Tier List/Shark3143/Water

Portrait	Name	Tier	Role	Preference	Notes
	Xander	S+	Attacker	All	His strength boosts from Striker’s Strength also boost Majestic Tide, allowing him to get absurdly strong in quests with a lot of enemies such as Facility Events. Even without, his 50% Force Strike passive makes the simple 1-2-force strike combo dish out more damage than other swords, and chews through overdrive bars like butter. Additionally, he has access to 3 attack skills with the 5* water sword, so his overall damage is quite high even without any stacks of Striker’s Strength. While his lack of burn resistance makes him a suspect pick versus High Brunhilda, he can more than excel in other quests.
	Lily	S+	Attacker	All	Lily comes out of the gate strong with 100% Skill Prep and has huge utility value thanks to how often she can freeze enemies with her S1. However, the skill animation of her S1 is painfully long to sit through, seriously cutting into her damage output, and the skill can miss a moving target. Full HP = Strength brings extra damage to the table, but is hard to realistically maintain in some content since the water element lacks good healers. Even if Full HP = Strength is off the table, Lily’s access to freeze, three attack skills, and Skill Prep makes her a strong choice for ending quests quickly and safely. It takes a lot of investment to reach the required HP to face down High Brunhilda without compromising on damage, but Lily is more than capable of doing well in the fight.
	Dragonyule Cleo	S	Attacker	Void Battles	Cleo’s S1 has a laundry list of incredible utility value, not only freezing enemies but also applying an energy stack as well as strength and critical buffs to the whole team in later stages. Her own damage output is held back by the slow animation speed on her skills, as well as the general weak damage output from daggers. However, she gets so much value from her first skill that she makes up for her weaknesses, assuming she’s able to stand close enough to her allies to apply her buffs to the whole team.
	Karina	S	Attacker	Imperial Onslaught	Karina has very high damage output thanks to her hard-hitting attack skills as well as access to a great attack skill from the 5* water axe. However, she can’t make anything out of her passive Healing Doublebuff without making some suboptimal choices. With the 4* water axe she can trigger it herself, or a team slot can be sacrificed to Thaniel, the only water unit with a team defense buff, who is otherwise profoundly mediocre. The water void axe has potential since each individual stack of Slayer’s Strength counts for individual boosts on her S1’s stacking mechanic, but content outside of facility events don’t have enough enemies to justify losing out on her other weapons.
	Elisanne	S	Support	All	Elly is a rare support character with an S1 buff, so its potency and charge time are much better than average, and it’s further boosted by her buff time skill, allowing for very frequent 19 second 20% strength buffs that contribute far more to overall team DPS than an attack skill would. She suffers from poor resistances, but can reach full burn resistance with a wyrmprint, which has allowed her to perform very well versus High Brunhilda thanks to the huge overall increase of damage she brings to the table.
	Dragonyule Xander	S	Attacker Support	Imperial Onslaught	His passive skills aren’t terribly useful, since 5% Skill Haste is not enough to secure an extra skill use in most quests, and trying to utilize Striker’s Energy is unwieldy and underwhelming. However, his natural strength is through the roof for a 4* unit and he has an excellent S1 that has a good chance to freeze. He also has a strength buff that would skyrocket his damage contribution if it weren’t for its terrible charge time and limited range to nearby allies.
	Fjorm	S	Attacker Support	Imperial Onslaught	Fjorm’s contribution is highly situational but very high impact, so she’s difficult to evaluate. She does have access to freeze on her fast-charging S1, so she has great utility value in content where freezes work. Ice Mirror is very good in specific situations, but its glacial 4 second skill animation makes it mediocre elsewhere. Her Last Bravery passive is absurdly potent for a team-wide buff, with a jaw-dropping 30% strength and 40% defense, but does require Fjorm to get to low health which can easily just be a waste of time in some content. She performs very well when she works, but her damage output is middling at best if she can’t get good value out of Ice Mirror or Last Bravery. Fjorm is consistently good versus High Brunhilda, since Ice Mirror has applications against the initial blast, stack, and chases, and you can be sure that Last Bravery will get value on the initial blast, even if the timing isn’t ideal. Also, the normally underwhelming healing skill from the 5.3 lance has applications in the High Brunhilda fight to help everyone survive stacks into chaser.
	Celliera	A+	Attacker	Void Battles	Celery has moderate damage output as well as good utility value through the occasional freeze. She lacks a full ailment resistance and the 5* water blade doesn’t have a good skill attached, but her Thaumian’s Bane gives her a huge damage increase in void battles against the Steel Golem.
	Rex	A+	Attacker	Brunhilda	Rex has two hard hitting attack skills with quick animations, allowing him to maintain good DPS, but he lacks notable passive skills. Access to the 5* water axe is a huge perk, due to its huge strength and great damage skill. While his kit is basic and he doesn’t have much utility value, he brings enough damage to be valuable.
