Naraka Bladepoint Tier List: Best characters for Solos and Trios
These are the best characters in Naraka: Bladepoint as decided by the top pro players!
Update: We've added some commentary on the new character, Shayol Wei, to our best Naraka Characters list before the arrival of Lyam Liu in Season 12!
Naraka: Bladepoint is a melee Battle Royale with 18 unique characters, each with their own skills, ultimate abilities, and roles to perform on the battlefield. The best characters in Naraka: Bladepoint are not only strong in a vacuum, but within the wider meta as you face off against your foes across Morus Isle.
In-game, each available character is given a rating across five key attributes: Survival, Support, Control, Damage, and Mobility. But when you’re first starting out in Naraka, and even when you’ve gathered some experience and are looking to improve, it can be difficult to discern between the massive amount of options at your disposal - and that's before you even start to think about the best weapons.
To help you decide who to pick, we’ve canvassed the opinions of pro players, developers from 24 Entertainment and content creators. With that insight, you can decide who to invest your time into learning seriously and who to choose for a bit of fun.
However, you also need to consider which mode you’re playing. The best characters in Naraka: Bladepoint are different depending on whether you’re playing Solo or in the most popular team mode, Trios.
We’ve collated information on both game modes, using the J Cup World Championship as a guide for who the very best professionals choose to play when it comes to the crunch.
Almost every character in Naraka was played at the highest level during the J Cup World Championship held in Chengdu, China - either in Solos or Trios. The only character not to feature at all was Valda Cui - a disaster for eye-patch fans.
But with that in mind, it means whichever character you like to play the most, you can probably find a role for them in competitive play, as you trade blows with the very best the game has to offer.
Naraka: Bladepoint Best Solo characters
The latest new character in Naraka: Bladepoint is Shayol Wei, an intriguing fighter with a variety of defensive abiltiies that lend themselves to the survivability necessary in Solo queue.
While it's too soon after her release to slot her into a specific ranking, 24 Entertainment tends to make new characters and weapons in Naraka very powerful. The early signs with Shayol Wei are no exception.
While her F ability looks to be a relatively reliable way to counter aggression, it's her Ultimate, the Black Tortoise shield, which completely blocks most normal melee attacks, and many characters' F and Ultimates, that's the star of the show.
The only question with Shayol Wei is whether a reliable method for wasting her shields emerges. Until that strategy is figured out, and probably afterwards too, she's very strong.
Outside of Shayol Wei, the best solo characters in Naraka, as determined by pro tournament picks, are as follows:
- Hadi
- Ziping Yin
- Feria Shen
- Temulch
- Justina Gu
- Takeda Nobutada
- Tessa
- Tarka Ji
- Wuchen
- Akos Hu
- Zai
- Matari
Hadi, another of the most recent characters added to Naraka: Bladepoint, was by far the most picked character across the tournament J Cup world championship before Shayol Wei was released. Hadi is still highly rated, despite catching a nerf in a post-tournament patch, not just because of his powerful abilities, but also because he has good matchups against other popular characters.
“It’s a character-based game, so character meta is definitely a thing. There’s definitely a character that is stronger compared to others,” ELD.Froztiuvs, a Naraka pro representing the NA region, told VG247 at the J Cup tournament.
“The Chinese side didn’t think Hadi was strong when he was released. I felt like Hadi was strong and played him twice in a tournament, and I feel like now everyone is picking up Hadi and trying to fight me to improve or setting up customs with other pros to learn Hadi.”
Another NA pro player, Tryhard, who reached the finals of the 2022 J Cup, agrees: “Hadi is easily the most dominant solo character just because of his Ultimate and his F ability is also very strong. And characters like Feria too are making an appearance in both modes, so they’re ones to look out for.”
Froztivus thinks Feria is near the top of the list too, while Temulch - who saw a lot of play in the later games of J Cup - is a solid choice as well: “Besides Hadi, it’s Feria because she just got buffed recently. I feel like Temulch is also pretty good even though a lot of people don’t really like him - but he has some features that are good against Feria or Hadi. As a counter pick, he can be good in certain situations."
However, J Cup 2023 Solo champion, AOW.Mike, showed how characters based around survivability and healing can still thrive in a Solo environment, using their damage reduction and health replenishing abilities to fend off attacks until they can swoop in to finish off opponents.
“Watching [Mike] almost made me feel like he’s a little toxic in how he steals kills,” Heaven, a content creator who makes English-language guides for Naraka, explained. “What stood out to me was one game where he was on Ziping Yin and using a repeating crossbow with venom tip. He’d shoot people pre-fight, making them unable to properly heal, then just keep up the pressure to the point where it was just not fun to watch from the perspective of the guy on the receiving end. I was actually suffering with them.
“Ziping fights tend to be giga-long. She’s 1hp, but as long as she’s not dead she’s still alive - she can just stall and heal and kite - she’s very hard to take down. You have to get past the Ult, past the F, past the movement, that’s just a lot of factors. Movement is huge in solos, definitely.”
Naraka: Bladepoint best Trios team compositions
In Trios, the main team-based mode in Naraka: Bladepoint, there are four main top-tier compositions:
- Takeda, Temulch and Ziping Yin
- Viper Ning, Tessa and Wuchen
- Kurumi, Yueshan and Tianhai
- Feria, Yueshan and Yoto Hime
Over the course of the most recent J Cup esports competition, all four of these compositions were used to varying degrees. There was also one instance where Tessa was substituted for Yoto Hime to create a team of: Viper Ning, Yoto Hime and Wuchen.
Some characters who struggle in Solos, or aren’t even seen at all, come into their own when supported by a team in Trios. This might be because their survivability is supported by a dedicated healer or tank, or enemies have a juicer or more distracting target to divert attention.
One of these characters is Takeda Nobutada, who is decent in Solo, but almost ubiquitous in Trios.
“Takeda is very strong,” Tryhard explained. “I think he’s weakened a little bit in solos because of the addition of Hadi, who’s the newest character, but he’s still part of the strongest composition for trios.”
Therefore, if there's a character you like to play with who gets outclassed by meta picks in Solos, then Trios might be the game mode for you. Characters that new players immediately have access to like Tianhai and Viper Ning both benefit from this switch, so if you've invested in learning the ropes with them, try making some new friends!
Where to learn how to use the best characters in Naraka: Bladepoint
For both North American and Chinese pro Naraka players, watching high-level gameplay is extremely important. It not only allows them to incorporate techniques and ideas from their peers into their own playstyle, but also to hone their understanding of the flow of combat.
Speaking to VG247 at the J Cup world Championship, Solo winner AOW.Mike attributed his victory to his understanding of the rhythm of matches and his sense of when to engage, when to fight and when to leave a situation.
To help develop this sense for yourself, there's no better place than the Naraka Esports' official Twitch page, which hosts live coverage of premier Naraka: Bladepoint tournaments throughout the year.
This includes the gala J Cup World Championship, which was most recently held in Chengdu, China in front of thousands of fans.
In the Solo matches, watch how the players gradually changed their picks as the tournament progressed - eventually gravitating more towards Temulch as a counter to Hadi. There are also many great examples of not just incredibly aggressive offense, but slippery defense as well.
Take ELD.Froztiuvs' performance for example. He had an amazing record in the Realm of Yang, showing that he's a fantastic 1-on-1 fighter. But when it came to placing consistently, players with a more opportunistic sense of when to stike and when to run away came out on top.
While in the Trios matches you can get a much better sense of the role that each character performs within their team composition. Emulating this will give you a much better idea of what you're actually supposed to be doing moment-to-moment with your chosen character.