Disclaimer
-This tier list is unofficial and entirely based on the opinion of the community playing LoC. It will try to be as objective as possible. This Tier List was made on version 2.41.
Discussion surrounding tiers, rankings and/or game balance should be kept on this page or on the Companion Tier List page.
-The goal of this tier list is to serve as a guide for anyone wanting to know more about the actual state of Paradox's balance in order to tackle its endgame, the Labyrinth of Chaos.
If you came here looking to know who is viable or not for non-LoC content: everyone is viable. You can finish part 2 with a full Battle Fucker team if you want to. Same thing if you want to reach floor 100.
However, not everyone can reach floor 100 without LoC gear, and very few characters have the potential to bring you to the point where monsters and super bosses stop scaling (check the Labyrinth of Chaos page for more details on how scaling works).
This tier list will however allow you to understand who can and who can't. If you are struggling with the main game, feel free to take a look at the Useful Battle Strategies and the Companion Tier List pages.
-This tier list will mostly talk about Races. That's because racial skill availability in Paradox is the biggest limitation a character can have. Traits do matter, but compared to races they are just the cherry on top. The tier list will also not mention LoC gear. Certain characters can become better with certain LoC gear that allows them access to builds that circumvent their weaknesses or boost their strengths even further. Unfortunately, a higher tier character will tend to always be far better with said gear than a weaker one. Also some effects are very rare and you can very well spend countless hours in LoC without running into them.
-This tier list only concerns version 2.41 and might change drastically depending on changes made to the gameplay by TTR. It may also change if new strategies that impact the META are found. As the playerbase is quite small, it is very likely that certain underappreciated strategies turns out to be far better than they initially appeared. Feel free to spark discussion and explore whatever isn't mentioned here.
-Ultimately, don't feel obligated to ditch a character just because it's rated as weak in this tierlist. Play who you want to play. It's a game. Your goal should be to have as much fun as possible.
| Terminology | |
|---|---|
| META: Most Effective Tactics Available.
Sweeper: A character meant to consistently one shot or kill as fast as possible mobs that you run into. They should ideally use as few buffs as possible. A very important role that's gonna decide how fast you are at going from point A to point B. They want to either have stats high enough to one shot mobs (early LoC) or use a combination of status ailments and predation-type skills (Queen Succubus is famous for this). Mostly useful early on because this strategy has been nerfed to oblivion in 2.40. Monsters and superbosses get increasing status resistance as you delve deeper maxing out at 99% resistance. So, a superboss that had 6% chance to be inflicted with stop will now have 0,06% chance to be inflicted by it.
Team comp: Your ratio of Support/Damage Dealers. You're limited to 11 party members + Luka so team composition is important. Optimally, you want 3-4 Damage Dealers and the rest as support. Keeping your Damage Dealers well buffed and protected is far more important than having multiple Damage Dealers in your active roster. Haste/Increased priority: The ability of a character to ignore AGI and always act first no matter what. Only concerns a specific category of skills (Singing, Dancing, White Magic, etc.). This is your only way to act first when their AGI value ends up becoming way too high for you to keep up. META for supports. Generally comes from traits but you can also get it from LoC gears.
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Tier List
Order within tiers doesn't matter.
SS (Exploit): 7 Heroes
S: Queen Slime, Slime + Scylla, Nightmares
A: Slimes, Giants, Mermaids, Humans
B: Lamia, Scylla
C: Beast, Elves, Roid, Doll, Sea-Dweller, Alraune, Land-Dweller, Yoma
D: Queen Succubus, Harpy, Kitsune, Demi-Human
E: Angel, Fairy, Vampire, Dragon, Ghost, Insect, Succubus, Chimera, Zombie
Explanation of each race's ranking
SS Tier
| Slime + Scylla | |
|---|---|
| This tier only consists of two monsters: Mitsuko and Awawa. The top tiers. They are pretty much a combination of the two best races and that gives them access to some insane synergy.
Slimes have access to: Division (+1 action per turn) Divine Destiny (+2 actions). Slimes can become Beast that can also become an Elf. Elves have access to Dullahan Rondo (+1 action). Scylla have access to Maid boost (+1 action), Ex Tentacle Up ( +8 normal attacks, +3 tentacle skills) and Initial Resolve (+400% to base normal attack damage) So 6 actions, 9 normal attacks, 4 tentacle skills and 500% ATK normal attacks per action, something that no one else in the game can hope to get. This allow Mitsuko and Awawa to reach a damage output that's impossible for the rest of the game to compete with and reach more than dozens of millions of %ATK per turn. This allows them to pretty much one-shot superbosses without any LoC gear (unless you're in the Deep LoC). After all, if you have 10M %ATK per turn, 100 ATK will make you deal 1 billion damage.
Mitsuko is also a Ghost so she has access to Preemptive Surprise Box.
