Guilty Gear Strive Tier List: The Best & Worst Characters, Ranked For Competitive Play

In many fighting games, tier lists are often released to gauge the strength of characters. Guilty Gear Strive's player base has already built up who's strong and underpowered following the game's release.

Here's who's the best and worst characters to play so far in Guilty Gear Strive.

Read More: Guilty Gear Strive Review: A Welcoming Fighting Game?

Latest News

15 December 2021 -

Following the November 30 update, players have found the right ways to use Happy Chaos and the other DLC characters. So far, these new characters work as follows:

• Goldlewis Dickinson - Slow but solid juggernaut that suffers on the defensive but has a suffocating offense filled with disjointed attacks, guard breaks, and high damage (Notable players: Gobou)
• Jack-O - Tricky pet-based fighter that controls the match when her Servants are out. Servants can cover her offense and stifle her opponent's advances if used well. Struggles on defense due to lacking strong meterless reversal options. (Notable players: LostSoul, Kazunoko, Purepure, SonicFox)
• Happy Chaos - Versatile character that can play effective zoning and heavy rushdown if his shooting resources are well maintained. While he can attack from close and far, his lack of invulnerable options leaves his defense and shutting down momentum steals severely lacking. (Notable players: Gobou, Kazunoko, SonicFox)

As for the tier list, the tier list remains similar and look as follows:

• S Tier: Sol Badguy, Nagoriyuki
• A Tier: Potemkin, I-no, Giovanna, May, Leo Whitefang, Zato-1, Chipp Zanuff, Ramlethal Valentine
• B Tier: Faust, Ky Kiske, Goldlewis Dickinson, Millia Rage, Axl Low, Jack-O, Anji Mito

Throughout Guilty Gear Strive's patches, Nagoriyuki has climbed to S tier as his players been steadily proving to be a well-rounded character with good answers for every offensive and defensive situation. Meanwhile, A tier characters Potemkin, Leo Whitefang, Zato-1, and Giovanna have strong showings and are often picked by top placing players in major Guilty Gear Strive tournaments.

Lastly, the B Tier characters are either characters that generates colossal pressure when the momentum is theirs but generally struggle much worse than the other characters when their advantage is stolen.

For now, we'll wait on Baiken's release in 2022 to see if anything changes on the "Adjust the Strong, Buff the Underperforming" approach on major updates, and if this returning character will heavily shape the meta.

13 October 2021 -

Arc System Works is getting ready to release the next major update this week, with the launch of the Guilty Gear Strive Update 1.10 Patch. As a reminder, significant updates like this normally mean big changes to the games meta and subsequently tier lists. So we'll be sure to update this page as soon as possible following the release of the new patch.

How To Read Tier Lists

First off, tier lists are not meant to be taken as the gospel truth of any fighting game. Seeing a character on top of tier lists doesn't unequivocally decide that a specific character is strong. Character ranking in tier lists will be different per person which makes it an unreliable tool and even a cause of arguments at times.

In order to fully utilize tier lists, players must treat it like a study and can only conclude when many tier lists are gathered. Taking one tier list and accepting it as the only source is a pitfall that players should avoid. Nevertheless, we've gathered a few tier lists from Guilty Gear Strive players from around the world to help us rule out who's the best and worst picks of the game. At least at the time of writing...

The Best And Worst Strive Characters, According To The Pros

We've gathered a few tier lists from some known players of Guilty Gear Strive. So far, any tier lists released from the first day of Guilty Gear Strive up to the release of Goldlewis Dickinson is still applicable. The latest patch that included the first DLC character didn't have any major buffs or nerfs to any character in the roster. Here are some of the tier lists that we've gathered

GO1's Tier List:

• S Tier: Sol Badguy
• A Tier: Chipp Zanuff, May, Leo Whitefang
• B Tier: Ramlethal Valentine, Giovanna, Millia Rage, Zato-1, Axl Low
• C Tier: I-no, Ky Kiske, Nagoriyuki, Potemkin, Anji Mito, Faust

