Tier List/Shark3143/Water

Portrait	Name	Tier	Role	Preference	Notes
	Fjorm	S	Attacker Support	High Brunhilda	Fjorm’s contribution is sometimes situational but very high impact. Her Last Bravery passive is absurdly potent for a team-wide buff, with a jaw-dropping 30% strength and 40% defense, which works very well in harder content where it’s easy to intentionally trigger. She performs very well when she works and can also freeze targets in some content, but her damage output is middling if she can’t get good value out of Ice Mirror or Last Bravery. Fjorm is consistently very good versus High Brunhilda, since she’s naturally immune to burn, Ice Mirror has great applications against the initial blast, stack, and chasers, and it’s simple to trigger Last Bravery as you’ll be taking unavoidable damage from the fight mechanics regardless.
	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 5.3 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 thanks to his damage output and quick breaks.
	Elisanne	S	Support	All	Elly is a 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. Her strength buffs have proven invaluable for Mercurial Gauntlet and she’s also seeing use in off-element teams as a support. She suffers from poor natural resistances, but can reach full burn immunity with a wyrmprint, which allows her to perform well versus High Brunhilda.
	Lily	A+	Attacker	High Brunhilda	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, which rewards characters who have extra range on their attacks.
	Karina	A+	Attacker	Mercurial Gauntlet	Karina has very high damage output thanks to her hard-hitting attack skills as well as access to a great attack skill from the 5.3 water axe. Karina's S1 has increased damage for every buff she has, giving her enhanced synergy with the myriad of strong support characters that see frequent use in Mercurial Gauntlet, such as Elisanne. However, she struggles to find other content in which to flex her power, since she lacks access to a Scorching Air Res weapon for Void Agni, and it’s difficult to face High Brunhilda without an immunity to burn.
	Dragonyule Xander	A	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* adventurer 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.
	Dragonyule Cleo	A	Attacker	Void Battles	Cleo’s S1 has a laundry list of 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, which isn’t always realistic.
	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 5.3 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 5.3 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. Rex can perform well as a baiter versus High Brunhilda by equipping a Burn Res print to prepare himself for the fight. When paired with a lance, Rex has the potential through his co-ability to entirely bypass the need for the Volcanic Queen wyrmprint.
	Zardin	A	Attacker	Void Battles	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 5.3 water sword. Zardin is usable as the baiter versus High Brunhilda if he equips a burn resistance wyrmprint to reach burn immunity.
	Xainfried	B+	Attacker Support	Brunhilda	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 contribution is not poor, characters ranked above Xainfried tend to boast either excellent damage output or utility value, so it's hard for him to stand out. Xainfried was once prized versus High Brunhilda for his burn immunity and HP co-ability, but he’s heavily overshadowed by Fjorm and Elisanne, who can do his role better than he does, since they contribute so much more damage.
	Orsem	B+	Attacker	Brunhilda	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. His burn immunity makes him a decent pick for the baiter role versus High Brunhilda.
	Waike	B+	Attacker Support	Void Battles	His S2 can inflict bog, which increases the damage enemies take by a massive 50%. Bog spam doesn’t work in current available content, as High Brunhilda is fully immune, and in higher levels of Mercurial Gauntlet Fafnir Roy becomes immune to bog after a single affliction, so it’s far more valuable to inflict the single bog with Leviathan for the break. However, Waike retains a niche versus Void Agni, where his high bog infliction rate can punch through Void Agni’s resistance, and he has access to a Skill Res Penetrator bow that lets him deal solid damage.
	Laranoa	B+	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	None	Striker’s Strength and stun immunity are a good combination for Fire IO, but his damage output isn’t good enough to justify using him elsewhere.
	Renee	B	Attacker Support	None	Renee seemingly boasts multiple useful support tools through team healing and her ability to inflict bog, both of which fall completely flat in practice. Bog spam doesn’t work in current available content, as High Brunhilda is fully immune, and in higher levels of Mercurial Gauntlet Fafnir Roy becomes immune to bog after a single affliction, so it’s far more valuable to inflict the single bog with Leviathan for the break. While she can trigger her own Team Healing Doublebuff with her S2, the amount of healing is extremely small, healing only 5% of max hp over an excruciating 20 seconds. Overall, Renee fails to find a niche in any form of endgame content currently in the game.
	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 or Critical Rate wyrmprints equipped. He also has access to a very good 5.3 weapon, which helps salvage his damage output.
	Jurota	B	Attacker	None	Jurota lacks damage output, since his S2 buff lacks the duration to be useful and the 5.3 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	None	Access to 25% Skill Damage would give Nefaria an extra punch, but she lacks multiple damage skills to make better use of it, and the 5.3 water bow doesn’t have a damage skill like the 4.3 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. Overall Nefaria’s damage output is low and her utility ranges from frustrating to nonfunctional.
	Jakob	C	Attacker Support	None	Jakob’s S1 can inflict bog, which is a huge boost to team damage since it raises the damage enemies receive by 50%. However, Jakob struggles to apply himself as bog spam doesn’t work in current available content, as High Brunhilda is fully immune, and in higher levels of Mercurial Gauntlet Fafnir Roy becomes immune to bog after a single affliction, so it’s far more valuable to inflict the single bog with Leviathan for the break. His own damage outside of bog is very low since his kit offers no further sources of damage output and the 5.3 core water lance only has a healing skill to offer.
	Cibella	D	Support	Imperial Onslaught	Cibella completely lacks offensive capability both in her skills and passives, but also in her choice of 5.3 lance, 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 5.3 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.