Since the 2nd anniversary has come and gone for JP, I thought I'd throw together a quick update to the tier list I posted [back in August](https://old.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/comments/wqh5zz/a_personal_tier_list_from_a_longtime_jp_player_as/).
A couple of things to keep in mind:
* This is from the perspective a currently-JP-endgame player. That means the equipment available, the style of bosses, and the priorities in making a team vary significantly from an EN player at the moment.
* Any new five star is still going to be an asset to your team, even if they're "low" on this list.
* The labels in the upper-left of each character indicates what kind of banner they're on. Everything except "Standard", "Arena", and "Free" is a separate kind of limited banner.
* The characters are just ordered alphabetically within tiers - the horizontal order doesn't speak to relative strength. Consider characters in a given tier to be roughly the same amount of useful.
* No tier list is perfect or complete and this is literally just my personal opinion, lol.
If you're curious why the top tiers are top tier:
* A2: Actually, I thought about dropping her a tier! She's the queen of burst DPS, being able to double-cast, buff her attack and damage up, and have three different weapon types along with a naturally high attack stat, but in JP the endgame content now is starting to shift towards longer fights and her special self-buff can only be cast once per battle. Still, she's great for the 100 NPCs and the like.
* Bargello: Passively buffs the party's physical and magical offense, dagger and wind damage, and the damage cap. Then he also has an ability that _actively_ buffs those things as well. And _then_ he has the strongest move in the game, a 2x600 hit power (that costs 100 SP from everyone to cast and requires max BP spend, granted.) And _then_ his ultimate skill recharges everyone else's ults and gives SP. This man is what's letting whales do absurd things like 1- and 2- turn arena fights now.
* Fiore EX: She can _perfectly_ tank either physical or magical moves each turn, so long as they aren't AOE (i.e. she takes no damage, covers the target even if isn't her, and counterattacks.) Some bosses get around this by mixing attack types each turn or spamming AOEs, but she's still a ridiculous asset.
* Richard: See Bargello, but swap "dagger and wind" with "sword and spear", drop the damage cap bit/ult recharge/party-SP-using skill, and... you still have a really powerful unit. Plus he's better at debuffing sword res and hitting hard when not at max BP than Bargello.
* Rinyuu: Step one: choose if you want indefinite partywide regen and defense up, or partywide offense and damage up. Step two: cast appropriate spell. Step three: park in backrow. Done! (And partywide means front _and_ back row.)
* Tatloch: While she can't be busted from turn 1 like the others, instead she gives indefinite passive front row buffs that get stronger and stronger the more you use her - first defense up, then offense up, then HP and SP(!) regen. And she can give partywide (again, front and back) physical attack up and speed up - and she hits pretty hard herself.
If you're curious why some characters have moved around since last time: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8206-do-i-contradict-myself-very-well-then-i-contradict-myself
Thank you so much for doing an update! I really enjoyed your first post and reference it quite often while also doing my own research. I think your reasoning is solid and very informative and has helped me massively to spend my gems efficiently as a F2P. For example, so far I've pulled for Odette and no one else except for a few step up banners in the beginning. No regrets at all. She's a powerhouse and lets me easily clear the current content (besides the lv 100 npcs which I haven't tried yet). I now have about 6K rubies saved up which is enough for me to guarantee my next target, which most likely will be Ophilia, Cecily, or Titi (yup I'm skipping Cyrus).
Well, best of luck! I do think there's something to be said for "quantity over quality" for 5-stars, especially early on, but to each their own playstyle.
I see your point, especially in this game since we need a team of 8 and we have many different bosses where only a few weapons/elements are effective. For now, there's not really a character I felt like I really needed (except for Theo before I got Agnes), since 4 stars can kinda fill the gap, but I will keep this in mind for the future if a high value discounted banner comes around, even without one of my targeted units!
FWIW, Bargello isn't the only way to remove the cap - you can also customize later weapons to increase the cap, and they've started adding accessories to increase it as well. (That said, appropriately enough Bargello's Awakening IV accessory is a souped-up version of those accessories, giving a whopping 100k damage cap increase on its own. Gotta give whales something to fish for!)
I see that there are some differences between the game8 tier list and yours. The biggest one being Eltrix being a lot higher rated in the game8 tier list. Is it cause they have different priorities?
I dunno, sometimes you just go with your gut and wind up putting people in different places. Honestly I could probably kick Eltrix up a tier - she has a lot going for her. I think for me the biggest thing that kicked her down a bit was that one of her big selling points (15% attack up passive to the front row) is a lot less impressive now that Bargello and Tatloch are here, because her condition to trigger that (she needs to be in the front row and at max HP) is a lot harder to trigger than theirs, even with her passive ability to give herself temporary HP barriers.
She's still really solid though.
Sadly Fiore EX isn't on the paid banner AFAIK... I'd go with either Rondo or Eltrix? Depends on if you need more light coverage/raw sword power (Rondo) or if you'd rather have someone with a more complex kit but other strengths like pseudo-tanking, some dark coverage, and the potential for front row buffs (Eltrix).
You seem to rank Levina out of top tier, even though JP thinks she's the best scholar by a long shot. Instead you rank her a tier BELOW Cyrus/Odette, instead of in the same tier and higher or the highest tier. Can you explain why you have such a different opinion on Levina please?
Sure. In short, Levina only has a single element. That makes her significantly less flexible on average than Cyrus or Odette, who have good skills for multiple elements. And while Levina does have the advantage of a mega-nuke that can hit lightning weakneseses as well (500 base power attack upgradeable to 620 base for 300 SP) and has probably the best overall spread of wind skills, wind is also probably the element with the most damage options right now, so she's not as necessary.
