For Honor Tier List Guide: 6 Season 1 Tier List

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• For Honor Tier List Guide: 6 Season 1 Tier List - June 23, 2022
• Scylla Build Ideas - May 29, 2022
• Centurion For Honor Guide - May 19, 2022

*Disclaimer: The following tier list is made for the Dominion game mode. Most of the heroes are viable in a 1v1 scenario. It all comes down to a combination of matchup knowledge and luck in the matchup, as some naturally perform better against others.

In this tier list, heroes are not in a specific order in their tiers outside the Pirate. Everyone else is somewhat equal in their respective tiers.

S Tier Heroes

• Pirate
• Warden
• Nobushi
• Warlord
• Jiang Jun
• Kyoshin
• Shinobi
• Zhanhu

A Tier Heroes

• Raider
• Shugoki
• Kensei
• Hitokiri
• Black Prior
• Lawbringer
• Warmonger

B Tier Heroes

• Aramusha
• Gryphon
• Centurion
• Tiandi
• Gladiator
• Conqueror
• Berserker

C Tier Heroes

• Highlander
• Orochi
• Peacekeeper
• Shaman
• Valkyrie

D Tier Heroes

• Jormungandr
• Shaman
• Nuxia

With that being said, let’s dive in and look at what exactly these heroes bring to the table (and what they don’t) so you can better understand why they are placed in their respective tiers.

S Tier Explained

These characters are broken and are mandatory to create a strong team composition. While picking these heroes will not bring a guaranteed win, it will increase your chances as their kits are overloaded with very good tools that are useful in a myriad of situations.

Pirate

Yep, we’re starting strong here. Pirate is the only character that truly sits atop the S tier, dominating everything. If you ever felt like your fighting games do not have enough guessing involved, then you are in luck, because fighting the Pirate is a permanent game of guessing.

With almost every string being able to be feinted into an unblockable or a guard break, it’s safe to say 50/50s are the bread and butter of this character. The Pirate also has an amazing ganking tool with her flintlock pistol that can guarantee allied hits, amazing one-shot potential with her “Walk the plank” string, and, quite frankly, an overloaded kit.

Warden

Warden isn’t in S tier because he has some crazy kit with even crazier mechanics. He is here because he is a “fair” character. He’s got some feints here and there, a bash, no dodge attack, and some unblockable attacks at the end of his strings. Nothing crazy. However, where he shines is in his simplicity and the dedication the player base shows towards him.

Back in the old days of For Honor, Warden was especially loved because of the character in the story called Hervis Daubeny. Daubeny was the leader of the Wardens, being part of the Blackstone Legion. But he only stayed for one season, before he took everything he could and left.

Enraged by his betrayal, Apollyon sent Holden Cross to punish him. Daubeny’s forces were no match, being wiped very fast. Cross challenged Daubeny to trial by combat, but Daubeny refuses, saying the famous quote “This is not a trial, this is an execution”. Here, the player is forced to fight against Cross’s second.

Nobushi

Nobushi is one of the first characters released in the game. She is part of the samurai, which were the “gimmicky” ones back in the day. She is especially great because of her fast attacks, dodge properties, and aggravating bleed.

One misstep and you can say goodbye to half of your health bar in 3 or so seconds. Her hidden stance is what makes her an amazing punisher against blindly aggressive players, as it can dodge any attack that doesn’t have undodgeable properties. She’s also a fan-favorite character because you can make her look as “UwU” as it gets out there in a war zone.

Warlord

Yet another old character, Warlord is in the highest tier possible because of his amazing ganking and disruption potential and sheer “Unga Bunga” potential.

This man is a force of nature with enough armor in his kit to equip an entire city. With him, taking blows is the preferred state of being, because all of his heavy hits have hyper armor and all of his light hits have a built-in parry mechanic.

He is the manliest man to ever man, and I am not kidding when I say your beard will grow thicker and you will start speaking Icelandic if you play him too much. With that said, his “fashion” is lackluster, even subpar I might say. However, that’s a blessing and a curse. You might not get great outfits later on, but you will look as cool as it gets from like…reputation 3.

Jiang Jung

JJ is comically simple. An old man with a Guan Dao slashes, stabs, and then needs to rest. But this is his charm, he has great mobility (just like every Chinese character) and great strings to complement his very good energy management. He also has a stance similar to Nobushi in which he gains dodge properties and regains his energy at a much faster rate.