Awawa is also a Chimera but unfortunately, Chimeras don't have much going for them, so Mitsuko is the stronger character by a little bit.
Their weakness is that they can die in the first turn (Like everyone who isn't an insect) and they aren't immune to most status ailments (like everyone who isn't an apoptosis). So they aren't really weaknesses and they have access to some of the best racial passives and stat spreads in the game.
|
S Tier
| Slime | |
|---|---|
| Slime is the most versatile class and is pretty much going to be excellent at whatever you want it to be. That's because with 5 actions per turn, you're playing 5 characters instead of 1 per turn.
They also have the highest HP modifier in the whole game (250%) meaning that it's gonna take a lot of firepower for them to die, making them very tanky in early LoC. Their weakness is that they can't equip a lot of defensive gear, which you can circumvent with abilities. Finally, the most important thing about slimes: A lot of them have other races that synergize very well with their unique skills.
|
| Scylla | |
|---|---|
| The big damage race. Scylla excels at both normal attack and skill builds making them the best race for DPS but also very strong sweepers.
They have access to EX Tentacle Up (+8 normal attacks and +3 tentacle skills per action), Initial Resolve (+400% to base normal attack damage) and Maid Boost (+1 action).
Their weaknesses? Below average resistance to status ailments and average stat spread focused around attack builds.
Nuruko and Amphil: You like Scyllas but you hate their poor status resistances? Pair an Apoptosis with it and you now have status ailment immunity as well as Normal Attack High Booster (+300% base normal attack damage). Excellent DPS.
|
A Tier
| 7 Heroes | |
|---|---|
| The reason why the seven heroes are high-tier is because of one very specific strategy called "Gravity Pleasure".
Upon finishing the collab scenario, the seven heroes get access to the ability Heroes of the 7 Worlds which converts any damage they deal into pleasure damage. Even chaos damage. That means that Time Magic skills like Mass Gravity that deal 75% current HP percentage damage will now deal 75% current HP pleasure damage. Using skills that increase pleasure damage taken like Mermaid Handjob (50% pleasure weakness) will allow you to reach more than 100% current Hp damage with Mass Gravity resulting in a one shot. The more pleasure resistance they have, the more debuffs you will need to stack. You can also stack 5 Seal of Est to bypass immunities, absorbs, and reflects by turning the pleasure damage into nightmare and as the gear itself is unimportant you will eventually get it. And that's pretty much it. Not much else to say.
Lauratt: His Warped Rod of Justice allows him to easily spam Mass Gravity tearing through enemy HP despite their resistances. Also his exclusive Shining Rage is one of the most powerful skills in the game.
|
| Insects | |
|---|---|
| Defensive race with high DPS. Group Shield is an ability that allow them to have 2 deflectors at the start of the battle (the only race with that privilege). Group Leader allow them to use 5 normal attacks per turn and 3 insect skills.
And that's pretty much it. They can do whatever you want them to do and they will do a great job at it. Straightforward and very reliable. Notable Characters:
|
| Queen Succubus/Nightmares | |
|---|---|
| Queen Succubus has 2 important skills: Lilith Orgia and Orgasmic Ascension. Lilith Orgia is an auto-hit skill that deals 1400% Dex or Mag pleasure damage with 75% chance to inflict Horny and Trance. Orgasmic Ascension will kill any enemy affected by pleasure ailments and sleep. Superbosses included. That makes them very potent sweepers in both the early and deep LoC, as well as your best pick at killing bosses weak to pleasure ailments.
Nightmares are immune to any type of damage except pleasure damage. To be more specific, any pleasure damage they inflict or take is converted to chaos damage. This makes it impossible for their damage to be reduced, but it also means that their damage can't be increased by debuffs. This is a very big problem to their scaling, making their potential DPS output pretty low once you start doing some math. Another big issue is that being immune to damage still means that you get hit, so status ailments are troublesome and will be responsible for killing them most of the time. They are high-tier nevertheless due to their usefulness against some superbosses and just how good Est and Fulbeua are.
Alma Elma. Alma isn't a Nightmare but is still high-tier for one reason: She's a Queen Succubus that can outdamage Est pretty hard because she can make use of elements and debuffs. |
B Tier
| Beast | |
|---|---|
| Beasts can become Elves allowing them to grab Dullahan Rondo (+1 action), but they also have Ixion (+1 action but can only use Spear skill and normal attacks) for Spear builds. Ixion isn't attractive for normal attack builds however, because It's Always My Turn gives +4 actions and is thus better.