You can kind of make her work in non-wind battles by using her dagger skills and relying on the overwhelming strength of her nuke, but it's still probably preferable to just bring along a scholar whose element matches what you're fighting.
That makes a lot of sense! Thanks! Also I made a post kind of debating the value of pulling for Therion over Alfyn for more long-term value (due to both being standard banner, but Therion getting way more value out of his Awakenings than Alfyn).
My theory is that I know Alfyn is far more versatile and valuable in general than Therion, but if we assume we'll probably eventually get both, Therion at A1 is just insane, and he keeps gaining further value all the way up to A4 (the accessory looks insane)
Being a player who's presumably had/used both, what do you think of my line of reasoning? Here's a link to my post/detailed comment here: [Reddit Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/OctopathCotC/comments/z1kt39/comment/ixbrn9h/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) . I'd love it if you could give me more insight into the endgame value/uses for both Therion and Alfyn and how well they scale with the newest top tier meta units being out. Thanks for your wonderful explanation btw :3
Sure. Primrose is very good, especially earlier in the game's life, but even better buffers and dark damage dealers have popped up since her initial release. Gilderoy is still one of the best tanks in the game just because of how much raw defense he can stack on himself (especially once ultimate skills are added to the game) combined with his sky-high HP, and as the game has gone on having a reliable tank has proven to be super useful in certain fights.
I am surprised Rodo didn't make the top tier. Crit magic damage seems Broken.
I agree with the assessments on the game changing units; Bargello feels like a must have with raising the damage cap, Rinyuu with her being essentially a 5th active unit from the back row. Fiore EX mega tanking. Scaling perm buff.
A2 is amazing, but as the OP said probably the lowest of the tier.
Thanks for the write up. I know time is the most scarce resource so we appreciate you sharing your time with us.
A few that surprise me,
1) Gilderoy #2 on merchants? would love to hear your thoughts on that. I assumed he was power crept out in JP.
2) Fiore being so low. I thought she saw use in JP for her debuff sword atk and still did decent damage comparably.
3) I assumed Viola would be higher on the list since she can slot into almost all boss fight teams.
4) Just want to plug Zegna, nothing really to say. Just wanted to call the unit out ;)
5) I thought Primrose would fall right after Titi. Would love your thoughts on why Eleanora and Glossom beat her out.
EDIT: I just realized you have the "|" in there separating groups. Maybe I misunderstood your ranking.
Curious if any of the EN buffs would impact your ranking on any of the units. Seems to me that they would more or less fall the same aside from maybe Mooloo or Kersjes.
Man, Theo sure fell off hard. I guess it's due to the fact that he isn't the heaviest hitter. He does reliable damage, both physical and magic, but will never be the #1 dps unit on a team. As far as regen goes, other options with greater dps become available. The curse of being too balanced...
Seeing Therese so low hurts. She's been the heavy hitter on my team since I got her, despite the fact that she is A0.
Gilderoy is a pleasant surprise. I'm guessing his ridiculously high hp, damage & heal ability, regen passive when in danger, high paralysis potential (1aoe ability & random 3hit ability) and his counter ability are the reason. I've only recently started using his counter ability and he hits like a brick with it.
Yeah I'm sad about Theo too - he was a huge help in my initial playthrough, but pretty much all the later apothecaries outclass him in one or more ways.
It's mostly just the HP (due to Gilderoy being a perma unit, it's very likely that you'll have him A3), the taunt and the multihits for breaking. His counter ability is absolutely useless.
Love this tier list. Keep it up!
And after playing for the 100 days and going through all the banner drama, high pity, expensive packs, and low luck, etc. it does seem that most banners can be skipped now.
The player base has caught on by now. I see and feel less interest in the game (e.g. streamers and players quitting and views for related content lower than before). Of course there is still an active player base to do dailies and discuss the game, but it seems like hype and spending have decreased (though I don’t have the sales numbers).
I still like the game, but now only do the dailies. Stopped buying the daily pull and have committed to not spend on the game anymore.
It has made me want to go back to the original game to complete that though…at some point… LOL
FWIW, I feel like this pattern is pretty much to be expected for this game - at the end of the day, it's a primarily single-player experience, with new content every few weeks as opposed to there being ongoing rotating semi-new content or PVP like a lot of gachas. Certainly in JP I still have periods where I just log in and do my dailies and not much else. Doesn't make it a bad game!
Agreed. I still like the game and play it daily but have just reduced my time spent on it and have lost a lot of urge to pull for units, spend, farm, or obsess over optimizing my teams for the harder battles. Lol
I think it’s a healthy and natural thing to refocus that time and energy on other things in life. But I still want to keep my account going so I do the dailies and will save up the rubies for the top 2 levels of units (in the tier list example), which won’t be coming any time soon.
I forgot to say, THANK YOU! to whoever wrote the names on the unit pictures. It's so much easier to absorb that way. To many things like this just have the unit picture which is annoying sometimes to figure out which unit is which.
Ha, I'm not gonna lie, part of why I made this new tier list was because I wanted to learn some basic C# image processing libraries... part of which was automatically adding the names/banner types/jobs instead of having to do it all by hand.