His hits are very wide and he also has access to feints and unlockables that make him very annoying in both 1v1 and group fights. He does struggle in 1vX fights as he can get easily interrupted by someone in his vicinity since the dodge property of his stance doesn’t work when he gets backstabbed.

Kyoshin

There are 2 Kyoshins inside of you: the femboy and Jetstream Sam.

Seriously now, this is the most anime you can ever get in For Honor. He has 2 dodge attacks, feints, and a stance that blocks every blockable hit in the vicinity (which you can then transition into a series of slashes that look like Kyoshin just stole the Yamato from Vergil and he can now slash through reality).

He’s a great 1vX’er because of said stance and his mobility. However, he doesn’t bring much to the table when ganking, so try not to be a revenge feeder and just decimate opponents by yourself, making your anime dream come true.

Shinobi

Ah yes, my main. He used to be the bottom of the barrel, and I contemplated my decision to main him a lot during that time. But after his rework, he’s just unfair to play against. He is by far the best disruptor in the game, being able to crowd control enemies from a distance. He’s not bad in1v1’s either, as he got much better punishes with this rework.

Ganking takes a bit to get used to, as you have to whiff your first hit in a string to then try and grab the enemy, but it’s not nearly as hard as it used to be.

Overall, Shinobi is a fun and unique character you can choose to play, and he also provides a decently high skill ceiling. His fashion is also top tier in my opinion, so if you want to make your ninja look extra Naruto and you want your enemies to hear Kana Boon’s “Silhouette”, the Shinobi is the right character for you.

Zhanhu

The last member of the S tier, Zhanhu is here because of his unmatched team fighting potential. The is no character that can deny area as well as Zhanhu, while also being able to 1vX and gank. His light finishers are unblockable, so fighting against him in a group fight is a pain, and all of his attack recoveries can be canceled into a dodge.

That means you will have to deal with the deadliest mosquito known to man while his teammates make sure you don’t forget this is a team game.

A Tier Explained

Raider 

Raider is still one of the best aggressive heroes in the game. The fact that he can 50/50 any heavy into a top light that stuns and is so fast it needs to be predicted makes it great in 1v1s. What Raider lacks is team fight presence. He cannot enable his allies in any way, so he’s mostly feeding the revenge meter. His ganking is great but requires some coordination with your teammates.

Not much though, I guarantee you that grabbing an enemy in front of them, pinning them to a wall, and beating them up with your knee will attract your teammate’s attention well enough.

Shugoki

Ah yes, the fat man. This guy is in A tier because of his versatility in every situation, as long as the enemy is not knowledgeable enough, that is.

Great team fight because of hyper armor and arguably the largest swings of any character. Amazing ganking with Demon’s Embrace because you can further set up your team’s damage by throwing the enemy on the ground, team fight control, and great 1v1 as long as the enemy is not patient enough.

Shugoki is good at punishing players that do not learn how to fight him. He is very similar in that regard to Hitokiri and Berserker. If you let the enemy go first you will probably out-damage than and out-tank them, as you have the largest health pool in the game and decent enough damage that it hurts when it eventually adds up.

Kensei

Being the vanguard of the Samurai, Kensei suffers from the same problems as Raider. It’s not that he’s bad, but he isn’t the best. He especially suffers in 1vX scenarios where he needs to stall enemies long enough for his teammates to arrive.

He’s very immobile, his only tools being very easy to react to side dodge attacks. However, he is much better than Raider and Warden in 1v1s, especially due to his kit having multiple feints and sometimes hard-to-read moves. He’s great as a bridge for the player toward harder characters.

Hitokiri

Hitokiri has many options in its arsenal. Disruption, heavy damage, good feints, the most badass weapon in the samurai arsenal, and the meanest asthma attacks. The Hitokiri is especially good against players that did not learn to properly parry. It’s one of those characters that stomp inexperienced players and requires you to press three, occasionally four buttons to win most fights.

Where the Hitokiri struggles is when facing better players. That’s when the player has to evolve and be creative with the character, or get stuck forever. Even then, I recommend Hito to anyone that wants a different type of samurai hero. I enjoy the character, especially all the cool executions and great customization options.

Black Prior/Vortiger

Black Prior is one of the most simple heroes to play in the game. But being easy to play also means a bit boring. His kit is good, especially good in1vX and 1v1 situations.

However, he doesn’t feel very rewarding after 20 games or so. There is only so much fun in screaming “Ad Profundis!” from the top of your lungs in voice chat and cosplaying a Turkish warrior (that’s the original inspiration for Black Prior).

