ULTIMATE OPERATOR TIER LIST

This is the seminal tier list ranking the best operators in XCOM: Chimera Squad in Impossible/no heal, including some tools on optimizing each teammate.

Intro

This is what each tier means to me, and (as always) feel free to disagree. These are my findings after 100 hours of play testing on Impossible, No Heal:

Tier List:
S: so powerful that they can break the game by themselves (enemies/bosses can't even take a turn)
A: Very good, will almost always win
B: Good, has an advantage
C: Okay, is evenly matched with their opponent
D: Bad, struggles to clear rooms/is as good as a basic Android

Judging Criterion

High tiers can handle an encounter by themselves, while low tiers either have weaker abilities, are more situational, or need more support from teammates to work.

A character may also be in a lower tier if they're very good but require extra resources, teamwork, or a precise build to do so. Many high tiers have great utility or damage without much modification.


I often thought of how well a team of 4 of the same operator would do compared to 4 androids. (for example, a team of Shelter's would struggle, while a team of Bluebloods would wipe the floor with most mobs).

Note: I found that:
1. Killing/incapacitating an enemy completely helps a team avoid damage more reliably than delaying a turn or defending, and
2. Making two damage-dealing actions behind cover does better than one damage and one movement ability.


With these in mind, you'll notice that high-damage operators score higher than highly-mobile, melee ops.

Reliability is everything and the only way to guarantee that your squad doesn't get unlucky and die to random crits. In a game with so much chance, the top tiers all either do insane damage reliably or negate enemy turns reliably.

Lastly, the tier list is focued on the hardest situations: long, triple-encounter missions. In single missions, everyone does much better (since they can all blow their ultimate immediately), and everyone would skew much higher.

S Tier

Terminal

1. Breach: Amazing. doesn't need key-card, so she can essentially carry two breach tools
..........Her gremlin can be used in any slot, so you can use her AND another breach tool in second team slot.
..........Along with her three utility slots, she can almost carry as much as a fifth teammate.

2. As the only medic, she's invaluable.
..........Many enemies hit for 3-5 damage, so bringing her and healing for 4 health (and adding armor) negates a full hit each time.

3. Can manage the timeline better than anyone.
..........Pin Down is really strong, and Cooperation is one of the best abilities in the game (it let's someone use a powerful "ends turn" ability AND still take their actual turn.)

4. Her learned ability gives her multiple overwatches!
..........taking as many shots as there are enemies and essentially doubling the overwatch potential of a team. This alone would place her in B Tier.

No cons. She's amazing!

Claymore

Where the other S-Tiers focus on killing many enemies, Claymore specializes in high-damage on a few.

1. Breach: Great He has wall-break ability, so he can bring two breach tools (and doesn't need to bring a breach charge)!

2. His grenades shred armor, negating how the game increases enemy difficulty.

3. 100% accuracy every turn (with his grenades), negating one of the hardest parts of the game: making important shots.

4. Crazy damage, but with his limited throwing range it's harder to wipe a room like Godmother or Blueblood
..........still, on a good turn he usually does 40 total damage to 2-5 enemies

5. Rupture so good. Two of his abilities rupture enemies, giving your entire team BIG damage and easily killing whoever was unlucky enough to get hit. His grenade often sets up enough damage that the enemy dies before the grenade explodes.

6.amazing ultimate (can throw multiple grenades) and learned abilities (a second grenade), allowing him to pile on big damage with 1-4 extra grenades, doubling your entire team's number of grenades!

S- Tier

Blueblood

Can clear/weaken an entire encounter by himself


1.Amazing ultimate (shoot everyone) and learned abilities (free reloads), routinely able to do 20-50 damage among 5-7 enemies.
..........his free reloads negate any disabling abilities enemies use

2. Breach: pretty good. Has an almost guaranteed, ignore-cover shot for those hard-to-reach enemies

3. Abilities: Parting Shot is amazing, and used with Deadeye (50%-extra-damage-shot), that becomes triple damage

4. He can naturally shoot twice per turn, either negating a miss or doing massive damage.


Cons: By using a pistol, he essentially has an entire upgrade tree only for him among the top tiers.
..........Considering you'll usually only be able to get two Mastercraft upgrades (unless you hustle), that's very expensive (it's an extra 18 turns in research time and an extra 155 elerium and 300 credits for Mastercrafted Pistols).

So he's "S-" only because he's the most expensive of the top tiers to build.


He's so good, though, that it's often still worth it.

Here's a video I made of a surprisingly normal (but crazy for anyone else) turn:

https://youtu.be/Cmezes8ANUM

A Tier

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A+ Tier

Patchwork

An amazing operator, her holo targeting is often the setup for the top tiers to do their max damage.