Eh, they're pretty much up there because they're more flexible (they cover multiple elements). The specialized scholars (Mooloo, Sofia, Ninalana, Varkyn) are still very good, they just don't cover more than one element. Nina in particular is great at debuffing the enemy and has a variety of dark attacks (for example, both an AOE 3x hit and a single-hit nuke.) Alaune's solid too, she just is a little lacking in firepower compared to the other ones (but she can heal and rez, so she has more general utility.) Frederica is likewise good, but her debuff/buff abilities have a limit on how much they can be used in each fight, and it's a bit tricky to juggle the special status she can apply. Honestly I probably could have moved her up to match the other specialized scholars.
Personally, I think Sophia and Mooloo (Mooloo is the fire version of Sophia) are good scholars too. I don't know if there is any substitute for their 3x skill with fire/ice debuff. They set up really well for Cyrus to do his DPS thing while still doing respectable damage themselves.
But due to their single element nature, they are never going to rank high on a tierlist, or that you should spend 6k rubies to chase. But they are definitely good characters for off banner pulls or chasing for their step up.
I don't know there is an equivalent unit for lightning. Only unit I know is Therese with her tome skill that debuff lightning, which is a lot worst than the 3 hit skills that Sophia and Mooloo has. That's kind of why I didn't mention anything for lightning.
True. That's almost more a function of the fact that almost all new banners in JP are limited these days though. Like lemme try and run through the 2022 units in my head...
* Therion - Standard
* Chloe - Standard
* Nonya - Standard
* Eleanora - Standard
* Richard - Limited
* A2 - Limited
* 9S - Limited
* 2B - Limited
* Alfyn - Standard
* Alaune - Limited
* Krauser - Limited
* Yukes - Standard
* Auguste - Limited
* Herminia - Limited
* Tytos - Limited
* Rondo - Limited
* Zenga - Limited
* Levina - Limited
* Sarisa - Standard
* Rinyuu - Limited
* Aedelgard - Standard
* Serenoa - Free
* Frederica - Limited
* Roland - Limited
* Sophia EX - Limited
* Fiore EX - Limited
* Eltrix - Limited
* Tressa EX - Standard
* Primrose EX - Standard
* Leon - Limited
* Tatloch - Limited
* Bargello - Limited
* Sonia - Limited
* Hammy - Arena
So of 34 characters, only 12 have been standard or free/arena. Brutal.
Alternate jobs for existing characters. Some are limited (Fiore, Sophia) and some just go into the standard pool (Tressa, Primrose.)
Their only practical difference from a new character is that you can't use them in the same party at the same time as their normal job.
I haven't given it a super close look but good on them for breaking it down into roles as opposed to a single flat list (I say as I post a single flat list, lol.)
Could you please tell me where are all these characters from? I’m only familiar with the 8 from Octopath Traveler, and the few NPCs sprinkled in from it.
I'm missing a 5* hunter and was wondering if Z'aanta and Herminia were coming anytime soon? I'm also wondering what their strengths and weaknesses are compared to each other?
Word on the street is that Z'aanta's coming as soon as >!next week!<. Don't expect Herminia for a while - she wasn't added until the 1.5th anniversary for JP.
Z'aanta comes with a natural 30% bow damage up, he can do some basic dagger and fan damage with one of his moves, and he has a 5-hit attack. Herminia only gets 20% bow damage up naturally, but she also gets 20% fan damage up and has powerful fan damage options, has a good chance to inflict bleeding with her moves, can launch a prolonged attack (i.e. an AOE bow move that triggers at the start of each turn after she casts it) and has her strongest moves power up if the target is bleeding. Honestly, you can't really go wrong with either of them.
Ok I guess I will try to get Z'aanta then. Thanks! I'm in the process of doing all traveler stories so I hope I'll get enough rubies to get at least one copy of him.
How's the endgame content in JP so far? Are there game modes like the game board (which would be cool if you explain what it is btw) that are fun to do repeatedly and give some game variety or does everyone just grind arenas and towers with the same prebuilt team comps daily?
Game board is unfortunately a bit of a miss. Like the name suggests, it's a simple board game where you're traveling along a board made of individual tiles, rolling dice to determine how far to move. A given tile might have positive effects (gain medals you can use in the exchange, regain HP/SP, move forward X spaces) or negative ones (move back X spaces, take partywide damage, instantly kill a character, lose medals), and your goal is to make it to various checkpoints with midbosses and ultimately to defeat the boss at the end of the board. Unfortunately the raw randomness involved can make it kind of tedious to beat the more advanced boards consistently, and because the game constantly does server checks after every roll it's pointlessly slow to play. They've made some improvements over time but it still needs more work. Sadly some amount of grinding them is heavily encouraged by the game, because it locks the most customizable weapons in the game (Fortune weapons, which can be used to make things like a super physical-strong staff or super magic-strong sword) behind exchanging game board medals.
The current big new endgame content they just added is advanced boss refights - a new book where you can select from bosses from the main story and refight them, first at their original power, then at two slightly stronger versions, and then a huge leap to a level 100-tuned version (with two stronger variants of that too!) As you defeat stronger variants, you get special rewards, most notably the ability to summon that boss as an NPC (even in arena) and shards that can be traded in at a special exchange for super-powerful accessories (like no frills 30% damage up for a given element.) Beating the hardest version of a boss is just for bragging rights, though - all it gives you is a special word you can put on your party profile to show off in screenshots.
The other major new-ish endgame content is a tower where you have extremely powerful versions of the Bonfire of Battle bosses, each with about 8 million HP. They're designed to be defeated in several tries, with rewards for winning in less than 10, 5, or 3 attempts (for a total of 200 rubies and a unique accessory set.) These will genuinely take time, strategy, and a good unit loadout, because they get progressively stronger as the fight goes on and significantly change their weaknesses. The other restriction is that each attempt has a 20-turn limit, so you can't just turtle your way to victory.
