Anime Vanguards Tier List (April 2026) – Best Units Ranked

Are you entering for the new updates or do you play every day? Your unit selections in Anime Vanguards determine how far you will progress in any scenario. With so many characters in the pool, choosing the right one is not always clear. This becomes even more important as each of the different game modes requires unique damage-dealing characters. By using this Anime Vanguards tier list, you can easily find the best mythic, vanguard, secret, and limited units that will help you breeze through the waves.

Anime Vanguards Tier List Overview

In our Anime Vanguards tier list, we have selected the top 50 units from the latest update of the game, version 12. This includes all Vanguard and some secret, limited, or mythic characters. We ranked the units from SS to D based on their high DPS, support, and utility.

So grab your Anime Vanguards codes, stock up on your gems, and try your luck by following our tier list for powerful units.

Anime Vanguards Tier List Explanation

Now that you know the full tier list, let’s provide a complete explanation of the unit rankings and why they are better than others:

SS Tier

The SS units in our Anime Vanguards tier list are the strongest in the game. Instead of just raw DPS, they bring special buffs, significant utility features, and completely meta-defining mechanics.

• Demon Leader (Control): As a top-tier support, the “Control Chains” passive reduces the placement cost for each chained unit by 10%, while also increasing its own damage. By providing a 30% damage buff to all chained Demon Hunter allies, it is an indispensable meta provider for ensuring your economy and scaling.
• God (Above Heaven): As the ultimate AoE nuclear weapon in the game, its reality-altering and time-stopping mechanics completely lock down the map. It provides your team with astronomical area damage that instantly vaporizes high HP boss waves, ensuring unique late-game security.
• Song Jinwu and Igros: This duo dominates the frontline role by summoning a self-renewing army using shadow extraction passives. By producing powerful units that do not count towards your placement limit, they provide your team with an excessive, zero-maintenance defense.
• Gujo (Infinity): As the leading crowd control unit in the game, its area expansion mechanics apply widespread stuns and extreme slowdowns to enemies. By halting the momentum of waves, it significantly increases the team's survivability while also providing top-tier damage output.
• Lich King (Ruler): As an elite summoner, he creates autonomous, highly durable defense lines by continuously producing shadow units. His ability to provide an impenetrable front allows you to focus your entire economy and remaining unit slots on pure DPS carriers.
• Rogita (Super 4): The ultimate boss killer, she wildly utilizes fusion stat multipliers to achieve the highest single-target burst damage. By placing her on your team, you aim to melt down large, high-priority bosses.
• Ice Queen (Free): The absolute gold standard for area denial, she locks enemies in place with a guaranteed AoE freezing passive. Her ability to completely stop rapidly moving swarms provides the necessary time for your heavy hitters to deal maximum damage.
• Alocard (Vampire King): As the primary DoT (Damage over Time) carrier, he applies heavy bleeds in wide areas. His unique sustainability akin to life steal and constant damage pressure makes him perfect for eroding multiple paths simultaneously.

S+ Level

The S+ roster in our Anime Vanguards tier list consists of incredible hyper carriers and top-tier supports, forming the backbone of any highly optimized team composition. While they may not have map dominance at the top level, their raw stats and scaling can easily carry you through the toughest late-game content.