He’s great but lacks the skill ceiling to be one of my favorites. However, his shield throw is great and very fun to use. It would be especially funnier if Ubisoft stopped listening to everyone complaining about ledges and just add some of them back.

Lawbringer

Lawbro is simply mediocre in the wrong hands. I’ve seen good players play him, and he is a beast. You might just disable your UI since you won’t see it too often anyway.

He’ll stun you until you will not be able to tell if you’re still playing For Honor or if this is a CS: GO lobby and you just ate all the flashbangs. However, being good at the game is the one prerequisite. In the hands of your average player, he’s a generally worse Raider.

Warmonger

This character is arguably just a better Warden. With that said, I think Warden’s simplicity is still better than Warmonger’s more modern but harder-to-use kit.

What makes her amazing in Dominion are her feats. No character can simply destroy the enemy lines with one press of a button as Warmonger can.

Either that or the enemies can simply perish in a matter of seconds by staying even remotely close to one another. Other than that, she has good bashes that can be charged, feinted, or tapped, making it a great mind game tool, and a mediocre pushback that needs to be activated from a string. If only we had more ledges to abuse it though.

Explaining B Tier

Aramusha

Aramusha was never an overpowered character. His rework somewhat helped, but he still lacks actual strings and mobility. His whole gimmick relies on making the opponent feel like he’s playing Dance Dance Revolution. The problem in that situation is that the opponent just needs to move around his guard and block all your attacks until you run out of stamina.

Aramusha needs tons of player input to make work, and as such, he isn’t placed very high. Some characters do the same thing Aramusha does, with less player input and higher efficiency. However, as a former Aramusha main, I’ve got to say: it’s worth trying. I had a lot of fun with him, so if you are like me and you love cool samurais with many swords, then you’ll have a blast.

Gryphon

Gryphon is a good hero, but he isn’t nearly as good as anyone above him. He has great mobility, and decent ganking, but he cannot 1vX for the life of it.

He has two strings he can use and both have a kick in the middle of them that can be reacted to with ease. He’s very reliant on poking the enemy, not all-ins, and because of that, he cannot help in team fights without feeding revenge to the enemy or handle multiple people without getting out damaged and killed.

He is an interesting character since he is a combination of kits from the game (it makes sense lore-wise). However, as you have come to know, interesting design is not always good design.

Centurion

Centurion is an amazing 1v1 character, but that’s it. If this was a duel tier list, he would be S tier. Good Centurion players can make you second guess playing this game. They can stomp you and you won’t even have proper time to react or do something before they throw you into a cinematic combo for three-quarters of your health bar.

With that said, he is a horrendous team fighter, staller, and ganker. In any scenario where he fights multiple people or helps his allies fight one person, he’s just going to drag everyone down with him.

He has zero unblockable hits he can access out of the blue, he has zero bashes that do something more than slightly disrupt the enemy and he has zero ways of dealing with more than one enemy at a time unless you are good at the game.

Tiandi

Tiandi is a vanguard. So he suffers the same fate as Kensei and Raider. They are decent at everything, good at nothing in particular. Or sometimes even bad at something. Tiandi is especially bad at team fighting and ganking since his only tool for disruption is a kick that sends the opponent half a map away.

If someone isn’t already waiting there for the opponent, good luck ever landing a hit on an enemy so far away. It is a good tool for pushing people off ledges or disengaging, but just that. Nonetheless, he is a fun character with a unique “ballerina” playstyle where you can feint attacks into a whole choreographed dance if you wish so.

Gladiator

Oh, man. If fashion was what we rated then this guy would be SSS tier. Gladiator suffers from the same problems as Aramusha. Lack of a proper kit.

He has some string here and there but his heavy hits are so slow you can simply play on reaction and still win. His main selling point, skewering your opponents, is kind of like a grab, but slow as hell and can be parried. So most of the time you end up feinting that for a guard break or nothing at all if the opponent blocks the guard break.

He’s a decent ganker and team fighter, but it comes down to how good the enemy is. And trust me, the enemy doesn’t need to be that good to block an off scree skewer and get half their revenge bar filled.

Conqueror

Continuing the trend of characters without properly desigend strings, Conqueror is our next entry on the list. He is just like Aramusha but a knight. Tankier, slower, less engaging C Stance. Even so, I have to give credit where credit is due. His shield bash is a fantastic tool for ganking.

