Putting together a Zenless Zone Zero tier list is more challenging than with any game miHoYo has previously made, and that’s because all of the characters are pretty strong. It’s always good advice to find someone that you like in these games, because honestly, most characters are viable in 90% of content provided you build them.
If you want to get the most out of your ZZZ characters, however, you’ll want to specialise in either a faction or a specific attribute—such as fire, ice, or electric—as this will unlock your agents’ additional ability. Enemy factions are also weak to specific attributes, which encourages you to create teams focused on fighting each of them in the endgame.
The starting roster of agents is a little unbalanced in terms of specialities and attributes. For example, there’s only one attack character for fire, ether, and electric, and the electric one is A-tier—what ZZZ calls a four-star. Ben is also the only defense character, and the ether attribute only has two agents available right now. Moreso than any other miHoYo game, though, all characters are viable, hence why my list doesn’t include a C tier.
miHoYo will definitely flesh out the roster, but it’s worth considering what’s up for grabs if you’re specialising a team towards an attribute. If you’re confused about what attributes or specialities are, check the section lower down the page explaining them. Otherwise, here’s my tier list of the best ZZZ characters with info about their roles and playstyles.
Zenless Zone Zero tier list
S-tier
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Ellen
Attribute: Ice
Speciality: Attack
This shark maid is an incredible ice-based damage dealer and the best attack character in the game right now. Ellen can enter a special sprint state that allows her to unleash the Arctic Ambush attack and gain Flash Freeze Charges; a resource she consumes to deal enhanced ice attacks against opponents.
Her core skill also massively buffs crit damage when she does either of those. Ellen is both very fun to play and one of the reasons ice is among the game’s strongest attributes right now.
Nekomata
Attribute: Physical
Speciality: Attack
Another speedy character, Nekomata is a physical attack agent who gains increased damage when she successfully pulls off a dodge counter or a quick assist. It makes for a fun, evasive playstyle, as this robo footed-feline dashes around the battlefield slashing up opponents and dealing Assault with her special attack.
Her additional ability increases the damage of her next EX special attack anytime a character inflicts Assault, making her the perfect centerpiece for a physical-focused squad.
Ben/Koleda
Attribute: Fire
Speciality: Stun/Defense
Though Ben and Koleda are two separate characters—A-tier and S-tier respectively—together they form the core of ZZZ’s strongest fire team. Koleda is a stun character who can trigger explosions with her hammer after her second and fourth attacks, but if she’s on a team with Ben, these attacks and her ultimate are enhanced and gain unique animations including the bear character.
Ben, on the other hand, is incredible even without Koleda. Though he might feel a little clunky to play at first, he’s currently the only shielder in the game and can parry attacks with his skill. His core ability also increases his attack based on his defense, which anyone who played Noelle in Genshin can tell you is a potent combo.
Nicole
Attribute: Ether
Speciality: Support
For my money, Nicole is easily the best free character you get in Zenless Zone Zero, due to her ability to group together enemies with ether vortexes, decreasing their defense and procc-ing the Corruption anomaly so other characters can punish them. Frequently applying these debuffs to enemies makes her a really strong agent, and if you manage to get the other new ether character, Zhu Yuan, their playstyles sync together really well.
Zhu Yuan
Attribute: Ether
Speciality: Attack
The only character from New Eridu Public Security, Zhu Yuan is a very strong ether attack agent who kind of feels like maining John Wick or Leon from Resident Evil. Her regular attacks are a mix of gun-fu, granting her Enhanced Shotshells she can blast into opponents for massive ether damage.
As mentioned above, grouping enemies with Nicole’s ether vortexes then blasting them with Zhu Yuan’s shotshells works wonderfully, especially as Zhu Yuan benefits from the ether damage buff that Nicole’s additional ability provides.
A-tier
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Soldier 11
Attribute: Fire
Speciality: Attack
The best—and only—fire-based attack character. Honestly, even though her animations are cool, Soldier 11’s playstyle is a bit boring, centered entirely around delaying attack inputs to imbue her sword with fire. However, it’s impossible to deny that she’s the strongest fire-based damage-dealer at launch, and the perfect complement to a team up with Koleda and Ben.