• Demon Hybrid (Saw): The “Continuous Movement” mechanic doubles his damage when the meter fills, while the “New Demon Hunter” passive detonates bleed stacks with a massive explosion. He is an offensive monster, but requires a Demon Leader in the team to unlock his 130% peak potential through the “True Love” synergy passive.
• Demon Leader: Even in his base form, he is a critical support pillar with incredible cost efficiency and a 40% damage buff specifically for Demon Hybrid. He significantly reduces the economic burden in the early game and allows your strongest Demon Hunter carriers to sweep through.
• Brolzi Super (Furious): His rage-based passives multiply his stats to astronomical levels as waves progress, providing explosive DPS power. While it requires a significant cash investment from your team's economy, the screen-clearing AoE damage cost easily justifies it.
• Conqueror vs Resilient: This dual unit hybrid DPS uses a unique conflict mechanism to deal devastating physical damage by shredding armor. They excel at dismantling late-game tanks, softening the toughest targets for the rest of your team to easily finish off.
• Redeemer (Rebirth): Provides some of the highest raw burst damage numbers currently available, serving as an elite wave clearer for late-game content. The only downside is that your team needs to build a significant early-game economy to meet the upgrade layers that provide ultimate map dominance.
• Diablo (Renacimiento): As an extraordinary AoE scaler, his abilities ruthlessly punish trapped enemy waves. He is an excellent mid-late game anchor to ensure that high-density swarms never breach your defenses.
• Shinobi Sage (Friendship): As a late-game scaler, his passives synergize and enhance particularly well with other shinobi units. He transforms a standard ninja team composition into a highly optimized, high DPS late-game powerhouse.
• Skele King (Rock): A top-tier support pillar using music-based passives that apply freeze control to enemies while providing significant buffs to nearby allies. He is a power multiplier that significantly boosts your team's overall DPS and survivability.
• Divalo (Requiem): As a tactical time controller, his requiem abilities allow you to precisely manipulate enemy movements and attack ranges. He provides your team with a critical breathing space during chaotic waves, tightly setting the pace of the battle.
• Teacher (Last Stand): Designed for crisis moments, the phase scaling passives provide significant damage spikes exactly when you need them. He is the ultimate safety net for your team during the brutal final waves of legendary phases.
• Lord Friezo (Emperor): The ultimate beam DPS unit, commands absolute authority with continuous, map-wide damage. Its extremely stable damage output provides a reliable, high-pressure backbone for your team's overall defense strategy.
• Quetzalcoatl (Sun God): As a leading anti-air and DoT hybrid, its massive air coverage completely locks down the sky. By applying persistent burning effects to flying targets, it eliminates one of the game's greatest threats before it reaches the ground.

S Level

Units at S level are reliable damage dealers and support specialists that can comfortably perform in mid to late game modes. These Anime Vanguards units may require slightly more careful economy management or precise positioning, but they are exceptional choices to complete your board.

• Iscanur (Pride): A heavy burst carrier that effortlessly melts high HP targets using sun-based burning mechanics. Its passive, which scales with sunlight, requires you to strategically time your wave progression, but grants your team unprecedented damage peaks.
• Pink Evil (Celestial): By combining heavy burst damage with strong regeneration passives, it provides incredibly low-stress lane stability. A self-sufficient pillar that can hold a lane entirely on its own, allowing your team to utilize resources elsewhere.
• World Destroyer (Ancient): As your basic physical AoE cleaner, it reliably wipes low-level enemies off the board with ground-shaking shockwaves. It ensures that your team's heavy single-target hitters are not distracted by weak, swarming enemies.
• Hollowseph (Pure): A versatile damage dealer that can transition excellently from high single-target burst to devastating AoE damage. It provides your team with excellent, consistent supportive features throughout all stages of the match.
• Okorun (Turbo): An extremely dynamic speed DPS that can switch between single-target boss annihilation and fast wave clearing. Its current versatility makes it an extremely reliable flexible choice for any team composition.
• Isdead (Romantic): A powerful crowd control alternative that freezes and slows advancing waves using heavy ice manipulation. It offers your team vital stalling capabilities at a slightly lower economic cost compared to top-tier CC units.
• Agony Shinobi (Power): An extremely efficient mid-game carrier that utilizes reliable AoE attack patterns and solid crowd control. By bridging your early game defense with your late game hyper carriers, it prevents leaks in the mid-game.
• Student (Angry): Unique anger mechanics trigger massive, temporary damage bursts. It requires careful economic balance to maximize your team's anger durations, but when active, it completely shreds bosses.
• Redeemer (Moonless): Specializing in continuous AoE, it provides significant range expansions as its passives level up. It offers excellent, wide coverage on the board but falls slightly behind the rebirth variant in pure damage numbers.
• Koguro (Unsealed): Acts as the team's specialized shield breaker, easily dismantling enemy defenses with fast, multi-hit AoE attacks. It paves the way for your team's heavy hitters to deal real damage, provided your team can afford its high upgrade costs.
• Renguko (Fire Cleansing): A DoT carrier that deals significant burning damage through solid, pattern-based attack designs. You must position it precisely in map corners to maximize its value to the team, allowing it to hit the most enemies.
• Explosive Demon (Bomb): Using devastating scaling passives, it covers large areas with undeniable explosive damage. If your team can overcome its notoriously steep mid-game upgrade curve, it becomes an extremely destructive late-game powerhouse.
• Cursed Shinobi (Black Flames): A DoT specialist that continuously spreads from target to target. While excellent at wearing down large hordes, it may require team support to secure the final blow against very fast-moving bosses.

A Tier

A tier units are solid mid-game players that perform excellently in niche roles such as early wave clearing or specific area denial in our Anime Vanguards tier list. However, as enemy health pools increase in later waves, they will eventually need to be replaced by characters with higher stat multipliers.

