The First Descendant – best character tier list

The First Descendant has many characters you can unlock over the time you spend playing the game. With the game being live, and various Descendants now running around live servers, we are getting an early impression of how the Descendants perform in solo and group play. So, we are here to provide you with a The First Descendant character tier list. Hopefully, you’ll get an idea of what characters you want to unlock with some reasons why they perform very well.

The First Descendant best characters tier list

Before we begin, be advised that this The First Decendent best character tier list is based on the core Descendants. The ultras largely do the same, albeit with much better aesthetics and scalings. So, if you like the core kit and what they offer, then the ult versions will be slightly better at what the class does anyway.

Moreso. The character tier list splits into various categories to give you an idea of their role in the party, and the value they bring in various aspects of combat. 

• Bossing – How good the character is at killing bosses with its core kit or providing support to kill bosses. 
• Mobbing – is all about killing or managing lots of hostiles that swarm missions and objectives. 
• Survivability – Assesses the defensiveness of the Descendant, regarding base stats, buffs to their own HP, Def or shielding, or proving defensive buffs to their allies.
• Crowd Control – Measuring the crowd control effects that the kit brings, ranging from debuffing enemies, preventing enemy mechanics, to outright crowd-controlling enemies through stuns and other effects, and how effective they all are.

With that said, check the table below for tier list rankings. There’s further explanation below the page.

Descendants	Bossing	Mobbing	Survivability	Crowd Control
Ajax (Tank)	D	C	S+	S+
Blair (DoT DPS)	S+	A	B+	D
Bunny (Nuker DPS)	B	S+	C	D
Enzo (Support)	A	B	S	D
Esiemo (Burst DPS)	A	S	B	B+
Freyna (DoT DPS)	A	A+	A	B+
Gley (Utility DPS)	A	A	A	A
Jayber (Utility DPS)	B	S	A	D
Kyle (Bruiser)	B	A+	S	A
Lepic (DPS)	A	S	C	S+
Sharen (Ambush DPS)	A	S+	B+	B
Valby (Consistent DPS)	A	A+	A	A+
Viessa (Debuffer)	A	A	B+	S+
Yujin (Healer)	B	B	S+	D

Ajax

Pros

• Best dedicated tank.
• Incredible shielding for allies for various scenarios and boss mechanics.
• Strong mobility.

Cons

• Low damage.
• Communication reliant.

Ajax is the dedicated tank Descendant role in the game. You’ll find all of the value for the class when you’re holding areas down with your barriers and bubbles. There’s not single mode in Operations that you won’t find use. Those abilities are even better in public dungeons or Void combat when you can mitigate a lot of damage when working together with allies or placing skills down in chokehold.

The only downside to Ajax is his damage is lacking from his skills. It requires some enhanced reflective wall stuff, so, you better focus on ATK buffs for your weapon mods if you want to kill things yourself.

Blair

Pros

• Strongest crit damage and crit chance modiifers.
• Very strong boss killing damage.
• Decent AOE if you can preplan, aim well, or react to spawn locations for your burning pans.

Cons

• No crowd control.
• Fairly low survivability.

Blair is perhaps the best boss killer in the game. He ranks at the top of our First Descendant Character TIer List because of it. YOu get some much crit chance with properly skill planing, and your damage will pump regardless on bosses burning with your skills, or from heat zones you place for both bosses and packs alike. Blair is for the pure ego DPS players.

The only downside is that Blaire lacks CC or defensiveness. So, if you group up with some of the A tier plus CC characters we list, you’ll find great value for your AOE skills to make Blair even better.

Bunny

Pros

• Very good AOE.
• Easy to manage resource skill to avoid MP pitfalls.
• Strong bust single target with ult.

Cons

• Weak defensive stats.
• Easy to drain Electricity if you’re not careful with scoped weapons.

The Bunny’s build is a strong character in The First Descendant, largely thanks to her burst damage from her Lightning Emmit skill that pulses around her. She’ll tear through spawning packs and destroy enemies through cover, shields and more. However, the downside is it’s easy to fumble her unique electricity meter, and, because she relies a lot on movement to generate electricity, she can easily drop her shield and health while managing those skills. You will need strong defensive buffs to your build or party support to see Bunny used properly. Atleast you are aware of her clear pros and cons if you want to play her.

Enzo

Pros

• Niche utility for ATK and ammo buffs.
• Strong burst ultimate skill.
• Okay AOE for solo and group play despite support playstyle.

Cons

• Passive is extremely niche for certain content. types
• Click and forget playstyle can be somewhat boring for certain playstyles.

Enzo is a very niche support class. The unique skill for ammo placement, Magazine modifiers and ATK buffs make him a decent support for challenging content. He also has some decent AOE and burst DPS windows with his ultimate and other base skills. The clear downsides are that his passive is very dependent on Encrypted Vault for the bonus loot, and that if your allies down know what he does, you may as well consider the ammo box a useless skill. It’s ideally best used for allies who are heavily reliant on the higher tier ammy type weapons too and for progressing hard bosses. Maybe avoid Enxo for now until players are more knowledgable or content starts getting very hard where ammo matters more.

