The First Descendant Tier List (July 2024)

Move over Warframe and Destiny 2 – The First Descendant is here to compete in the looter-shooter space. Like Warframe, The First Descendant features an ever-growing variety of playable characters, and today, we’re putting them into tiers to help guide you toward your next Descendant of choice. Here’s our The First Descendant tier list.

The First Descendant Characters Tier List

S Tier Characters

Jayber

Jayber is one of those kinds of characters that is useful in almost every kind of content in The First Descendant. He utilizes both an attacking turret as well as a healing one that can be enhanced by his other ability that summons a weapon enhancing both turrets. Likewise, his ultimate recalls his turrets and lets him send them out once again, but this time they arrive already enhanced.

His kit is simple and effective, and his attack is increased when both turrets are out, making him very capable in pretty much all content.

Kyle

Where Ajax falters as a tank, Kyle succeeds by using his Magnetic Force to take damage for him. This works by Magnetic Force acting as its own source that, when depleted, recovers Kyle’s shields and more Magnetic Force over time. His Magnetism Spurt skill additionally converts Magnetic Force into another health pool that drains itself first when he takes damage, allowing his HP or shields to safely regenerate.

His other two abilities, a force field and dash, regenerate Magnetic Force as well while being a decent source of damage and defense respectively. Finally, Kyle’s ultimate ‘Superconductivity Thrusters’ lets him pull off a Titan Thundercrash-like attack that deals more direct damage than you would think. This makes Kyle a good tank, but also a good damage dealer to trash mobs and bosses.

Bunny

Bunny is one of the fastest characters in The First Descendant. Her abilities and passive let her not only run faster but charge and deal electrical damage as she does so. Because her abilities work so well with each other, her damage output is startlingly high. Even her ultimate, which shoots electricity, makes her a viable pick for bursting down bosses.

While she is a little squishy in terms of durability, her maneuverability makes up for it. Especially when simply moving around and then landing after a double jump damages nearby enemies and electrocutes them.

Yujin

Yujin represents one of the best when it comes to supporting characters by being the embodiment of support. His main abilities heal allies and increase their attack damage, debuff enemies and heal allies that attack them, and reduce ally damage taken while increasing healing. Those three skills alone make Yujin a very effective support character, but his ultimate puts him over the top.

His ultimate, ‘Hyperreactive Healing Ground’ heals himself and his allies, removes debuffs, and grants immunity to further debuffs. Yujin does this all while his ultimate also increases his own attack and skill power. If that wasn’t enough, his passive lets him rescue teammates faster and increases their max HP temporarily once revived. Great character, undoubtedly going to be used often.

A Tier Characters

Esiemo

Esiemo is one of the newer characters coming when The First Descendant launches. As a DPS character, his skill kit revolves around dealing burst damage via remotely detonated bombs that he can launch onto enemies and terrain. He also features a landmine skill that he can use to cover the team’s flank since they detonate automatically when enemies are nearby.

Esiemo’s ultimate works well with his passive, allowing him to charge into enemies, do massive damage, strip them of buffs, and then drop another bomb after his shields deplete. He’s not the tankiest character, but setting up moments of extreme burst damage is satisfying and useful.

Gley

Gley is an interesting damage character who trades her own HP for strong attacks. She has a berserk mode that increases damage, and ways to siphon health from enemies. Her passive is what really makes her unique. When she kills an enemy, she spawns a life sphere that restores the HP she used to enter her berserk mode. Meanwhile, her ultimate transforms her gun into ‘Massacre’ that deals additional damage while frenzied and stuns enemies on hit.

You’ll just have to be careful to not get her health too low while entering berserk mode.

Valby

Valby is a lot like Freyna in that her water abilities cause lots of damage over time. Each one of Valby’s abilities creates these puddles that do lots of damage over time and last around 10 seconds. Meanwhile, if Valby stands in these large puddles, the cost of her skills is reduced. This can cause a snowball effect where her very mobile abilities nearly fuel themselves with efficient casting.

Valby isn’t the best against bosses due to a lack of direct damage, but her ultimate has incredible crowd control where giant bubbles pull in enemies and do respectable damage.