1. Breach: godlike, best in the game. (IMO)
..........Doesn't need keycard, so can have 3 total breach tools (holo, key card, and your choice) AND 3 utility slots.
..........That's almost an entire other character's worth of extra tools to bring.
..........Can use her breach tool in any slot, allowing you to use up to THREE BREACH TOOLS per breach.

2. Abilities: great

..........Stasis can shut down a high-threat enemy (two with Hacking if you're fighting Sacred Coil robots). That's basically Torque's skill on steroids.

..........Stasis also has an unexpected use: using stasis on the final enemy of an encounter helps the rest of the team's abilities refresh. Using it at the end of 2 encounters gives you two free rounds, the same as a 50% cooldown decrease!

..........100% accuracy damage with Shock, which at higher levels can dish out around 8-12 damage per turn to several enemies.

3. Cons: lower damage output, but with reflex grip she can dish it out really well with a single shot and a Shock.

Godmother (with Serial)

1. Her "kill-anyone-close-to-her" skill (close combat specialist) is good at finishing off any last approaching enemies she only injured, or "Untouchable" avoids any incoming damage.

2. "Ventilate" does 6-10 damage with 100% accuracy, a rare skill.

Cons: can only do THE COMBO once, but she can hold her own quite well for the other two encounters with her other abilities

She essentially negates most of an entire encounter by herself.

Note: included is a build using the workshops's most popular mod when this was uploaded: anyone can use any gun (it helped counter some day 1 bugs). It's amazing. See below

Godlike Godmother:
She can clear an entire encounter by herself.
..........She seems designed to use the epic gun "Fortunate Blossom". She has a game-breaking combo with her amazing ultimate (extra crit, dodge, and a second turn), Serial from the gun (get an extra action from every kill), and her free reload skill. She can routinely do 20-70 damage among 5-10 enemies before anyone else can even take a turn.

..........Note: I use Superior Scope, Reflex Grip, and Motile Inducer to further optimize her damage. If you activate Serial and Overwatch on her Motile turn, she still has those bonuses on her actual turn, doubling her damage output!
Verdict: With Fortunate Blossom, definitely S Tier. Without, a solid A-Tier pick.

Here's a video I made to showcase how crazy her damage output can get:

https://youtu.be/RaGB-y_eIGI

A Tier

Torque

amazing utility and crowd control. simply kills slower than other top tiers

1. Breach: great. 5 poison damage guaranteed AND it's multi-use.

2. Abilities: Great
..........Bind can shut down a high-threat enemy, and with Reflex Grip, she can still shoot/shoot venom.
..........It's less reliable, though, than Patchwork's Stasis (may miss the tongue pull or get shot).

3. Tongue Pull can give an extra action and help bring back someone far away from the evac point
..........So with Reflex Grip Torque has three actions (Tongue Pull one enemy, shoot another, bind), or shoot, Tongue Pull a teammate, and give a them the third action.

4. Cons: nothing but her "toxic" personality (excuse the pun).
..........Her ultimate seems less useful and usually has a lower chance to hit than a rifle shot with a scope.


Note: I have had the most success with Terminal, one of the S-Tier damage dealers, and Torque or Patchwork as support.

A- Tier

Axiom

ability: Solid.
..........unreliable accuracy and can't be improved with scopes.

..........Breach: Good. Chance to panic, and able to use it often (there seem to be more doors than wall breaches, for example)

1. Good ultimate, hits and disables several opponents, but leaves him out in the open
..........Shrug It Off (occasionally only take 1 damage) and regen are strong abilities, though.

2. Can go Berserk sometimes after getting shot, which lets him attack an extra time.

3. Using a mindshield allows him to have max rage and never go berserk.


Cons:

1. His ability often leaves him out of cover, leading to him getting shot multiple times. Can often go down before he can heal (unless he has "shrug it off" and his heal ability").

2. His ability often has lower accuracy than shooting, which defeats its purpose.

3. Build dependent: He needs "shrug it off" and his regen ability. Without them, he's much weaker, and a newer player may make the mistake of not choosing that and see him perform much worse (hence A-, not A Tier).

B Tier

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Cherub

Breach: Good. can block all incoming damage (single-use)

Cons:
1.Blocking is difficult to coordinate. It's often unclear whom an enemy will shoot. Killing quickly is better to truly avoid damage.
..........Terminal does this job more consistently by negating damage after someone gets shot, instead of having to guess beforehand who is going to get hit.

2. Limited to a pistol (slightly less damage and and range than a rifle. Expensive to upgrade. See Blueblood).

B- Tier

Verge

1. Breach: Decent disable, good that it's multi-use.
..........an issue, though, that you'll see come up a lot with him is that after he disables an enemy, they're not dead and he struggles in dealing with them.