Lycaon
Attribute: Ice
Speciality: Stun
Though Lycaon’s playstyle is about as basic as Soldier 11—you hold down attacks to charge and deal ice damage—it doesn’t matter so much when his speciality is stun. Lycaon’s role is effectively jumping in, beating the crap out of enemies until they’re stunned so other characters can take over, and he does that exceptionally well. Alongside Ellen and Soukaku, Lycaon is the third pillar of ZZZ’s best ice team.
Grace
Attribute: Electric
Speciality: Anomaly
Anomaly characters are a little strange in that they’re damage-dealers who focus on proccing attribute anomalies. I would call them DoT attack characters, but as you’ll see with Piper in the next entry, that doesn’t quite fit as a description.
Personally, I prefer Grace to Anton as an electric damage-dealer; she has a fun playstyle based on shooting enemies with a nail gun to gain stacks of Zap, which her skill then consumes to throw electric grenades and apply Shock. She also works well with Rina’s additional ability that increases Shock duration.
Piper
Attribute: Physical
Speciality: Anomaly
This axe-wielding mechanic is ZZZ’s strangest character. Her focus is on building the Assault anomaly, but since this deals a massive chunk of damage to enemies when it procs, she’s kind of like a specialised physical attack character in her own right. In fact, I honestly prefer Piper to Corin since she has a massive AoE when she spins with her axe, powering up while consuming energy.
This means she can proc Assault on lots of foes at once, utterly blending them, plus she gains damage-reduction as she spins. I would 100% recommend Piper as a character to run with Nekomata, since all the Assault she causes will power up the robo-kitty’s EX special attacks.
Koleda
Attribute: Fire
Speciality: Stun
Though I’d definitely say Koleda is S-tier in combination with Ben, when she’s on her lonesome she’s more A-tier. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still an amazing stun character for a fire attribute team, or any other in fact, but she loses a bit of her potency where not paired with the big ol’ bear.
Lucy
Attribute: Fire
Speciality: Support
Despite being labelled as a fire support character, Lucy is interesting in that she’s really the only general support character in the game at launch. This is because she supports the squad with her Guard Boar minions, who inherit both her attack and impact, plus crit rate and crit damage via her additional ability.
After using her EX special attack, she buffs both party and Guard Boar attack based on her own, so functions as a pretty strong support for any team. It’s also a lot of fun smacking boars at enemies with a baseball bat.
Rina
Attribute: Electro
Speciality: Support
Whether you use Grace or Anton, the real core of ZZZ’s strongest electric team is Rina. This puppet-wielding maid boosts squad PEN ratio—the amount of enemy defense you ignore—based on her own, but she also increases Shock duration and squad damage to shocked enemies with her additional ability
This makes her a strong support best utilised in electric parties. She’s also a damage-dealer in her own right with lots of electric AoEs that are great for taking out groups of enemies.
Corin
Attribute: Physical
Speciality: Attack
There’s not all that much to say about Corin other than that she’s a strong physical attack character, able to grind her chainsaw against enemies for massive damage and to proc Assault while gaining damage reduction.
While Piper is better in terms of AoE damage and Assault specifically, I’d say Corin wins on a single target damage basis. If you pre-registered for the game, she’s also a free character, and by far the best damage-dealer of the free characters you can get.
Soukaku
Attribute: Ice
Speciality: Support
This little blue demon is currently the only member of the Hollows Special Operations Section 6 faction, but she’s an amazing support character for ice teams, especially paired with Ellen and Lycaon. Soukaku’s playstyle revolves around gathering three stacks of Vortex using her EX special attack, before unleashing Fly the Flag and entering the Frosted Banner state.
This enhances her basic attacks to deal ice damage, consuming the Vortex, but also buffing her attack. This buff also applies to characters switching in for quick assists and chain attacks. Lastly, her additional ability increases ice damage for the whole squad when she consumes said Vortex.