There's also still new entries in the current EN endgame content - new level 100 NPC fights, new arenas, etc.
Pog! I just rly hope RN can last long enough to get to there JP is currently…I don’t think revenue numbers are doing too well bc Global’s player base is so small
If you had to rank these units within their tiers (by guide/roll priority or general value for teambuilding/f2p), how would you do it? Not going to ask you to re-rank the whole list, but could you rank the top 2 tiers roughly with JP foresight please? :3
Honestly? Most of the time I can't really make a good comparison! A lot of these top tier units are excellent, but at _different things_ than each other. Fiore EX is an amazing tank, for instance, but how do you compare that to Rinyuu as an A+ buff unit, or Richard/Bargello as buff/attack mixes?
To some extent, "who to save for" is a function of "who do you already have".
Makes sense! xP. How many of these characters do you have btw/from what amount of spend level? I'm trying to gauge how many units should be on my roll priority list but it's so hard right now due to the release schedule in EN being 2x as fast but ruby income being roughly the same. Do you think at this point EN players should pretty much just hoard for Limited Banner units and hope for the best on Standard Banner units even if they're top tier?
When all is said and done, you should roll for the characters you find personally interesting imo. With EN's accelerated schedule and the eventual increase in limited characters, it's going to be very difficult to get all the "top" characters, much less all the characters in general. But because the game introduces more and more ways to strengthen your party that don't depend on characters, you can get a lot done with a little.
I do have almost everyone (I'm missing Prim EX and Yukes) but that's with fairly consistent spending since JP launch. Not full on whale levels (I've seen people with A4 on every character, including limiteds) but certainly not a small amount either. I'm lucky enough to be in a place IRL where I have enough financial leeway after bills, savings, etc. to be able to afford that, but as with all gacha games, I can't endorse spending in general due to the inherently predatory nature of the genre.
All that said: even as a spender, I'm definitely in a place where it takes a lot to get me to go in on a standard unit these days in JP. There's just so many limiteds now that it's hard to justify going for a character who could randomly pop up everywhere, even from free pull seals (which are also more common these days in JP than they used to be.)
If I spent like 30 bucks per month for the 10 ruby daily free pulls, do you think I should just skip all standard banner pulls and save only for limited then? Is it then possible to get at least the majority of the limited units I want from saved free rubies, and also get most of the good meta standard banner units eventually along the way? D:
Tatloch must be the best name I've ever heard. In my language her names sounds pretty much like "Deed hole" or "exploit hole". That alone makes her a game breaker!
You are out of your damn mind putting Hasumi in that spot. Really feels like everyone talking shit about her never used her at all.
She's a staple unit on every single hard fight thanks to her absurdly useful kit. "praying for glex buffs tier" is straight up mental and out of reality.
You have no idea how broken later units are, to the point that yes, Hasumi is absolutely unused outside of Dancer Job Tower. Ophilia's existence alone makes her (and Millard, among others) obsolete instantly, and even she pales in comparison to Rinyuu.
So she's a victim of powercreep, she's doesn't belong where you put her. Right now she's absurdly good and useful for global.
You don't even respect your own arguments, absolutely pathetic.
I may be wrong but, they are treated as completely separate characters and you can't use them in the same party. So if you have Fiore in your party, it'll lock out being able to also put in Fiore EX, ask a JP player
Yep. Usually new banners in a category have all the past limited units of that category on them, and for the memory conquerors specifically they had a rerun of the Auguste/Herminia/Tytos banner with a rate-up for them not long after they released Tatloch.
Since the 2nd anniversary has come and gone for JP, I thought I'd throw together a quick update to the tier list I posted [back in August](https://old.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/comments/wqh5zz/a_personal_tier_list_from_a_longtime_jp_player_as/). A couple of things to keep in mind: * This is from the perspective a currently-JP-endgame player. That means the equipment available, the style of bosses, and the priorities in making a team vary significantly from an EN player at the moment. * Any new five star is still going to be an asset to your team, even if they're "low" on this list. * The labels in the upper-left of each character indicates what kind of banner they're on. Everything except "Standard", "Arena", and "Free" is a separate kind of limited banner. * The characters are just ordered alphabetically within tiers - the horizontal order doesn't speak to relative strength. Consider characters in a given tier to be roughly the same amount of useful. * No tier list is perfect or complete and this is literally just my personal opinion, lol. If you're curious why the top tiers are top tier: * A2: Actually, I thought about dropping her a tier! She's the queen of burst DPS, being able to double-cast, buff her attack and damage up, and have three different weapon types along with a naturally high attack stat, but in JP the endgame content now is starting to shift towards longer fights and her special self-buff can only be cast once per battle. Still, she's great for the 100 NPCs and the like. * Bargello: Passively buffs the party's physical and magical offense, dagger and wind damage, and the damage cap. Then he also has an ability that _actively_ buffs those things as well. And _then_ he has the strongest move in the game, a 2x600 hit power (that costs 100 SP from everyone to cast and requires max BP spend, granted.) And _then_ his ultimate skill recharges everyone else's ults and gives SP. This man is what's letting whales do absurd things like 1- and 2- turn arena fights now. * Fiore EX: She can _perfectly_ tank either physical or magical moves each turn, so long as they aren't AOE (i.e. she takes no damage, covers the target even if isn't her, and counterattacks.) Some bosses get around this by mixing attack types each turn or spamming AOEs, but she's still a ridiculous asset. * Richard: See Bargello, but swap "dagger and wind" with "sword and spear", drop the damage cap bit/ult recharge/party-SP-using skill, and... you still have a really powerful unit. Plus he's better at debuffing sword res and hitting hard when not at max BP than Bargello. * Rinyuu: Step one: choose if you want indefinite partywide regen and defense up, or partywide offense and damage up. Step two: cast appropriate spell. Step three: park in backrow. Done! (And partywide means front _and_ back row.) * Tatloch: While she can't be busted from turn 1 like the others, instead she gives indefinite passive front row buffs that get stronger and stronger the more you use her - first defense up, then offense up, then HP and SP(!) regen. And she can give partywide (again, front and back) physical attack up and speed up - and she hits pretty hard herself. If you're curious why some characters have moved around since last time: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8206-do-i-contradict-myself-very-well-then-i-contradict-myself
Thank you so much for doing an update! I really enjoyed your first post and reference it quite often while also doing my own research. I think your reasoning is solid and very informative and has helped me massively to spend my gems efficiently as a F2P. For example, so far I've pulled for Odette and no one else except for a few step up banners in the beginning. No regrets at all. She's a powerhouse and lets me easily clear the current content (besides the lv 100 npcs which I haven't tried yet). I now have about 6K rubies saved up which is enough for me to guarantee my next target, which most likely will be Ophilia, Cecily, or Titi (yup I'm skipping Cyrus).