Cons:

I put him as B-Tier because he's decent (good aim, decent damage), but only if you don't use most of his moves.
..........He's seems strongest if you use him as a pseudo-sniper (one turn to berserk and the second to shoot) even though it's tempting to use all 4 of his abilities.

His biggest issue is that he has such a high learning curve for only average payoff

Even worse, the game gives no hint to this restrained play style. If you play him as intended (all abilities, no shooting), he definitely struggles down in D tier, getting shot by enemies that have woken up whom he can't disable again and haven't died yet to his mind flay.


Abilities: Mostly Weak

1. Berserk is good, Sleep is unreliable, Mind Flay does low damage (poor man's Patchwork because it does less damage and requires setup).

..........Note: I strongly dislike sleep in XCOM CS. it's a 50/50 as to whether it'll do it's job and stop an enemy's turn.

2. His ultimate is terrible. Only ult where he can get unlucky and control no one.

3. Useless against robotic enemies.

C Tier

Zephyr

1.Her attacks have 100% accuracy.

2.Her parry blocks any attack.


Cons:

1. Breach: Sh*t. expect to get shot an extra time every encounter.

2. It's good that she blocks for herself, but she can still get ganged up on.
..........since she's usually deep behind enemy lines, she often gets shot 1-3 times per turn cycle.
.........Note: Cherub can help with some of the incoming damage.

you usually have to choose:
1. get shot again before she can parry or
2. put her first or second, slowing down your high-damage teammates.

Other cons:
3. Can't use epic weapons or special rounds.
4. Low damage ultimate. Godmother, Patchwork, Axiom and Blueblood all do it better.
5. Does early-game damage. Can't keep up with difficulty increase.


So how good is zephyr? B Tier in Act 1, C Tier in Act 2, D tier in Act 3.
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D Tier

Shelter

This one I struggled with. I really wanted to like Shelter. I like his voice actor, but I found that he usually either creates poor defence, deals weak damage, or gets ganged up on behind enemy lines.


Cons:

Breach: okay damage mitigation, but it's a one-use ability.

1. Ultimate is good, but it's single use is not good enough to compensate for his flaws on the other 2 encounters

2. Has a 4 damage 100% accuracy ability, but can't use every turn like patchwork.

3. The intended synergy looks like it's with Godmother and/or Zephyr, but it takes too much effort to set up.
..........You have to waste an action moving next to one of them, then switch places for Godmother or Zephyr to do damage. By that point, someone like Claymore or Blueblood would have already done 8-15 damage.


Verdict: He's slightly better than an android, even though he's fun to play.

Note: It is worth mentioning that his ability to negate mental states makes him a strong counter-pick when doing the Progeny missions last.

Final thoughts

This isn't a list of who is/isn't fun to play! You can beat the game with everyone. I enjoy using all of them, and I'm sure you will to.

Hope this helps inform your team builds!

[Alfred Kodani]

Shelter is amazing when he combos with other delay operators. He is far less likely to die when the enemy never gets off a shot.

[MaceX]

Now that I have tried all characters, I think Patchwork is one of the top characters to have especially on the hardest difficulty. She is the ultimate crowd control. You mention that her Shock ability is 100@ hit chance, You don't mention that it can chain and stun groups of enemies in one attack. When there are rooms with large groups, there is a chance that she could hit and stun every enemy. I find stasis best to be used on the enemies that are immune to mental status effects, Using Cooperation or mobile inducers on her lets her use it multiple times a turn as it has no cool down. Also to note that she is the ultimate robot killer.

Shelter is great of the grab and go mission. Use his clone to get close to the loot, swap places. Grab the loot the swap back then evac.

[Didact]

Hi @jise and @Dr. Charizard. Updated the guide to answer your comments. THank you for your input.

[Jise]

I don't think the normal game lets Godmother equip Fortunate blossom. Can she?

[MaceX]

Zephyr does have some bonus if you set things up right. I played it through on Normal. In some breaches the Last person in is rooted, she does not seem to be effected. by that breach condition. It may make her lower down on the turn chain, but you can negate that some of that late turn issue if you mix it with Terminal's Cooperation. With her 100% chance hits, good for finishing off those almost dead or weak enemies during a breach where others have a small hit chance. I

I agree not best late game. Mostly good for status effects. Also late game can be useful for just being the person who gets put to do research.

[Cassiel]

I think your list misses quite a lot, and those things you glance over do have impact:
1: Mobility is quite important, especially on VIP missions (though any mission which involves extraction).
2: consider the length of the mission. Shelter struggles on longer missions, but can be near game breaking on single encounter missions. Conversely, Terminal isn't so great on such missions since most of what her kit is based on can be replaced by utility items such as medkits and motile inducers.