Lepic

Lepic is a pretty good all-around DPS character. His ability kit is all about throwing grenades. One grenade pulls enemies together and the other explodes. This makes him pretty good at clearing trash mobs or groups of enemies in general. Lepic’s overclock ability increases skill attack damage, while also adding a burn effect to his grenades. Meanwhile, his ultimate creates an AoE zone from an artillery shell he fires, dealing damage over time to anything in it.

Fun, solid, and fairly balanced but not the best.

Freyna

Freyna is another DPS, damage-over-time character that plays somewhat similar to Blair. The difference, and the reason she’s A-tier versus Blair’s B-tier, is her more consistent damage output. Freyna’s poison abilities scale better the more she’s able to poison others. This works out really well compared to other damage-over-time characters since her Decomposed Poison skill allows poisoned enemies to spread it to other nearby enemies through their poisoned footprints.

Freyna even has a defensive skill that significantly raises her defense, while also inflicting those that attack her with Room 0 Trauma. She’s pretty solid all around, but her lack of direct boss damage holds her back from S-tier.

B Tier Characters

Blair

Blair is a character that revolves around using fire spells to burn enemies and create hotspots called Stoves. The more he burns, the more critical damage he does, and the more stoves on the battlefield increase his crit chance. The only problem is that his entire kit centers on damaging abilities with little in the way of crowd control.

His damage isn’t quite as potent as other characters with similar loadouts. This makes Blair fairly average at the moment.

Ajax

Ajax is one of the tank characters you will likely get access to sooner rather than later. Ajax is actually a pretty good tank in his own right, with the ability to make force fields that block projectiles but allow you to shoot through, and an ultimate that’s similar to Destiny 2’s Titan bubble. That said, his two melee abilities keep him from being the kind of tank that can also do damage, while also putting him in danger due to their limited rage.

Ajax can enhance his skills by collecting Void Energy by using other skills, which certainly helps him tank. However, his low damage makes the early game more difficult and grindier than it needs to be.

Enzo

Enzo is a fairly unique support character. He doesn’t excel in damage, defense, or crowd control, but in sheer ammo utility. His passive ‘Shoot Support’ increases the maximum ammo capacity of teammates around him. Meanwhile, Enzo’s ‘Start Supply’ ability summons a resupply device that can be used once by each ally to resupply their ammo. He can do some damage with his summonable explosive drone and can even tank a few hits with his shield-recharging enhanced combat suit.

Beyond that, his ‘Small Supply Ship’ ultimate can both support and deal damage during its duration. Enzo may be a fairly strong character by himself, but due to his supportive nature, the success of his team relies on who his teammates are and what they’re using.

C Tier Characters:

Viessa

Viessa is one of The First Descendant’s support characters. She’s very useful at applying her Ice Shackle effect with her skills that slow and freeze enemies. Her passive will then kick in and send one of her ice spheres to attack frozen targets. It is unfortunate that with all of this area of effect and freezing debuffs, Viessa can’t compete with others on this list for raw damage.

Because she freezes more than she outright kills enemies, she’s just not as useful. Additionally, she’s also not ideal for boss encounters that require much more direct damage.

Sharen

I really want to like Sharen. She’s an assassin-type character that gets close, deals massive damage, turns invisible, and does it all again. The problem is that her passive requires you to attack an enemy that isn’t attacking you. This is difficult to do in solo play, which devalues her passive and overall damage. Sure, she can electrocute and stun enemies with her Impact Rounds ability, but it’s not enough to make her more valuable than other damage characters.

For example, her ultimate lets her throw ten knives which is decent, but stops scaling beyond what those ten knives can do by themselves. Compared to other, stronger characters, Sharen is missing a vital element that’s hard to pin down.

D Tier Characters

I’m happy to report that zero characters in The First Descendant perform poorly enough to be down here. Future characters may not rank very well, but we will update this list when that time comes.

Like Warframe, The First Descendant’s roster will continually grow. Even as that happens, balance changes will likely help under-performing characters. So play what you want to play without feeling like you need to play the hard meta.

For more like this, check out this piece on The First Descendant’s release time countdown. We also have a guide explaining The First Descendant’s endgame features. If you want more, here’s how to get Ultimate Viessa and Ultimate Bunny.