Legends Characters Tier List

Legends Character Tier List Guide

The tier list reflects the potential of that character in very skilled play, with a small number of players involved in the match. Good players can beat poor ones no matter which character each chooses. But when everyone involved is playing well, some Legends characters are simply more effective at doing and taking damage. That's what determines the top tier here.

Buying some of these characters using Marks of Legend is only available for Legendary accounts. Legends who are purchased in the marketplace instead unlock for all characters on the account, importing with a marketplace claim.

As of GU51 - Last update 2015/08/25

Tier List

Top tier

• Two Face (70 MoL): High health, damage, and ranged attacks. Very effective supercharge (Harvey Domination - Bullet Barrage) for high damage plus incoming damage immunity.
• Shazam (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Mighty escape power to avoid counters and damage, massive supercharge, and high damage.
• Black Adam (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Escape power to avoid counters, strong supercharge, and high damage.

Lower Top

• Bane (55 MoL): High damage and health when Neo-Venom is used effectively.
• Catwoman (70 MoL or Bombshell Catwoman in Marketplace): Very high burst damage from weapons and effective power rotations.
• Bizzaro (85 MoL + Last Laugh): Good straight and AOE damage with major damage mitigation powers.
• Lex Luthor (Marketplace or 100 MoL): High DOT plus burst damage, with useful clipping and jump cancelling options.
• Wonder Woman (all skins, Marketplace or 100 MoL): Good burst damage and reflection shield; limited by power consumption.

Upper Mid

• Doctor Fate (85 MoL + Hand of Fate): Unique powers with pets, buffs, and debuffs allow strategic play and power management.
• Felix Faust (85 MoL + Hand of Fate): Strong short range combat damage and survival, many pets that can also detonate.
• Atrocitus (Marketplace or 85 MoL): AOE and CC powers with damage interactions, but with low health.
• Circe (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Good burst damage, survival options, and fast cool-downs; limited by power consumption.
• Supergirl (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Good DOT plus clipping burst damage, strong finishing move.
• Cheetah (85 MoL + Trigon): Good health, finishing move, and high berserk damage.

Mid tier

• Batman (all variations, various costs): Useful support drone, stealth, balanced damage and health.
• Robin (10 MoL, free for heroes): Long weapon combos give good damage, are hard to complete.
• The Huntress (10 MoL): Decent burst damage with backflip, high health, power efficient.
• The Joker (70 MoL): Useful pets and backflip for burst damage, high health and Clown Box safety net.
• John Stewart (85 MoL + Last Laugh): Good burst damage but very low health unless shielded.
• Amon Sur (85 MoL + Last Laugh): Useful burst damage and stuns, medium health.
• Donna Troy (85 MoL + Trigon): Low health with shield/healing mitigation, moderate burst damage.
• Wonder Girl (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Similar powers to Wonder Woman but without her damage potential.
• Kyle Rayner (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Good DOT, burst damage, and survival balance.
• Sinestro (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Useful CC powers, moderate AoE burst damage, low health.
• Nightwing (35 MoL): Good health, medium damage from dual-wield weapon and powers.

Lower Mid

• Kilowog (85 MoL + Last Laugh): Medium health and AOE attack but without high burst damage.
• Arkillo (85 MoL + Last Laugh): Good health and AOE attack but without high burst damage.
• Arkham Joker (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Good pets, backflip, and health, but with weaker weapon and supercharge than the regular Joker.
• Green Arrow (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Good health and ranged attacks but most powers can be dodged

Upper Low

• Harley Quinn (10 MoL, free for villains, Future+Bombshell Harley in Marketplace): Good health and high burst damage but with risk of interrupts.
• Guy Gardner (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Limited damage, risk of interrupts, powers can be dodged.
• Power Girl (85 MoL + Last Laugh): Limited burst damage with basic brawling and weak powers.
• Superman (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Limited burst damage with basic brawling and weak powers.
• Saint Walker (Marketplace or 85 MoL): Low health and damage potential from powers.

Low

• Ursa (85 MoL + Last Laugh): Ineffective powers and poor survival.
• General Zod (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Ineffective powers and poor survival.
• Steel (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Low health and damage potential is limited by interrupts.
• Hal Jordan (Marketplace or 100 MoL): Good DOT and burst damage but low health. Currently has a nasty bug in his block breaking; the character would be mid tier if fixed.

What the tier list is not

Ease of use guidance. Some of the top tier Legends are relatively easy to start with, such as Bane. Some are hard to reach top potential with, like Catwoman. But that is not a factor in the ranking. To get a better understanding of ease of use and deeper details, there are several longer guides you can look up individual Legends in:

• Getting Started in Legends PVP. Guide for newcomers. Comments heavily on learning curves.
• Legends PvP guide- Your Favorite Character(s). Very detailed guide focusing more on the popular and effective Legends.
• Legends PvP Character Stats and Power Descriptions. Statistics and power descriptions about each character.