Aside from that, they have access to Asura's Dance (+3 normal attacks per turn) and Bastet dance (+50% EVA/MAG EVA). They are a good race but they just get overshadowed by Slimes because they can become Beasts too. Something that's not in their favour is that a lot of stuff they get can also be found in jobs with better counterparts.
|
| Elf | |
|---|---|
| Dullahan Lord has access to Dullahan Rondo (+1 action for -25% ATK/MAG/DEX). That's it. Not much else to say. Queen Elf has a passive Slayer Booster which is okay, except since you can't tell which superboss you will face beforehand, so you can't rely on this. Elves are technically worse than Beasts by a little bit, but they both just get overshadowed by Slimes. |
| Lamia | |
|---|---|
| Race with a very good stat spread but mostly used for support. They have access to Waning Moon Dance and Evening Moon Dance (Null Physical and Magical respectively for 4 turns) making them invaluable against some super bosses.
Some people consider them to be A, others believe they belong in B.
|
| Queen Mermaid | |
|---|---|
| Only concerns Laura. Aqua Pentagon allows you to place 2-hit deflectors on anyone. That means you can put a Vicarious Shikigami on her (2-hit deflector at battle start) and use Aqua Pentagon on your DPS. She also gets Ocean pleasure skills exclusive to Mermaids that will inflict pleasure weakness, making her vital for the Gravity Pleasure strategy and to boost the DPS of pleasure builds.
Why just B tier then? Because you can run into Laura in the Labyrinth of Chaos and she will teach Aqua Pentagon to anyone you want. The best character with it is Nemea, because she has Haste on White Magic skills, meaning that she will always cast it before the superboss can act. Alternatively, you can find LoC gear with White Magic Haste (the legendary LoC Gear Omega Adeptas) and equip it to Laura or another character that knows Aqua Pentagon. White Magic Haste + Aqua Pentagon is a powerful strategy that ensure that DPS builds can keep buffing themselves without recasting deflectors if they run out of them. It synergizes incredibly well with multiple actions and/or the legendary shield High Deflector (2-hit deflector at battle start, 50% chance to get a new deflector at the end of your turn). It's kind of an exception in the tierlist: It's not Laura who is B tier, it's Aqua Pentagon. Once you got the gears and/or taught it to Nemea, it becomes the strongest support strategy. |
C Tier
| Apoptosis/Doll | |
|---|---|
| Apoptosis get 3 important things: Nullify All Status and Normal Attack High Booster (+300% to base damage of normal attacks) and Daisy Bell (50% all element damage booster). That alone doesn't make them that great. However, most Apoptosis have other races that make good use of those skills.
Notable Characters:
|
| Harpy | |
|---|---|
| A race that can stack a lot of evasion through their passives, but they also have access to Sky Dance (+50% Eva/Mag Eva). However, auto-hit skills are very common in the LoC. But Magical Evasion can't be bypassed. That makes them very useful against superbosses that don't have auto-hit skills or rely a lot on magic skills.
|
| Kitsune | |
|---|---|
| Mostly a support race thanks to Anti-Death Song (nulls instant kill effects). Taoism is also nice to inflict elemental weaknesses so your DPS can increase their damage significantly.
Almighty Song is useful if you somehow can't use some 'Skill Use: Job/racial skill' ability.
|
| Seraph/Fallen Angel | |
|---|---|
| Only concerns 3 monsters. Eden and Micaela-chan (Seraphs) and Lucifina-chan (Fallen Angel). What hurts them the most if the fact that they only have one base race: Angels. Magic evasion is very strong but superbosses that only rely on spells aren't that common. They have very good traits however, so they are individually decent picks despite their race being C tier.
Notable Characters:
|
D Tier
| Alraune | |
|---|---|
| Support race that doesn't actually have much going for them. Healing boosts don't matter if getting hit will always result in a one shot. They simply don't have anything that you can't get from jobs. However, they do have good status resistances and a couple are good due to individual factors. The best thing about most Alraunes is that they can become Sea-Dwellers. More on Sea-dwellers in their section.
Alrauna. See the Queen Alraune entry under D Tier. Priestess. Same as Alrauna. |
| Angel | |
|---|---|
| Nullify Elemental (learned from Cupid of Lust) is nice but it doesn't work against Holy, Dark and of course, Chaos. Also, If a skill is both Fire and Physical, then you will take physical damage instead. The game picks whichever deals the most damage everytime, which doesn't play in your favor there. However, this ability could be useful if paired with MP drain (preventing the enemy from using anything that deals Holy damage) and physical immunity (e.g. from Waning Moon Dance).
|
| Chimera | |
|---|---|
| Lots of status immunity and alright stat spread. Unfortunately for them, everything they do, jobs and other races can do better. The artificial spirits from Force Mutant have strong stat debuffs, but unfortunately all superbosses have high resistances to stat debuffs.
Notable Characters:
|
| Demi-Human | |
|---|---|
| Cool passives but everything they get can be learnt through jobs.