B-tier
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Billy
Attribute: Physical
Speciality: Attack
While Billy is undoubtedly a fun character to play—especially if you like guns and a ranged playstyle—he’s somewhat overshadowed by the sheer number of great physical damage-dealers in the game.
While Piper is adept at proccing Assault and Corin is amazing at blending single targets, Billy doesn’t feel all that special, except in his ability to shoot lots of different enemies at once. He’ll certainly perform well-enough as a damage-dealer, but he’ll likely be one the first characters you look to replace with another attack agent—unless you really like his character, that is.
Anton
Attribute: Electric
Speciality: Attack
Anton is a little unusual in that while all other attributes have S-tier attack characters—effectively five stars—he’s the only A-tier, and it does leave him feeling a tiny bit lacklustre in comparison to other electric characters like Grace and Rina.
The fact that you need to build energy and use his EX special attack before he can even start properly dealing electric damage really slows things down. He’ll certainly work fine for an electric team, but you’ll likely be looking to future agents for a better electric attack character overall.
Anby
Attribute: Electric
Speciality: Stun
As a free stun agent, Anby is pretty useful, since she applies daze to enemies and big bosses so you can let loose with your attack character. Ultimately, though, she’s the worst of the game’s stun agents and has a somewhat annoying playstyle centered entirely around inputting your attack late after the third attack in her combo.
When you’re fighting highly aggressive enemies, such as bosses, it can often quite hard to reach that third attack without being interrupted by having to evade or counter. She’ll still get you through the story, especially on an electric team, but Koleda and Lycaon feel far stronger overall.
How to get new characters in ZZZ
You get new characters by pulling on banners in the Signal Search (Image credit: miHoYo)
The character selector lets you recruit an S-tier from the starting roster once you use 300 Master Tapes (Image credit: miHoYo)
Since Zenless Zone Zero is a gacha game, you’ll acquire most characters by pulling on banners. Here it’s called Signal Search and the currency used to pull is called Master Tapes. You can acquire these whole, but you’ll generally earn Polychrome via playing the game, which you can then spend to purchase them.
Besides the three free characters you get at the start of the game—Billy, Anby, and Nicole—plus Corin if you pre-registered, it’s likely that you’ll be able to get more free characters via in-game events. If ZZZ is anything like Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail, there’ll be at least one free character available for reaching a certain stage in its endgame, most likely the Hollow Zero activity in this case.
ZZZ also has an S-tier agent selector—what the game calls five-star characters—which lets you recruit an S-tier character from the starting roster once you’ve used 300 Master Tapes, similar to what they did in Honkai: Star Rail early on.
What are specialities and attributes?
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Your team composition in Zenless Zone Zero is mostly determined by both agent specialities and attributes. Specialities are the roles that each character takes in a team, and like Honkai: Star Rail, it also changes the selection of W-Engines—essentially weapons—that they can use. The specialities are:
Attack characters function as your damage-dealersStun characters focus on building daze on opponents to stun them, allowing your team to deal extra damage. Most effective against bosses and tough single targets.Support characters buff the effectiveness of the whole squad and often provide attribute-specific buffs, like how Nicole boosts ether damageAnomaly characters centre around building attribute anomalies such as Assault and Shock. There are only two of these in the game at launch in Grace and Piper.Defense characters are tanky and have shielding abilities that let them counterattack. Ben is the only defense character at launch.
Agents also have an attribute; either fire, electric, ice, physical, or ether. Having a balanced team in terms of specialities is important—usually an attack, a stun, and a support—but the reason attributes are so vital is because enemies in ZZZ have specific attribute weaknesses and bringing specialised teams provides a big advantage.
Characters that share attributes—or are from the same faction—also unlock passive additional abilities in combat and these are pretty powerful. If you run Soukaku with another ice attribute character for instance, she can provide a 20% ice damage buff to the whole squad.
Playing into attributes won’t feel as necessary early on, but if you want to bring the strongest team to an activity, you should definitely specialise your attribute and focus on building teams that provide each for the endgame.