This is not a buying guide. You will not win or lose based just on who you play as, whether that's a top or bottom tier character. But players new to Legends may not benefit from investing time into learning a fundamentally weak, low-tier character either. These tiers are useful to guide a short list of characters to consider. Once you've narrowed things down, it can be helpful to check one of the other guides too.

Recommendations on all the characters to play. Playing a Legends character makes you more effective at fighting against that character later. It's a good idea to become familiar with all of the inexpensive Legends in the core game--Robin, Harley, Huntress, Batman--because random queuing into instances will encounter them a little more frequently than average. Some good players even like to masquerade as newbies by playing as one of these characters. Consider spending some time with these characters when you're new to Legends and they’re cheap to purchase anyway.

Long-term guidance. Legends aims for all the characters to be evenly matched. There are regular changes made aiming to "nerf" overpowered characters, ones that have unfair moves, and less regularly to buff weak ones. If you're selecting a character based on top potential, expect that to change over time.

Factors for tier placement

Size: The standard size for serious Legends tournaments is 2v2 matches, which makes that most important size for this tier list. 1v1 influences the rankings to a lesser extent. It's very hard to rank how well a particular character will work in a larger group. Some become more or less effective depending on the group size. If this is important to you, check the more detailed guides to the character. There may be notes on larger group play there.

Burst Damage: how fast you can apply damage during a short period, especially just after a successful counter. Skilled PvP involves fitting as much damage you can can into periods where the enemy is vulnerable due to being countered, stunned, or knocked down.

Top potential: The best players will use techniques like clipping and jump cancelling to get the maximum damage out of each character. The top tier Legends tend to benefit from those techniques more than the bottom tier ones.

Credits

The list of characters in each tier originated from the many contributors to the Legends Tier List discussion. Collation, text, and all the errors by CrazyArtBrown. Updated tier placement suggestions, editing, and many character description ideas from The Enquirer and additions to this thread.

I'd place super girl higher, I think she is Upper Mid Tier.
She has great counter punishment, and is very clippable,

Bizarro is the only Brawling character that keeps sorting into a higher tier. But his burst damage is on the weak side. He just makes up for it with his huge damage reduction. Supergirl is easily the 2nd best Brawling character in the game, and the power based side of her counter-punishment is OK. But when you're out of power and it's weapon time, she still lags behind the best characters.

For various reason i cut out a new guide section I started writing yesterday on how weapon choice influences the tier right now. Here's my rough draft:

The various weapons in the game have different burst damage potential for both close (melee) and ranged attacks. Several of the best Legends are using Hand Blasters as a strong weapon at all distances. Shield (Wonder Woman) and rifle (Two-Face, John Stewart) are similarly effective. The many characters using Brawling cluster in the middle tier to low tiers. Brawling has high damage melee attacks, but they take long combos, and its ranged attacks are weak. Legends using the Two-Handed weapon (Harley, Guy, Steel) tend toward lower tier because they're limited by how its high damage attacks are easy to interrupt.

she has a finisher that is clippable, if you tap your opponent down close to half, and score a counter at that point, it's a gravy win from there on. she also has some damage absorption too, plus a finisher and some combo moves, and with different ways to clip... I'd say she's upper mid. she's certainly higher than the people you've placed her amongst.

Just to be clear: I'm not really placing people in most cases. I sometimes guess about new characters, and my accuracy rate is getting better lately. For the most part I just collect data; listen to what everyone else says while looking for agreement and patterns. If another person or two chimes in saying, yes, Supergirl really is competitive against Fate, Faust, and Circe, I don't have a problem with moving her up.

The reasons you gave are why Supergirl is in the mid tier, instead of mixed into the low-tier Kryptonian ghetto. From what I've heard about and seen in the game so far, no brawling character has combos good enough to compete against the weapon bursts of the top tier characters. Even with clipping, there's just not enough time during the counter window to fit one of brawling's strong attacks; they're just too slow.

I might actually replace Felix Faust with Supergirl.
Speaking from a 2v2 perceptive, as Supergirl has a better finisher that can be clipped and can used to knock out almost any character from half-health.
BB > Whirlwind > Finisher > Clipped with Ocular burst, all of which fit inside one counter window.
Felix has great burst potential but 2 of his attacks are interrupt able, and 2 are pets, leaving only his 2nd ability and shield viable for clipping. Both of which have a considerable amount of CD.

I played a lot more Faust, Circe, and Dr. Fate than usual getting Legends PVE feats, and they all stuck me as similar quality. Faust is probably the weakest of those three, but he's still way ahead of the typical character in the middle tier.

I'm convinced Supergirl should go up though now, with that outline of exactly what fits into the counter window. Moved and mini-description updated: "Good DOT plus clipping burst damage, strong finishing move."