Source: Mildom

Kyamei's Tier List

• S Tier: Sol Badguy, Chipp Zanuff, Zato-1
• A Tier: Ramlethal Valentine, May, Millia Rage, Giovanna, Leo Whitefang
• B Tier: Potemkin, Ky Kiske, Axl Low
• C tier: Faust, Nagoriyuki, I-no, Anji Mito

Source: Mildom

KojiKOG's Tier List

• S Tier: Chipp Zanuff
• A Tier: Sol Badguy, May, Millia Rage, Ramlethal Valentine, Giovanna
• B Tier: Potemkin, Nagoriyuki, Ky Kiske, I-no, Faust
• C Tier: Anji Mito
• ? Tier(admits to not know enough of the character to decide): Zato-1, Leo Whitefang, Axl Low

Source: Mildom

Dogura's Tier List

• S Tier: Sol Badguy, Chipp Zanuff
• A Tier: Ramlethal Valentine, Giovanna, May, Millia Rage, Zato-1
• B Tier: Leo Whitefang, Axl Low, Potemkin, I-no, Nagoriyuki, Ky Kiske, Anji Mito, Faust

Source: Mildom

HookGangGod's Tier List

• S+ Tier: Sol Badguy
• S Tier: Leo Whitefang, Chipp Zanuff, May, Ramlethal Valentine
• A Tier: Nagoriyuki, Axl Low, Giovanna, Millia Rage, Potemkin, Zato-1, Ky Kiske, I-no
• B Tier: Faust, Anji Mito

Source: HookGangGod's Youtube Channel

KizzieKay's Tier List

• S+ Tier: Sol Badguy, Ramlethal Valentine, May
• S Tier: Chipp Zanuff, Giovanna, Zato-1
• A+ Tier: Leo Whitefang, Ky Kiske, Axl Low, Nagoriyuki
• A Tier: I-no, Potemkin, Millia Rage,
• B Tier: Anji Mito
• Laust Tier: Faust

Source: KizzieKay's Youtube Channel

SuperDEBico's Tier List

• S+ Tier: Sol Badguy
• S Tier: Leo Whitefang, May, Chipp Zanuff, Ramlethal Valentine
• A+ Tier: Nagoriyuki, Potemkin, Millia Rage, Giovanna, Zato-1, I-no
• A Tier: Axl Low, Ky Kiske, Anji Mito
• A- Tier: Faust

Source: Romolla Ch. Youtube Channel

Who We'll See A lot On EVO 2021

Basing from these tier lists, most of the characters vary in tiers except for one: Sol Badguy. Most professional players note that Sol Badguy's high damage output and has complete tools to deal with any situation make him a difficult opponent to defeat. For some matchups, Sol Badguy only needs one or two mistakes to crush his foe cleanly.

On the other end, the persistent top tiers are May, Ramlethal Valentine, Giovanna, Leo Whitefang and Chipp Zanuff.

May is similar to Sol who has access to high damage output but is paired with pressure that can be applied rapidly to make their foes panic.

Meanwhile, Ramlethal Valentine is a great rushdown-zoner hybrid who has fast, far-reaching normals who also make the opponents lose all their health if she send her opponents to the wall.

Giovanna is known for her fast grounded movement which enables her rushdown playstyle really well. She also access to fast buttons with long active frames and can frametrap well into its gatlings. For simpler speak, Giovanna can exert intense pressure which punish the foe who fails to punish her fast pressure cleanly and enemies can lose rounds hard through failing to escape this pressure.

Leo Whitefang is a strong character with many options for offense and defense. Leo sets himself apart from the others as he has a checkmate situation with his backturn stance. Any enemy caught in range of his backturn stance attacks find it difficult to escape him and will often snowball his foes to losing at least 50% of their lives if they guess wrong.

Lastly, Chipp Zanuff is another character with many options for both offensive and defensive situations while having several of the game's fastest attacks in his arsenal.

So far, well-rounded characters with access to consistent high damage combos are the cream of the crop for the Guilty Gear Strive cast. Characters who aren't on this list could be underdogs in this case. We'll see more of these guys once EVO 2021 starts in August where players aiming to win it all and be crowned the best of the best in the world

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