Esiemo

Pros

• Strong single target damage with grande stacking.
• Strong AOE skills, even better with planning.
• Some group and crowd control utility with uiltimate skill.

Cons

• Can be hard to plan with.
• Using ultimate skills to remove debuffs and charge can leave you exposed or easily misused and mistimed.

Esiemo plays a similar role as Lepic, however, has better planning options, and higher burst windows with the sticky explosive stacks he can do. If you’re all about explosions, then Esiemo is a strong DPS for all bossing and moving content. Furthermore, Esiemo has an interesting ultimate skill, that removes debuffs, offers knockback, and provides some defensive buffs.

He’s a pretty good damage dealer, with interesting utility, CC, and more. He might actually be very strong due to how strong and versatile that kit is. He’s certainly one to watch. Yet, the clear downside is the planning and knowledge required to get the most out of the buff stripping and how to best stack your grenades for damage. It is something to note if you want to master this character and get the most out of his unique features.

Freyna

Pros

• Strong single target damage.
• Mobbing offers lots of ATK buffs.
• Unique debuffing effect.

Cons

• Not quite as strong as other DPS classes.
• Coordination reliabt due to Toxic floor hazard management and her toxin spread attack buff management.

Freyna is poison-themed Descendant, that can do lots of damage to bosses. Moreso, the class has a unique debuff effect via its Room 0 Trauma effect that deals continue damage. Since it is easy to apply, you can combo it with other status effects for some incredibly high pack destruction and pack management. Throw in her defensive and stacking ATK buffs from poisoned enemies, and Freyna is a great DPS character.

The only downsides is how much value you get from poison buffs as her allies can nuke her buff potential. Simply throw your poison out there, get the buffs, and focus on nuking the elites or bosses are key to her playstyle. All in all, if you want a more flexible DPS character over Blair, Freyna is likely your choice for boss-killing.

Gley

Pros

• Flexible high damage, and crowd control skills.
• Strong recovery and survivability despite health reducing skills.
• Fantasitc crowd control on her ult skill.

Cons

• Hard to play due to various weapon setups for close range skills and long range themed skills.
• Managing frenzy and berserk states can be tricky.

Gley is a very interesting Descendant on the Tier List, largely down to her mixture of self-harm, big buffs, damage debuffs to enemies, you can play her any way you want. If you want to shred bosses, go berserk mode with a sniper and nuke enemies. Perhaps you want to play a more supportive role, you can debuff enemy ATK stats while in Frenzy mode with mob-controlling weapons. In addition, since she uses health as a resource for buffs, you can kill enemies and get more health globes for self-sustain, more than normal HP drops from enemies. So, she is fantastic for solo play, group play, support play and boss killing. She’s a fairly safe character to research for so many reasons.

Jayber

Pros

• Good burst windows with enhanced turrets.
• Built in mana regen for enhanced medical turrets offers more interaction with skills.
• Decent support with medical turret, perfect for solo and group play.

Cons

• Can be hard to properly plan turret placment.
• Coordination reliant getting the most from the turrets.

Jayber is a support DPS type Descendant. This makes him rather interesting to rank on the First Descendant character tier list, because he has some decent damage, and decent support. Yet, he is not a master of either. You can place turrets, offer tactical advantages with placements or your turrets to enemies, and your allies via your medical turret. If you can play well, then you can get more turrets, enhance them with your ultimate for key moments, and generally be valuable to the team.

But, turret placement and ally coordination are very important to use properly. So, be careful with Jayber and plan ahead to get the most support DPS mixture in harder content. If you’re looking for a solo character, Jayber is quite neat for many reasons.

Kyle

Pros

• Unique bruiser playstyle at launch.
• Decent damage and survivability for a fairly tanky Descendant.
• Solid movement effects and crowd control despite bruiser playstyle

Cons

• Magnetic Force resource hard to manage via being a damage mitigation and damage dealing resource.
• Coordination reliant with barrier and fly ultimate in group play.

Kyle is a mixture of a support DPS and tank, giving him a bruiser role. If you want the benefits of the tanking tactics for your reflective wall like Ajax, the offers it too. However, his Magnetic passive makes him different, with that resource used for damage, and reducing damage taken. You can use this to tank for the team, get more defensiveness, or engage with your ultimate skill to fly into battle and nuke entire battlefields if you want to. He is a fairly cool character for solo play. But, its value in groups seems to fall off compared to dedicated tanks or support DPS characters. Avoid Kyle for now, because while he’s decent, he’s hard to recommend unless you really like the sound of hit charge-in, drop barriers and beat people up playstyles.