• Deceiver (Monster): Offers great early game support features with unique monster mechanics that help establish your starting board presence. However, the stat scaling drops off noticeably, so your team will need to replace it in the late game endurance conditions.
• Horsegirls (Racers): As hyper-efficient early game pillars, they secure the first few waves perfectly with fast attack rates and speed buffs. They allow your team to aggressively gain economy without worrying about early leaks.
• Igros (Elite Knight): A strong early game DPS that clears lanes with quick physical cuts and stacking bleeds. A great start for your team, but it will eventually be outclassed by units with larger AoE or full shadow monarchy synergies.
• Astolfo (Driver of Black): Provides your team with fast attack speeds for high flexibility and unique board mobility. Its ability to quickly reposition makes it an excellent emergency response unit when a lane suddenly starts leaking.
• Ice Manipulator (Admiral): A solid area denial unit with massive ice damage zones that effectively slow down enemy progress. Extremely valuable when your team needs to control large, open areas on wide, open-format maps.
• Company Captain (Hybrid): An extremely reliable frontline fighter that scales well with standard physical damage. Provides your team with a solid, reliable damage foundation without requiring any complex setups.
• Armored Mage (Rearmament): Versatile armor-switching mechanics offer your team excellent tactical flexibility to adapt to different wave types. However, it lacks the raw, peak DPS multipliers necessary to occupy space at the highest levels.
• Elastic Captain (Pirate): Provides massive, impressive AoE combat damage with item-based transformations that easily clear clustered enemies. While powerful, its attack range may feel somewhat limiting for the team on maps with long, spread-out paths.
• Fastest Shinobi (Flash): Serves as the ultimate cleanup crew for fast-moving enemies with an extremely low attack duration (SPA). Easily saves your team from leaks, but cannot effectively deal with late-game hordes due to a lack of wide AoE.
• Delusional Demon (Blood): A DoT specialist based on stackable blood manipulation bleeds that reduce enemy health over time. While strong, it falls slightly behind due to the current meta heavily favoring burst damage over gradual decay.
• Sword (Black Tyrant): A physical AoE specialist with wide cutting sword attacks, perfectly suited for holding narrow passages. It can shine brilliantly when your team can consistently funnel enemies into a single dense path.
• Slime (King): Functions as a unique stalling support that severely slows down enemy progress using suction mechanics and water damage. A solid backup choice for your team when top-tier raw freezing units are unavailable.

B Tier

If you are looking for good foundation damage, B-level units in the Anime Vanguards tier list are great choices. However, these characters are clearly suffering from power creep compared to the current meta roster. They are completely suitable for early progression, but their lack of wide area effects or advanced buffs makes them a burden against intense late-game raids.

• Warlord (From the Sea): Provides decent crowd control with water-based martial arts attacks that push enemies back. Unfortunately, the base damage modifiers cannot compete with the current top-tier DPS roster, making it an suboptimal choice for late game.
• Fallen Angel (Guns): Offers high single-target efficiency thanks to its rapid fire rate, but the lack of AoE cleave makes it a significant burden for your team against mid to late-game raids.

C Level

Instead of using C-level units, it would be much better to save your gems to obtain better units in Anime Vanguards.

• Manipulator (Spider): Uses visually interesting web-based traps that provide some minor immobilization assistance. Ultimately, placing it takes up valuable unit limit slots that your team desperately needs for high damage carriers or superior freezing units.

D Level

If you are unlucky in pulls, keep these D-level units until you obtain better Anime Vanguards characters according to our tier list.

• Gazelle (Zombie): Has a fun immortal revival trick that allows it to return to the board when defeated. In a highly optimized tower defense scenario, this passive is practically useless for your team since your frontline units should never die.
• Leo (Others): A good physical fighter with fast, close-range combo attacks. It is severely lacking in the pure stat multipliers and AoE abilities required to handle modern, high-health tower defense content.

Our Anime Vanguards tier list ends here, where we ranked all units from vanguard to mythic rarity. Which characters are you using to crush the lobby? Let us know in the comments.

The Shinobi Sage (Friendship) is the best overall DPS unit in Anime Vanguards after update 12.

Alocard (Vampire King) is the best support unit in Anime Vanguards after update 12.

The Lich King (Ruler) and Demon Leader (Control) are the best utility units in Anime Vanguards.

Yes, Gojo or Gujo (his name in the game) is a great character, especially when you unlock the infinity version.

Goku (Roku) and Ichigo (Ichiga) are the best starter characters in Anime Vanguards.