generalist with a strong mix of damage, break value, and utility. Q's strongest utility is his safety, with multiple ways to dodge while attacking on top of having a dodge counterattack. However, this great strength is also his biggest flaw right now; while Sword and Spear is technically usable since he does have a deflect counterattack in his kit, it's locked behind his third primary while in Berserk state which makes it very awkward to access early in a fight. He's also the worst of the three generalists: his damage can be somewhat on par with Yo's, but it's certainly not Hina levels; his break speed is slightly faster than T0 Hina, but much slower than Yo's; and his utility is limited to applying full-field Attention whenever he reactivates his Berserk state.

An underwhelming healer, but a surprisingly great DPS/breaker mix. Koishi's healing CD is simply too long to be considered for the role, especially when you could run a dedicated healer (Minami) or even sub-healers (Tsuruko, Yo) instead. What he does do well is function as a middle ground between Yo's damage-heavy breaking and Senju's break-heavy damage. Koishi's secondary attack deals massive damage, above-average break value, and is very simple to utilize. He's also a deflect counterattacker, letting him abuse the new Sword and Spear to great effect. His low tier placement is not indicative of his viability, but rather due to his heavy reliance on Todoroki to output similar damage numbers to higher-tier characters.

Gotanda's simplicity and safety make him a great DPS option, but his damage numbers are not quite at the level of other characters. His premiere use case is definitely his ultimate, which deals extremely high damage thanks to it hitting many times; however, tension is at a premium and it can be very difficult to justify Gotanda as an ult-centric character over the much simpler and more AI-friendly Iroha. Even if his overall DPS is better than hers, Iroha can immediately one-shot all currently available content (except high-level Red Limit bosses) with three Support/Crit Damage gold lines.

Mita's unique blend of evasion and buffing is currently very unique. Auto-evade makes him by far the safest character for players who aren't good at dodging attacks themselves, and for people who can, his ability to deflect counterattack combined with Sword and Spear lets him deal actually respectable damage. Unlike Saigo who has lengthy animations, Mita is significantly quicker, and his break values are pretty good for what they are. His only real issue is how his buff works: not only do you need to position yourself well for it to go to your DPS (whether you play as Mita or with AI Mita), it also decays over time and relies on the enemy being aggressive enough for him to toss it out reliably. Compared to the simplicity of Todoroki's set-and-forget buffs or Saigo's sheer survivability, Mita is a bit outclassed at the moment.

Minami is a pure healer, with a powerful shield on break. However, Minami herself contributes very little damage or break, making running her a very hard ask. One has to wonder if picking her over “good enough” healers like passive-1 Tsuruko or 1–2 point passive-2 Yo is worth it when most content doesn't even deal enough damage fast enough for her healing to matter. And that's not even going into her inconsistent AI performance. The safest way to win any battle is to simply kill it faster—a task that is very easy to accomplish for anyone who can spend a few hours giving Tsuki EX rank and some good Patimon. Once any player has access to even halfway decent DPS options, Minami feels more like a liability than a helper.