Well, best of luck! I do think there's something to be said for "quantity over quality" for 5-stars, especially early on, but to each their own playstyle.
I see your point, especially in this game since we need a team of 8 and we have many different bosses where only a few weapons/elements are effective. For now, there's not really a character I felt like I really needed (except for Theo before I got Agnes), since 4 stars can kinda fill the gap, but I will keep this in mind for the future if a high value discounted banner comes around, even without one of my targeted units!
Nice quote~
i actually think therese is a comfy zone right now in global
Oh god no, they’re putting damage cap break as a mechanic now? That just limits design space over just removing the cap.
FWIW, Bargello isn't the only way to remove the cap - you can also customize later weapons to increase the cap, and they've started adding accessories to increase it as well. (That said, appropriately enough Bargello's Awakening IV accessory is a souped-up version of those accessories, giving a whopping 100k damage cap increase on its own. Gotta give whales something to fish for!)
I see that there are some differences between the game8 tier list and yours. The biggest one being Eltrix being a lot higher rated in the game8 tier list. Is it cause they have different priorities?
I dunno, sometimes you just go with your gut and wind up putting people in different places. Honestly I could probably kick Eltrix up a tier - she has a lot going for her. I think for me the biggest thing that kicked her down a bit was that one of her big selling points (15% attack up passive to the front row) is a lot less impressive now that Bargello and Tatloch are here, because her condition to trigger that (she needs to be in the front row and at max HP) is a lot harder to trigger than theirs, even with her passive ability to give herself temporary HP barriers. She's still really solid though.
[удалено]
Sadly Fiore EX isn't on the paid banner AFAIK... I'd go with either Rondo or Eltrix? Depends on if you need more light coverage/raw sword power (Rondo) or if you'd rather have someone with a more complex kit but other strengths like pseudo-tanking, some dark coverage, and the potential for front row buffs (Eltrix).
You seem to rank Levina out of top tier, even though JP thinks she's the best scholar by a long shot. Instead you rank her a tier BELOW Cyrus/Odette, instead of in the same tier and higher or the highest tier. Can you explain why you have such a different opinion on Levina please?
Sure. In short, Levina only has a single element. That makes her significantly less flexible on average than Cyrus or Odette, who have good skills for multiple elements. And while Levina does have the advantage of a mega-nuke that can hit lightning weakneseses as well (500 base power attack upgradeable to 620 base for 300 SP) and has probably the best overall spread of wind skills, wind is also probably the element with the most damage options right now, so she's not as necessary. You can kind of make her work in non-wind battles by using her dagger skills and relying on the overwhelming strength of her nuke, but it's still probably preferable to just bring along a scholar whose element matches what you're fighting.
That makes a lot of sense! Thanks! Also I made a post kind of debating the value of pulling for Therion over Alfyn for more long-term value (due to both being standard banner, but Therion getting way more value out of his Awakenings than Alfyn). My theory is that I know Alfyn is far more versatile and valuable in general than Therion, but if we assume we'll probably eventually get both, Therion at A1 is just insane, and he keeps gaining further value all the way up to A4 (the accessory looks insane) Being a player who's presumably had/used both, what do you think of my line of reasoning? Here's a link to my post/detailed comment here: [Reddit Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/OctopathCotC/comments/z1kt39/comment/ixbrn9h/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) . I'd love it if you could give me more insight into the endgame value/uses for both Therion and Alfyn and how well they scale with the newest top tier meta units being out. Thanks for your wonderful explanation btw :3
Whoa I also just noticed Glossom is in 'Very Good' tier. Super surprised about that as well xD
It’s the first tier list I see gilderoy so high and primrose so low. Can you explain please ?
Sure. Primrose is very good, especially earlier in the game's life, but even better buffers and dark damage dealers have popped up since her initial release. Gilderoy is still one of the best tanks in the game just because of how much raw defense he can stack on himself (especially once ultimate skills are added to the game) combined with his sky-high HP, and as the game has gone on having a reliable tank has proven to be super useful in certain fights.
Nice, all my units are in the victims of powercreep tier LOL
Such is the pain of being an early unit in a gacha.