Faust the weakest of the 3?
I'd put him at the strongest, especially in legends pve, Faust's finisher can summon more pets with every KO, I've had 4 pets out at once on many occasions, he has a personal shield, and the ability to explode all summoned pets for huge damage.

Fate is a good support character with his health buffs and nice DoTs, but doesn't have any damage mitigation, and without a bat drone he's sitting with not enough power to do anything half the time, so you're basically relying on one pet and his HBs for damage (Faust blows him away in this aspect).

Circe is questionably better than Faust (at least most would say) she can definitely have pets out more consistently than a Faust who cant time his finishers properly, she has a nice personal shield and of course tunneling is beautiful.
What I think gives Faust the edge on her is his finisher, he's the only HB user that even has one and the cool down is relatively short.

For people that aren't amazing with Faust and cant time his finisher properly on a consistent basis, it would definitely appear that Fate and Circe are better, mainly because their damage is just easier to do, but if you get good with Faust, the damage of 3-4 pets out constantly and a 35% finisher will top the board against Circe and Fate all day.

This is mainly from a Legends PvE perspective, for PvP I would put Faust below Fate and Circe because you can't get the full use of his pet summoning finisher in arenas.

Legends tier list should always be based upon the highest effectiveness of a Legend from a 2v2 perspective.

Fair enough, I'm more of a 1v1 player myself, so when I reference Legends PvP I'm usually talking about my experience in 1v1s.

That's agreement all around then. Playing in Legends PVE let me explore more of Faust's options than usual, and that's why the mini description I wrote even highlights the exploding pets as a potential strong point. But the tier guide is based primarily on 2v2 PvP matches. And Faust sorts closer to the bottom of the HB using magic characters there.

I don't think he's so much weaker than he should get knocked down a while tier though. Everyone seems to think the relative strengths of Faust, Fate, and Circe change based on the exact fight configuration, and to me that says they're all pretty close to equal.

yea, you kinda can use the finisher in arena's! I've done it so many times

no no no no no. I'm sorry I'd disagree with that. Faust has much better counter damage and some CC depending on his pet. Supergirl is ok and has enough to stand her ground amongst the people of that tier, but.... she doesn't have as much counter damage. Also, Faust is better than Fate I mean, that's just clear damage wise, so if any thing, Supergirl would replace him. After they nerfed his pet, and the dots, Fate isn't that useful in my opinion. If you JC the first move, and that's why the pet does nice form of damage.

Also, if you are in a 2v2 map like batcave with people who summon turrents, you can easily use the finisher to get a pet.

You can disagree. But you are wrong here.
Supergirl's counter punishment is far far superior then Faust's.
. Took out roughly 40% of the enemies health.
. Knocked out enemy at 50%. [3:08]
Granted that was before the DoT-Nerf but the only move that was adjusted of her was the DoT on ocular burst, her finisher move still does the same amount of damage.
If you are at 50% health and make a mistake in a counter against a competent Supergirl, you are dead.
Fate is extremely useful, you can't tell me being able to lower everyone's damage in an AoE field while buffing all allies in that field by 1500 health is not useful. Not to mention his pet [Girl] grants the user 1500 health buff and debuffs the enemies.
This tier list is not based upon damage, it is based upon how effective the character is in a 2v2 standpoint.

well dang, I see. I stand corrected. what does the girl pet debuff? Also stupid dot nerf

Reduces enemies damage modifiers by 7% for 6 seconds.
The DoT-Nerf was needed, as characters such as SG, Atro and Lex could win matches by just spamming DoT's and not even using counters.

I don't think there's any pressure here to replace characters in a tier just because someone is promoted. The Mid tier was bigger than I liked anyway. Characters there are typically balanced but not spectacular at any one thing (Kyle Rayner, Batman, Huntress, Donna Troy) or have their strong stuff balanced by some serious limitation (John Stewart's health, Robin's long combos, etc.)

I'm satisfied that Supergirl and Faust are better than that. They have clear strong points beyond the average Legend, while not having any nasty limitations to worry about.

There is one loose end in the middle tier I wanted to ask about. I saw some second-hand comments that Clutch thought Cheetah had good enough burst damage to be bumped up into the straight middle tier, from her current spot in Lower Mid. I tried playing some more Cheetah to figure out why, but I don't see it yet. She is great at comebacks with her berzerker damage; I'd rather not get beat down to where that matters though.

well that seems like a bit of an exaggeration. I could see with atro, but anyone else... I have to disagree.
Power bar's couldn't sustain that.

Batman should be in top tier, his powers when clipped with his insane martial arts can deal more damage then Bane, Lex, Wonder woman and Two face. I know this because I play with Batman and know how to effectively clip the right moves and powers together

You were there for the 3 videos Clutch posted of Lex, Atro and Supergirl killing enemies just by spamming DoTs right?