	Waike	A+	Attacker Support	All	His S2 can inflict bog, which increases the damage enemies take by a massive 50%. The damage potential of bog is very high, and it’s easy to inflict on the Steel Golem and the Elite Swordsman in Fire IO due to their low resistances. However, bog afflictions have to share space with freeze as only one can apply at a time, and bog afflictions are redundant during the break as any adventurer with Leviathan in the room can apply bog with Tidal Wave. Waike should not be used versus High Brunhilda despite his partial burn resistance, as she’s immune to bog.
	Xainfried	A	Attacker Support	Void Battles	Xainfried's Dragon Claws and Dragon Time make him incredibly well optimized for raid-style content when it rolls around. However, Dragon's Claws is too slow to be notable in current permanent content, and he's also held back by the poor animation time on his S1, lengthy charge rate on his otherwise powerful S2, as well as his poor selection of weaponry. While his damage isn't bad, characters ranked above Xainfried tend to boast either excellent damage output or utility value, so it's hard for him to stand out. As a side note, Xainfried was once meta for High Brunhilda for his HP co-ability and burn resistance, but has been largely made redundant by Fjorm and Elly, who became viable thanks to the dual-wyrmprints update.
	Orsem	A	Attacker	Void Battles	Orsem struggles to attain good DPS despite his useful passive abilities to increase his critical rate, since daggers in general are underpowered, his frame data on his skills isn’t fast, and his selection of weaponry could be better. However, he’s still valuable for the utility of freeze.
	Jakob	A	Attacker Support	Void Battles	Jakob’s S1 can inflict bog, which is a huge boost to team damage since it raises the damage enemies receive by 50%, and much of current water-advantaged content have bosses with very low bog resistances. However, his own damage is very low since his kit offers no further sources of damage output and the 5* water lance only has a healing skill to offer. Jakob’s potential to increase overall damage through bog is very high on paper, but he’s unusually weak if he can’t apply it, it’s somewhat redundant with Leviathan, and he has to butt elbows with adventurers that are trying to apply freeze. Jakob should not be used versus High Brunhilda despite his partial burn resistance, as she’s immune to bog.
	Zardin	A	Attacker	None	Zardin’s natural strength is hilariously low, and it’s unrealistic to maintain Full HP = Strength, but his kit is hiding subtle advantages. His skill animations are blisteringly fast, with his S2 tying for the fastest skill in the game at 0.9 seconds, which is even faster than buff skills and over twice as fast as the average attack skill. Thanks to his amazing frame data, he gets to spend a lot of extra time attacking normally to deal damage and build up more skill activations. He also has access to a 3rd attack skill through the 5* water sword, so his overall damage output carries him despite his lack of utility value and ailment resistance.
	Laranoa	A	Attacker	None	Laranoa’s maximum potential is impractical to achieve, since her powerful team buff is proximity based and difficult to apply to the entire team, especially as an archer. On top of that, repositioning to get good value from her amazing buff threatens to drop her combo and hurts her Hits = Critical Damage passive. Her Skill Damage passive is good, but she lacks multiple attack skills to use it with. While she’s potentially strong on paper, it’s difficult to realize her strength in practice.
	Luther	B	Attacker	Imperial Onslaught	Striker’s Strength and stun immunity are a good combination for Fire IO, but his damage output isn’t good enough to let him excel elsewhere.
	Pietro	B	Attacker	None	His S2 is an underwhelming shield and his blind res is irrelevant, but it’s at least possible to make use of his otherwise unsupported Critical Damage passive if he has Dragonyule Jeanne equipped. He also has access to a very good 5* weapon, which helps salvage his damage output.
	Jurota	B	Attacker	Imperial Onslaught	Jurota lacks damage output, since his S2 buff lacks the duration to be useful and the 5* water katana doesn’t have a skill to increase his damage. However, at least he has Broken Punisher to help finish off bosses in dragon form on the break.
	Dragonyule Nefaria	C	Attacker Support	Void Battles	Access to 25% Skill Damage gives Nefaria an extra punch, but she lacks multiple damage skills to make better use of it, and the 5* water bow does not have a damage skill like the 4* bow does. Her S2 takes forever to charge and the 15% shield and single energy stage it grants are not only seriously underwhelming but also a pain to apply to allies. Flurry Freezer sounds like a strong utility passive due to the value of freeze, but it’s not useful because its chance to freeze is too low to function on bosses.
	Cibella	D	Support	Imperial Onslaught	Cibella completely lacks offensive capability both in her skills and passives, but also in her choice of 5* weaponry, so she currently has the lowest damage output among all non-healers. She can attempt to build around her support kit and use HP dragons to scale the potency of her shields and healing, but this will reduce her low damage even further. With the 5* water lance, she can provide some healing to the team through the weapon skill, but it’s a far smaller amount than a dedicated healer’s skills, has an absurdly long charge time, and is also limited to nearby allies, so it doesn’t justify the use of an HP dragon. Her shields can block ailments such as stun, but it’s hard for them to get value in Fire IO due to all of the incoming chip damage from adds and the Swordsman's autoattacks, and shields lack usefulness in void battles since they don’t block the Dull debuff that the Steel Golem applies. Overall, Cibella struggles to find a niche since her damage is terrible and her defensive support isn’t nearly as useful as running a healer instead.