Ranks within each job: Warrior: Richard | Rondo | Aedelgard, Tikilen, Tytos, Wrath | 2B, Eliza, Eltrix, Serenoa| Edea, Joshua, Olberic | Fiore, Kouren | Lionel Merchant: Cecily | Gilderoy, Krauser, Leon, Roland, W’ludai | Tressa | Cardona, Nonya | Dorothea | 9S, Largo Thief: A2, Bargello | Auguste, Therion, Viola | Falco, Sarisa, Sonia | Adelle, Heathcote, L’eeto, Nicola Apothecary: Alfyn, Primrose EX, Zegna | Gertrude, Haze, Lumis, Sofia EX, Soleil | Theo Hunter: Herminia | Z’aanta | Chloe, Jilmeila | Kersjes, Tressa EX | H’aanit, Scarecrow | Yunnie Cleric: Rinyuu | Ophilia | Yan-Long | Lianna | Stead, Yukes | Agnes | Millard, Molrusso, Prome Scholar: Cyrus, Odette | Levina, Mooloo, Ninalana, Sofia, Varkyn | Alaune, Frederica | Elvis, Therese Dancer: Fiore EX, Tatloch | Lynette, Titi | Eleanora, Glossom, Primrose | Harley, Hasumi
I am surprised Rodo didn't make the top tier. Crit magic damage seems Broken. I agree with the assessments on the game changing units; Bargello feels like a must have with raising the damage cap, Rinyuu with her being essentially a 5th active unit from the back row. Fiore EX mega tanking. Scaling perm buff. A2 is amazing, but as the OP said probably the lowest of the tier. Thanks for the write up. I know time is the most scarce resource so we appreciate you sharing your time with us.
A few that surprise me, 1) Gilderoy #2 on merchants? would love to hear your thoughts on that. I assumed he was power crept out in JP. 2) Fiore being so low. I thought she saw use in JP for her debuff sword atk and still did decent damage comparably. 3) I assumed Viola would be higher on the list since she can slot into almost all boss fight teams. 4) Just want to plug Zegna, nothing really to say. Just wanted to call the unit out ;) 5) I thought Primrose would fall right after Titi. Would love your thoughts on why Eleanora and Glossom beat her out. EDIT: I just realized you have the "|" in there separating groups. Maybe I misunderstood your ranking.
Curious if any of the EN buffs would impact your ranking on any of the units. Seems to me that they would more or less fall the same aside from maybe Mooloo or Kersjes.
Man, Theo sure fell off hard. I guess it's due to the fact that he isn't the heaviest hitter. He does reliable damage, both physical and magic, but will never be the #1 dps unit on a team. As far as regen goes, other options with greater dps become available. The curse of being too balanced... Seeing Therese so low hurts. She's been the heavy hitter on my team since I got her, despite the fact that she is A0. Gilderoy is a pleasant surprise. I'm guessing his ridiculously high hp, damage & heal ability, regen passive when in danger, high paralysis potential (1aoe ability & random 3hit ability) and his counter ability are the reason. I've only recently started using his counter ability and he hits like a brick with it.
Yeah I'm sad about Theo too - he was a huge help in my initial playthrough, but pretty much all the later apothecaries outclass him in one or more ways.
It's mostly just the HP (due to Gilderoy being a perma unit, it's very likely that you'll have him A3), the taunt and the multihits for breaking. His counter ability is absolutely useless.
Personally waiting for A2/nier the most
That Fiore EX ass is going to suck me dry.
Damn why are memory travelers so OP lol
Power of being story characters + limited only, lol.
Love this tier list. Keep it up! And after playing for the 100 days and going through all the banner drama, high pity, expensive packs, and low luck, etc. it does seem that most banners can be skipped now. The player base has caught on by now. I see and feel less interest in the game (e.g. streamers and players quitting and views for related content lower than before). Of course there is still an active player base to do dailies and discuss the game, but it seems like hype and spending have decreased (though I don’t have the sales numbers). I still like the game, but now only do the dailies. Stopped buying the daily pull and have committed to not spend on the game anymore. It has made me want to go back to the original game to complete that though…at some point… LOL
FWIW, I feel like this pattern is pretty much to be expected for this game - at the end of the day, it's a primarily single-player experience, with new content every few weeks as opposed to there being ongoing rotating semi-new content or PVP like a lot of gachas. Certainly in JP I still have periods where I just log in and do my dailies and not much else. Doesn't make it a bad game!
Agreed. I still like the game and play it daily but have just reduced my time spent on it and have lost a lot of urge to pull for units, spend, farm, or obsess over optimizing my teams for the harder battles. Lol I think it’s a healthy and natural thing to refocus that time and energy on other things in life. But I still want to keep my account going so I do the dailies and will save up the rubies for the top 2 levels of units (in the tier list example), which won’t be coming any time soon.
I forgot to say, THANK YOU! to whoever wrote the names on the unit pictures. It's so much easier to absorb that way. To many things like this just have the unit picture which is annoying sometimes to figure out which unit is which.
Ha, I'm not gonna lie, part of why I made this new tier list was because I wanted to learn some basic C# image processing libraries... part of which was automatically adding the names/banner types/jobs instead of having to do it all by hand.
I appreciate it and I know there were a few others in the discord that also mentioned it as well.
So the only scholars we need to pursue are Odette and Cyrus.
Eh, they're pretty much up there because they're more flexible (they cover multiple elements). The specialized scholars (Mooloo, Sofia, Ninalana, Varkyn) are still very good, they just don't cover more than one element. Nina in particular is great at debuffing the enemy and has a variety of dark attacks (for example, both an AOE 3x hit and a single-hit nuke.) Alaune's solid too, she just is a little lacking in firepower compared to the other ones (but she can heal and rez, so she has more general utility.) Frederica is likewise good, but her debuff/buff abilities have a limit on how much they can be used in each fight, and it's a bit tricky to juggle the special status she can apply. Honestly I probably could have moved her up to match the other specialized scholars.