Lepic

Pros

• Strong AOE damage dealer.
• Incredible crowd control via Traction Grenades. Easily counters riot shield enemies too
• Cheat death passive is very strong for all content.

Cons

• Fairly expensive and weak single target damage
• Grenade throw trajectory feels weird to use and easy to miss enemies because of it.

Lepic is one of the starter characters, which offers decent damage, strong crowd control, and a unique cheat death mechanic on his passive. It makes him very good to play in all content. While his damage eventually falls off for the more DPS-focused Descendants, you’ll find his CC potential is still excellent for open-world play, countering elites, especially those with riot shields, so, Lepic still has an easy-to-use kit for playing solo, in groups and more. Hell, you can even use his kit to CC enemies to help Freyna and Blair kits to dish more damage out. Don’t overlook the crowd control and burst DPS potential this character has

The clear downside however is his single target damage. The amount of mana you spend on his Overdrive skill to get the burn active for then to apply bruns on your other skills is not great. Avoid doing that when you have more dedicated damage dealers, and keep the man spare for any mob spawns.

Sharen

Pros

• Unique stealth mechanic.
• Strong burst damage with melee attack via stealth kill chains.
• Solid crownd control and AOE effect via ult and stun skill.

Cons

• Very squishy if you misplay stealth against bosses.
• Hard to master character with stealth chain kill mechanics.

Sharen has the most cool-looking kit of all characters on the First Descendant Tier List. Her chain stealth mechanics, executing enemies not hitting you with more burst damage and refresh stealth makes her a cool open-world character to play. Moreso, she has fantastic CC spread, allowing her to stun several enemies, go invisible, then chain slash stealth kill them all to death. It’s easy to see how her combos work for group and solo play out in the Operation zones. Her single target damage is not too bad too with her electricity debuff-applying skills.

The only main downside is her nerf to damage potential when she isn’t focused, and her Def is lacking slightly. If you want the rule of cool, Sharen is awesome for that playstyle. She won’t scale as high as other damage dealers who specialise in AOE or single-target, but that’s fine, since you have a unique playstyle for her to have value in dungeons, and different missions in Operations.

Valby

Pros

• Strong survivability with moving to other bubble locations and Dimension skill.
• Cheap skills when stood in puddles she creates from her skills.
• Easy applied damage to both packs and bosses alike.

Cons

• Relies on strong mana management to use properly.
• Ultimate skill is not that great for mobbing or bossing,a nd tis corwnd control, while fantastic is outclassed by other crowd control skills in the game.

Valby is a slippery (pun intended) DPS character, with strong constant damage opportunities, and interesting take on survivability. She’ll cheapen her skill costs via her water bubble puddle mechanic, and psam more bubbles. She can throw even bigger bubbles for AOE, and when she needs to relocate, go to other puddle areas and avoid enemy fire or melee threats closing in. Throw in another DEF-themed skill that allows her to flow through enemies, and she evades most deathly situations.

As for her ulty, she has a strong Crowd Control skill, which is nice for those oh-no moments. However, it’s fairly poor cord control for the amount of mana it costs and its cooldown. It’s a panic button skill rather than you bring her for crowd control. If you want an engaging DPS to play with solid DPS over time for all scenarios, Valby is worthy of your attention.

Viessa

Pros

• Great for progressing on harder diffuclties due to her CC.
• Slowed enemies are easier to survive against, and it is easier to land weakspot shots on slowed targets.
• Decent single target damage via passive ice shard generation for boss killing. Not bad for AOE but low splash damage range effects effectiveness. Require syncing with your slowed enemy cc effect or group CC from other Descendants to work properly.

Cons

• Hard to play due to frost movement skill and planning required.
• Hard to see her strenghts while playing low level normal content as her CC is moe vulable in harder content.

Viessa is another starter character, that, when you play, specialises with debuffs and crowd control. Her value shines the most via slowing harder-to-kill enemies and large packs of hostile for various objectives in Operations. When tougher enemies are slowed, it means everyone else has an easier time landing those weakshot hits, or getting away from danger. This is where the strengths of her exist.

If you’re looking for damage, she does fine with her icicle effects. But, for her role as a farmer and pusher, it’s all about the crowd control effects.

Yujin

Pros

• Only dedicated hard support in the game.
• Strong ATK buff for your HIGH DPS Descendants like Blair and Freyna.
• Strong self buffs to your own ATK and DEF for bossing and mobbing when needed.

Cons

• Best used in pre-made teams due to distance effects.
• While he has self buffs, they are few and far between which makes solo-play somewhat hard.

Yujin is a dedicated support healer character, and frankly the only one of its kind at the time of writing. If you’re looking to support your allies with buffs, healing, Def and more, then Yujin is the one. Avoid Yujin if you want to solo play, as there’s many more better for it. Simple and easy analysis for a tier list ranking.