Notable Characters:
|
| Dragon | |
|---|---|
| Good stat spread. Yep, that's pretty much all there is to say sadly. |
| Fairy | |
|---|---|
| Good for evasion and magical evasion stacking, which is sadly quite situational against superbosses. Everything they do, Harpies are better at it. Mermaids can become fairies too.
Notable Characters:
|
| Ghost | |
|---|---|
| Preemptive Surprise Box is good for sweeping. If you notice all the mobs are stunned when the battle start, you can kill them all with Pandora Vore.
Aside from that, they don't have a lot of synergy, really. Good Ghost monsters are good because they have other races, not because they are Ghosts. Notable Characters:
|
| Human | |
|---|---|
| Underwhelming race with underwhelming traits. Aside from the seven heroes who have their own tier, Humans don't have much going for them. The Worm Summoner line give them nice stat spread and the Vampire racial line doesn't offer anything that jobs don't do better.
7 Heroes. High tier because of the Gravity Pleasure strategy. They also have very good traits on top of it. They have their own section in A tier.
|
| Imp/Succubus | |
|---|---|
| The race that's hurt the most by the fact that the Queen race change items aren't accessible in part 2. In the case of Succubi, all the good stuff is offered by the Queen Succubus race. They also have very underwhelming traits on top of that, and the introduction of Nightmares makes them look even worse.
|
| Land-Dweller | |
|---|---|
| Underwhelming race with good diversity in traits. They can become Yoma, who also don't have much going for them. |
| Mermaid | |
|---|---|
| Mostly useful for Mermaid Handjob and Mermaid Rape that inflict Pleasure weakness, making them pretty good for the Gravity Pleasure strategy. They aren't "bad" but they aren't amazing either.
Notable Characters:
|
| Queen Alraune | |
|---|---|
| Currently, only Alrauna has access to this race. She's very good at inflicting status ailments and instant death effects (thanks to Pollen Success Up, which she gets as both a racial passive and an equippable ability). She is useful as a sweeper thanks to Aztec Rose (guaranteed kill on anything not immune to Instant Death) and Venus Trap (kills any non-boss enemy with Trance). She can also inflict many status effects (mainly with Fragrance of the End, but Aroma of Intoxication is useful for inflicting Trance, and Petrifying Pollen for Petrify), some of which can work on bosses. Queen's Honey can also be useful for curing the party of status ailments. She also has decent status resistances, including several immunities. Priestess also has access to the race through an event in the story.
Unfortunately, there is currently no LoC gear that grants Haste for Plant skills. Another issue is that Aztec Rose become less relevant as you delve deeper due to monsters getting increased resistances to Instant Death effects. For the rest, everything else she does, other races or jobs can do better. Aztec Rose still make her very effective as a carry for early LoC so she can be a great help for people looking to farm gears in order to prepare before delving into the LoC. |
| Sea-Dweller | |
|---|---|
| Support race with some situational but interesting skills. The race is D or C tier depending on who you ask.
Time Warp Dance has a 50% chance to inflict Slow and Stop. But Time Magic is better against mobs and Slow/Stop Strike better against superbosses. Bullseye Song (+200% to accuracy) isn't that useful because sweepers will prefer to use auto-hit skills. DPS also have access to buffs to increase their accuracy. Dragon Pulse Song allows you to absorb wind, earth and water, which is sadly rather niche and no superbosses use only these elements. Dragon Palace Dance (all resists -50%) is very good... If they are weak to one of the 4 elements and/or you have enough element boosters in your gear to make good use of it. The issue with Sea-Dwellers is that they don't have anyone with Haste and their traits are underwhelming. Notable Characters:
|
| Vampire | |
|---|---|
| Underwhelming race with an identity crisis. They are some kind of jack of all trades that aren't good at anything they do sadly. Queen Vampire has Stop Strike +40%, but because she doesn't have additional attacks per action, an Insect or a Scylla will have far better chance to inflict Stop with a Stop Strike +20%. |
| Yoma | |
|---|---|
| Another jack of all trades that use rapiers. Rapiers are unfortunately underwhelming and everything they learn can be found in jobs.
The first one is pure MAG by using a Gammatron which gives you Gamma Burst (1800% MAG Fire/Nuclear, Auto-hit, Ignore def) and then stacking as much MAG and Black Magic/Nuclear/Fire Boosters as possible. In that case, she runs into the bane of MAG builds: Zero Tolerance got the 700% MAG skill boost and Testament offer haste on Black Magic/Time Magic/Summoning skills. Both are in the accessory slot and is a difficult choice to make. The second build is considered to be the optimal one with Attack Magi ability, Ultimate Charge (700% ATK for next turn with multiple legendary gears having it) and Testament in the accessory slot. A Gammatron with an ATK stat is recommended in the weapon slot.
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| Zombie | |
|---|---|
| They don't have much going for them, sadly. |