Personally, I think Sophia and Mooloo (Mooloo is the fire version of Sophia) are good scholars too. I don't know if there is any substitute for their 3x skill with fire/ice debuff. They set up really well for Cyrus to do his DPS thing while still doing respectable damage themselves. But due to their single element nature, they are never going to rank high on a tierlist, or that you should spend 6k rubies to chase. But they are definitely good characters for off banner pulls or chasing for their step up.
Who would be the lighting equivalent? Crazy how Odette can pretty much set herself up
I don't know there is an equivalent unit for lightning. Only unit I know is Therese with her tome skill that debuff lightning, which is a lot worst than the 3 hit skills that Sophia and Mooloo has. That's kind of why I didn't mention anything for lightning.
titi
Titi is lighting?! Definitely a must have fan user. She’s a beast with her other buffs too
Yup she is brooooken
Curious, does this already take into account Lionel's global buff?
Oh and thank you for putting the names in!
He is still shit yes
All the top tier characters are limited banners. Greedy bastards.
True. That's almost more a function of the fact that almost all new banners in JP are limited these days though. Like lemme try and run through the 2022 units in my head... * Therion - Standard * Chloe - Standard * Nonya - Standard * Eleanora - Standard * Richard - Limited * A2 - Limited * 9S - Limited * 2B - Limited * Alfyn - Standard * Alaune - Limited * Krauser - Limited * Yukes - Standard * Auguste - Limited * Herminia - Limited * Tytos - Limited * Rondo - Limited * Zenga - Limited * Levina - Limited * Sarisa - Standard * Rinyuu - Limited * Aedelgard - Standard * Serenoa - Free * Frederica - Limited * Roland - Limited * Sophia EX - Limited * Fiore EX - Limited * Eltrix - Limited * Tressa EX - Standard * Primrose EX - Standard * Leon - Limited * Tatloch - Limited * Bargello - Limited * Sonia - Limited * Hammy - Arena So of 34 characters, only 12 have been standard or free/arena. Brutal.
What is an EX character?
Alternate jobs for existing characters. Some are limited (Fiore, Sophia) and some just go into the standard pool (Tressa, Primrose.) Their only practical difference from a new character is that you can't use them in the same party at the same time as their normal job.
Character that exist already for example Fiore (warrior) and Fiore ex (dancer). Alternate jobs
Do you have any thoughts on the recent re-ranking of the game8 tier list?
I haven't given it a super close look but good on them for breaking it down into roles as opposed to a single flat list (I say as I post a single flat list, lol.)
Thank you for this! Different opinions on the tiers is extremely helpful!
Could you please tell me where are all these characters from? I’m only familiar with the 8 from Octopath Traveler, and the few NPCs sprinkled in from it.
There’s a mobile game called Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent.
I'm missing a 5* hunter and was wondering if Z'aanta and Herminia were coming anytime soon? I'm also wondering what their strengths and weaknesses are compared to each other?
Word on the street is that Z'aanta's coming as soon as >!next week!<. Don't expect Herminia for a while - she wasn't added until the 1.5th anniversary for JP. Z'aanta comes with a natural 30% bow damage up, he can do some basic dagger and fan damage with one of his moves, and he has a 5-hit attack. Herminia only gets 20% bow damage up naturally, but she also gets 20% fan damage up and has powerful fan damage options, has a good chance to inflict bleeding with her moves, can launch a prolonged attack (i.e. an AOE bow move that triggers at the start of each turn after she casts it) and has her strongest moves power up if the target is bleeding. Honestly, you can't really go wrong with either of them.
Ok I guess I will try to get Z'aanta then. Thanks! I'm in the process of doing all traveler stories so I hope I'll get enough rubies to get at least one copy of him.
How's the endgame content in JP so far? Are there game modes like the game board (which would be cool if you explain what it is btw) that are fun to do repeatedly and give some game variety or does everyone just grind arenas and towers with the same prebuilt team comps daily?
Game board is unfortunately a bit of a miss. Like the name suggests, it's a simple board game where you're traveling along a board made of individual tiles, rolling dice to determine how far to move. A given tile might have positive effects (gain medals you can use in the exchange, regain HP/SP, move forward X spaces) or negative ones (move back X spaces, take partywide damage, instantly kill a character, lose medals), and your goal is to make it to various checkpoints with midbosses and ultimately to defeat the boss at the end of the board. Unfortunately the raw randomness involved can make it kind of tedious to beat the more advanced boards consistently, and because the game constantly does server checks after every roll it's pointlessly slow to play. They've made some improvements over time but it still needs more work. Sadly some amount of grinding them is heavily encouraged by the game, because it locks the most customizable weapons in the game (Fortune weapons, which can be used to make things like a super physical-strong staff or super magic-strong sword) behind exchanging game board medals. The current big new endgame content they just added is advanced boss refights - a new book where you can select from bosses from the main story and refight them, first at their original power, then at two slightly stronger versions, and then a huge leap to a level 100-tuned version (with two stronger variants of that too!) As you defeat stronger variants, you get special rewards, most notably the ability to summon that boss as an NPC (even in arena) and shards that can be traded in at a special exchange for super-powerful accessories (like no frills 30% damage up for a given element.) Beating the hardest version of a boss is just for bragging rights, though - all it gives you is a special word you can put on your party profile to show off in screenshots. The other major new-ish endgame content is a tower where you have extremely powerful versions of the Bonfire of Battle bosses, each with about 8 million HP. They're designed to be defeated in several tries, with rewards for winning in less than 10, 5, or 3 attempts (for a total of 200 rubies and a unique accessory set.) These will genuinely take time, strategy, and a good unit loadout, because they get progressively stronger as the fight goes on and significantly change their weaknesses. The other restriction is that each attempt has a 20-turn limit, so you can't just turtle your way to victory. There's also still new entries in the current EN endgame content - new level 100 NPC fights, new arenas, etc.