Simply amazing. Hopefully, the enemy doesn’t dodge it. His counter stance is just like Aramusha’s, but worse. Both can cancel their recovery frames into it, but Aramusha gets a guaranteed light or an unblockable heavy if he parries with it. Conqueror just gets a guaranteed light. Funny enough, good Conqueror mains can handle all the situations in the game and succeed.

The problem is, there is a Pirate in the game and she does everything any character could do but better. Also, continuing the trend of mediocre characters having the best fashion, Conqueror is no exception. He can be dreessed to look so badass it should be illegal.

Berserker

Berserker is the last pick for my B tier because he doesn’t do much. Great players can handle most situations, but that comes down to a lot of practice.

Outside of that, Berserker is just a newbie stomper. He is the definition of a first boss in Dark Souls. Berserker will force you to learn how to parry, or you will die trying. The moment you understand how to properly parry his hits, he isn’t a threat more than any of the low-tier characters.

C Tier Explained

These characters are subpar in most situations and simply useless sometimes. You can always compensate with skill, but that takes a lot of practice.

Highlander

Oh man, this guy is one of my biggest regrets. Highlander is objectively the most complicated character to pilot in For Honor. His stances are buggy, his hits don’t always register or register even when ten meters away from you. He has an animation cancel that needs you to spam emotes.

Yeah, he’s that kind of character. Don’t get me wrong, playing him and winning feels incredible. There is something special about screaming “Dauðinn blasir við þér!” while grabbing someone’s throat and slamming a 2-meter sword on them. If you ever main this guy, I promise you that one day you will wake up screaming one of his voice lines, and that’s perfectly okay. It’s what playing Vikings does to anyone.

Orochi

Orochi just got reworked. They did fix some of his problems, but nothing truly changed. Being the most played character in the game, you’d think Ubisoft would give more love to him. Orochi is C tier because he lacks, quite frankly, everything. He’s a good counter attacker, but no For Honor player has the mental capacity to wait for the enemy to attack.

He has lackluster damage, is very squishy, his dodge attacks are very predictable and easy to parry, he has zero ganking tools, zero team fight tools, and even in 1v1s, he gets stomped on by many characters. Once again, you can always compensate with skill, but if winning is what you’re seeking, I suggest looking for another hero to play.

Peacekeeper

She has the same problems as Orochi. I’m not joking when I say the poster boys/girls in For Honor are the worst characters to play. She has zero ganking tools, zero team fighting tools, lackluster 1v1s, and loves to feed revenge to the enemy when trying to guard break them every second of their existence.

Shaman

I think you can start to see a pattern here. Most assassins are lackluster. Shaman is one of them. I could write the same thing again, but just look at what I said about Orochi and Peacekeeper. The shaman does have a much better ganking tool when jumping on you and eating your throat, but in the end, it doesn’t provide enough to bump her up a tier.

Valkyrie

She is the exact product of what happens if you take Aramusha or Conqueror and strip them of their C Stance. She simply has nothing worthwhile going for her at all. She is annoying for spamming lights in every situation, but she doesn’t have a choice. She lacks a proper kit to deal with most problematic instances in this game.

D Tier Explained

The D tier is the bottom of the barrel. I wouldn’t ever recommend playing any of these characters in the state they are in right now. They are gimmicky characters that Ubisoft thought could win just with that gimmick alone. For said reason, I’ll briefly brush over them to explain their unique traits and why it doesn’t work.

Jormungandr

Their whole gimmick is knocking down an opponent in order to use their finisher move on them for heavy damage. But they have one of the shortest ranges in the game, 0 mobility, 0 strings longer than two hits, and horrendous defense outside the game mechanics.

All you can do is use his special guard break move to lower the opponent’s stamina and hope they don’t run away to regenerate it and eliminate your progress.

Monk

All of his good hits come when you get into your stance. In this stance, you cannot block, and all of the moves are comically slow anyway. You can throw a light attack, and he’ll be out of his stance, forced to rely on his mediocre moveset.

Nuxia

Her whole gimmick is her trap mechanic. When she uses a trapping maneuvre, if your guard is in the direction of the attack, you get trapped , and she confirms a decent amount of damage.

However, this is so easily countered by so many things. You can switch guards, emote, unlock from the opponent, just guard break her and confirm damage yourself. Overall, good idea but a lackluster execution.

FAQs

Conclusion

This is a list of all the For Honor characters reviewed, up to Pirate release. It’s hard to say how it will change in the next season, but unless some very hard nerfs hit the S-tier cast, this list will be a good indicator for a decent amount of time.