Slay the Spire 2 Character Tier List: Ranking the Spire's Most Miserable Souls
Figuring out which cursed wanderer to drag up this unforgiving tower is half the battle, and I am here to save you hours of painful trial and error.
Mega Crit is officially back to ruin my sleep schedule, and they brought a few new friends to the slaughter. Slay the Spire 2 dropped into early access with a roster of five distinct characters. You start with the trusty Ironclad, but expanding your options is going to be your very first objective. The developers introduced two completely new faces alongside three returning veterans, and figuring out who actually has the mathematical advantage takes a lot of painful trial and error.
I have spent an unhealthy amount of time getting crushed by random Elites and tweaking terrible decks to figure out exactly who is worth your time. The balance is surprisingly solid for a launch build, but certain mechanics are simply outperforming others by a wide margin. Before you commit to a brutal two hour climb, you need to know who is actively carrying their own weight.
The Five Minute Unlock Exploit
Before I rank the roster, you need to actually have access to them. The game unlocks characters sequentially by requiring you to participate in a run with the previous hero in the chain. If you want to skip the agonizing grind and get right to the new toys, there is a remarkably easy exploit to unlock the entire cast in about five minutes.
You literally just boot up a run with your current character, press the escape key, and hit "Give Up." The game counts this miserable zero-point failure as a completed attempt and immediately unlocks the next character in the line. You do not have to fight a single enemy. Just spawn in, quit, and repeat until you have all five options sitting on your character select screen.
For those of you jumping into the new cooperative mode, do not panic about fighting your friends for the top tier classes. You can actually run duplicate characters in multiplayer without any restrictions.
S-Tier: The Overpowered Royalty
If your only goal is to mechanically break the game and laugh while elite bosses melt into a puddle, this is exactly where you want to be. These characters offer late game scaling that makes the final acts feel like a victory lap.
The Regent
This new alien royal feels exceptionally busted right now. As I outlined in my Slay the Spire 2 Regent guide, he introduces Stars as a completely separate resource from your standard energy. You start every combat with three Stars, and your deck is built entirely around generating and spending them for massive returns.
The scaling here is just absurd. You can find spells that nuke targets and actively refund the Stars if they secure a kill. The specific card Bombardment is incredibly broken in the current build. Upgrading it allows you to deal roughly 50 damage almost for free on turns where you just want to sit back and play defensive cards. You have a very comfortable 75 starting health, but you rarely need it because the Regent's damage output can usually clear a room before the enemy even gets a turn. His alternate Sovereign Blade build is equally terrifying, allowing you to forge a single weapon in your hand until it can erase a boss in one swing.
The Silent
The rogue of the Spire remains a masterpiece of game design. The Silent requires a massive amount of finesse because she has zero built in healing and a relatively low health pool of 70. Every point of damage you take early on is a permanent tax on your run. However, her late game scaling is unmatched.
She dominates the top tier purely because of the new "Sly" keyword. This mechanic instantly plays a card for free the moment it is discarded from your hand. When you combine this with her insane card draw capabilities, you can build decks that cycle through your entire arsenal in a single turn. Whether you are spamming a million zero cost Shivs powered up by the Accuracy card or stacking Poison exponentially with Catalyst, her damage ceiling is virtually limitless once you understand her combos. Check out my Slay the Spire 2 Silent guide if you are struggling to survive her fragile early game.
A-Tier: The Reliable Workhorses
These characters are incredibly solid. They might lack the immediate raw power of the S-Tier, but they offer highly consistent mechanics that can drag even a mediocre player to the final act.
The Ironclad
The poster boy is exactly as reliable as you remember him. The Ironclad is the ultimate safety net for beginners who are still learning enemy attack patterns. His Burning Blood relic heals 6 HP at the end of every single fight, meaning you can make stupid mistakes early on and simply outlast the punishment.
His straightforward mechanics are his biggest strength. You can turtle up with Barricade and Body Slam, or you can lean into Exhaust synergies with Dead Branch to completely overwhelm the board. He also has access to Bloodletting cards that hurt his own HP pool for massive buffs, which pairs perfectly with his high base health of 80. He sits in A-Tier simply because his damage ceiling feels slightly rigid compared to the raw, game breaking output of the Regent or Silent. You still have to work for your victories, but my Slay the Spire 2 Ironclad guide can help you optimize those heavy hits.
The Necrobinder
Playing a sassy lich with a giant skeletal hand is a fantastic concept, but it comes with a massive learning curve. The Necrobinder is incredibly squishy, starting with a pitiful 66 health. You mitigate this by summoning your pet "Osty" at the start of combat. Osty acts as a physical shield that you can buff to absorb incoming hits.
The highlight of this class is the Doom mechanic. It is essentially a death mark that instantly executes an enemy the moment their health drops below their current Doom stack count. It feels incredibly rewarding to perfectly calculate an execution. The only reason the Necrobinder is not S-Tier is that the pet absorption mechanic feels slightly bugged right now. Taking a lethal hit because damage leaked through your pet when it clearly should not have is infuriating. Until Mega Crit irons out the kinks in her defense, she requires flawless play. I highly recommend reading my Slay the Spire 2 Necrobinder guide before attempting a run.
B-Tier: The RNG Victim
You can absolutely win with this character, but the game is going to make you fight tooth and nail for every single victory.
The Defect
The robotic spellcaster relies entirely on channeling elemental orbs that provide passive benefits every turn. You start every fight by channeling one Lightning orb for a free 3 damage ping thanks to the Cracked Core relic.
The massive, glaring issue with the Defect is the heavy reliance on the Evoke mechanic and the Focus stat. Evoking an orb consumes it for a huge burst of power. If the randomized card rewards decide not to hand you reliable Evoke options or cards that generate Focus, your entire run will completely stall out in Act 2. You lack the consistent raw damage of the Ironclad or the explosive scaling of the Regent. When the card drops align perfectly, the Defect is a brilliant storm of mathematical perfection. When they do not, you are just a fragile piece of scrap metal waiting to get crushed by bad luck. If you are determined to make the robot work, you should rely heavily on the zero cost Claw deck outlined in my Slay the Spire 2 Defect guide to bypass the orb RNG entirely.