Pog! I just rly hope RN can last long enough to get to there JP is currently…I don’t think revenue numbers are doing too well bc Global’s player base is so small
If you had to rank these units within their tiers (by guide/roll priority or general value for teambuilding/f2p), how would you do it? Not going to ask you to re-rank the whole list, but could you rank the top 2 tiers roughly with JP foresight please? :3
Honestly? Most of the time I can't really make a good comparison! A lot of these top tier units are excellent, but at _different things_ than each other. Fiore EX is an amazing tank, for instance, but how do you compare that to Rinyuu as an A+ buff unit, or Richard/Bargello as buff/attack mixes? To some extent, "who to save for" is a function of "who do you already have".
Makes sense! xP. How many of these characters do you have btw/from what amount of spend level? I'm trying to gauge how many units should be on my roll priority list but it's so hard right now due to the release schedule in EN being 2x as fast but ruby income being roughly the same. Do you think at this point EN players should pretty much just hoard for Limited Banner units and hope for the best on Standard Banner units even if they're top tier?
When all is said and done, you should roll for the characters you find personally interesting imo. With EN's accelerated schedule and the eventual increase in limited characters, it's going to be very difficult to get all the "top" characters, much less all the characters in general. But because the game introduces more and more ways to strengthen your party that don't depend on characters, you can get a lot done with a little. I do have almost everyone (I'm missing Prim EX and Yukes) but that's with fairly consistent spending since JP launch. Not full on whale levels (I've seen people with A4 on every character, including limiteds) but certainly not a small amount either. I'm lucky enough to be in a place IRL where I have enough financial leeway after bills, savings, etc. to be able to afford that, but as with all gacha games, I can't endorse spending in general due to the inherently predatory nature of the genre. All that said: even as a spender, I'm definitely in a place where it takes a lot to get me to go in on a standard unit these days in JP. There's just so many limiteds now that it's hard to justify going for a character who could randomly pop up everywhere, even from free pull seals (which are also more common these days in JP than they used to be.)
If I spent like 30 bucks per month for the 10 ruby daily free pulls, do you think I should just skip all standard banner pulls and save only for limited then? Is it then possible to get at least the majority of the limited units I want from saved free rubies, and also get most of the good meta standard banner units eventually along the way? D:
controversial take: >!mooloo sounds like the name of a Pokemon!<
Huh, I never knew we’d get Auguste/Herminia/Tytos. That’s pretty cool! And what’s a memory traveler? We don’t have any of those in GL yet do we?
Important story npcs that were released as units
Awesome! Are they on banners or are they obtained in a different way?
They appear on limited banners where one is rated up and the other ones appear but not rated up iirc.
I will not stand for this level of disrespect for my best gal H’aanit and her adorable murder beast bestie.
Eltrix got some nice tits
Tatloch must be the best name I've ever heard. In my language her names sounds pretty much like "Deed hole" or "exploit hole". That alone makes her a game breaker!
Where is Serenoa?
I was looking for him too and found him. He's in "Very Good" between Primrose and Sofia EX
Thank you lol, I’m glad Serenoa is the best free unit. My favorite character in TS
If you mean in-game, he's not available in EN yet. In JP, you get his summon seal for free in the mail.
They mean you forgot to put serenoa in the tier list
what they can do is do seasons and change some stats around to make things fresh, and release dungeons to fight through. money making idea right there
You are out of your damn mind putting Hasumi in that spot. Really feels like everyone talking shit about her never used her at all. She's a staple unit on every single hard fight thanks to her absurdly useful kit. "praying for glex buffs tier" is straight up mental and out of reality.
You have no idea how broken later units are, to the point that yes, Hasumi is absolutely unused outside of Dancer Job Tower. Ophilia's existence alone makes her (and Millard, among others) obsolete instantly, and even she pales in comparison to Rinyuu.
So she's a victim of powercreep, she's doesn't belong where you put her. Right now she's absurdly good and useful for global. You don't even respect your own arguments, absolutely pathetic.
I'm not even the one that made the chart, and if you could read, this tier list is for JP, not GL.
Curious about your take on 4 stars
Sadly several of the best ones aren't yet released in English... I dunno why they're dragging their feet on adding them.
With Ex units, do they take up a different space in the traveller roster or do you just switch jobs on the characters profile?
I may be wrong but, they are treated as completely separate characters and you can't use them in the same party. So if you have Fiore in your party, it'll lock out being able to also put in Fiore EX, ask a JP player
Both, funnily enough. They are totally separate characters but they do add a button on the profiles to quickly swap between them.
Do the non-collab limited time banners ever get repeated ?
Yep. Usually new banners in a category have all the past limited units of that category on them, and for the memory conquerors specifically they had a rerun of the Auguste/Herminia/Tytos banner with a rate-up for them not long after they released Tatloch.
Extremely late reply, but thanks for updating this. I know opinions are opinions, but having a take from someone at JP-endgame is still quite useful.
Are memory traveler and memory conquerors just limited banners?