Skulls Tierlist Mini Guide! (Updated to 1.6)

My personal overview of all skulls in game. Enjoy!

First things first!

There are basic rules to this game:

- Dash as much as you can because it makes you invulnerable

- Charged attacks are bad because they need time and expose you to enemy dmg - items that support charge attacks were added to the game

- Status effects like freeze, poison, burn, stun and bleed don't apply to main bosses :( - status effects now apply to bosses!

- Summons will attack nearest enemy and can be problematic to use on multi platforms so keep that in mind. (Recruit, Gravedigger and Ent)

This tierlist is just my personal opinion and I would love to hear yours ;)
Also, let me know what should I add to this guide. I will take every suggestion into consideration.

I reviewed every skull in accordance to maxed out Trait Tree (Important)

Tier D - Forsaken by god and devs / Don't pick those!

Hunter – The worst skull in the whole game, auto attacks are slow and have low range (archer with low range XD), charged AoE attack exposes you to dmg, deals low dmg, the skills are also underwhelming (Barrage is really hard to execute properly and gets blocked by ceiling). keep in mind that we are talking about rare skull and upgrades don’t get any better :/

Tier C - Bad skulls / Barely playable

Recruit – Physical summoner class which feels somehow still underwhelming after rework. Problem is, there aren’t any items that could improve your minions and his charge attack expose you to dmg. Keep in mind that minions attack nearest enemy and there are situations where we want to focus specific enemy first.


Champion – His slow time ability is wonderful and can be devastating to bosses but he needs energy to use his abilities so vs normal enemies you are pretty much left with your own hands before you can do anything.


Djinn – Poor offensive but his abilities provide a lot of evasion and escape. His dash does not give you as much invincibility as normal dash. There is no really any reason you would pick Djinn


Ent – His playstyle revolves around staying in one place which doesn't sound like a good idea but he gets a pay off for it. You can keep your seed tiles forever but it requires practice and good timing.


Mummy – He needs items that will compensate his low dmg and benefit from his high attack speed (Thief’s Armor, Jagamon Thorn, Explosive arrow). Without those items it’s not really a good character. Trap damage reduction is useless once you will get used to them. His skills are also underwhelming with a very low range.


Mage - We are introduced to Fire elementalist to complete the status effect characters.
Although mana mechanic is quite interesting it might feel clunky and slow. It is even more junky during boss battles where staying in one place is basically a death sentence.

Minotaur – Your mediocre power character. Slow, high hitbox, long Cooldowns, Skills feel not rewarding for the damage outcome


Davy Jones - Captain himself joins the battle with a massive artillery at his hand!
Take a while to get used to his reload mechanic but the damage output that he is able to provide is amazing!


Sword – Bleed is not viable and is outclassed in dmg by skills and pure physical builds

Tier B - Good

Bomber – I know that some will say that you can deal insane amount of dmg with bomber and its true but in order to achieve this you need good magic items and a self-detonate skill which is not guaranteed. Otherwise, you will need to assemble hextech spam build. If you really want to play this skull don’t treat him as your main skull but rather as a nuke skill for your mage character.


Yaksha – Reworked Yaksha is finally playable. It feels better but his transformation limits your area and it can be problematic in some situations. It's easy and fast to get transformation done tho.


Aqua – The problem with this skull lies in his wave skill design. Not only does it suffer from the platforming problem but also pushes away your enemies giving them a chance to counterattack.


Rider – Stomp through hordes with your bike and swap him out for the boss fights, Great passive ability if you manage to find move speed items.


Gambler – Mix of physical, magic and attack speed character without any escape mechanic. His skills are actually a good pay off after a rework and are worth using.


Monkey King - Agile and able to kill enemies without contact with his clones. Final form skills require chargup to be signifact so that is the main downside.


Gravedigger - Decent summoner for both Boss fights (except St. Joahn). After rework he finally is magical damage oriented further pushing his summon's damage to the limit.


Living Armor – I’m not really a fan of his soul gauge mechanic because you can be easily wrecked when trying to fill it but if you do, the payoff is huge. Try him out and see if this playstyle fits you.


Samurai – He needs stacks on enemy in order to deal massive dmg but if you manage to be patient and stack it's a huge payoff.


Glacial – After rework he is now viable vs bosses but the problem is that he is not a starter skull and it's hard to pick freeze related items and count that you will get this skull in your run.
The best bet is to make a general magic build and try him out.


Ninja – Can’t say nothing bad about this skull, he is fast, he has dmg and he has perfect escape mechanic, he doesn’t benefit as much from attack speed but at least he is physical dmg oriented.

Tier A - Very Good / Overpowered with proper items

Werewolf – Great starter skull, he has fast attacks, he is mobile, his skills are mostly physical and later on he gets a useful passive increasing his Crit chance.


Ghoul – He finally got a rework that was very needed. New ghoul can now shine bot in normal and boss fights, you no lunger get stuck and punished by your huge hitboxes as you can manipulate your size. He was also given a heal mechanic.


Gargoyle – Finally, after a rework our airborne Skull is more than playable.
First of all, you can concentrate on making him a mage character as most of his skills are magical now. With the increased consistency and damage you are now able to cheese some stages and bosses with proper items and it is amazing!


Warrior – After rework you can one shot bosses with proper gear. He is absolutely beast vs bosses but requires patience and some practice vs normal monster maps.


Spear – Get as many dash-oriented items and become and S-tier killing machine that can dash through the game! (Pope can be a pain in the ass since he floats around platforms)


Shield – Best skull for alternative usage. Who doesn’t love shields right? Boss is about to nuke you? Just swap to shield and mitigate the dmg. Easy!


Clown – Great attack speed skull with a lot of escape abilities. On the bad side we have medium range attack and weak jump attack.


Predator – Physical slaughterhouse against normal enemies, kinda weaker vs boss but still viable.


Prisoner – Mobile Speed skull with great diversity abilities and passive buffs which can last through rooms.


Berserker – Yes, he is slow, yes he has a low range, yes he don’t have any escape mechanics but he hits like a truck and if you manage to find items that can provide damage reduction/shields (Knight’s Determination and staff which regenerates hp to 30%) then he will obliterate anything while on low health.


Rock Star – Mobile, high dmg mage with really useful skills. His energy bar can be easily disrupted and can sometimes be misleading but anyway, prepare to mash that attack button and be rewarded with devastating concert.


Sneak – The only character who can help you with your bargains. After rework he is pure magic damage and you no longer have to worry about getting a proper set of skills. The new patch brought many new items so now extra gold will come handy when rerolling shop items.

Tier S - Overpowered / Godlike

Alchemist – Homing projectiles without mashing your attack button, huge golem blast which passes through walls, flasks with high number of uses and status effect (overpowered synergy with Mage’s Necklace). This skull keeps enemies in a safe distance and is 100% magic damage oriented. And you can get this bad boy as a starter skull which is probably the best thing about it.


Dark Paladin – This aggressive mage rewards you for spamming your skills with a hp shield. As a balance hero he gets reduced cooldowns for spamming his magic abilities. His passive ability which empowers you magic damage is also nice addition to his arsenal.


Archmage / Archlich / Grim Reaper – they fall into the same category of “kill everything on map with a safe distance”. Their abilities allow you to sit in a safe place and just nuke enemies without engaging in battle. It was overpowered in early access and it still is. Should be nerfed so have fun while it lasts.

[ninjax23441]

i feel like sword deserves higher placement like in a its good with the right items

[76561199025030370]

I absolutely love this list, however the archmage isn't as good as this list says, slow autofire + the skill that isn't the meteor or the death beam are pretty much useless on this guy like the small green poke thing,Carleon recruit's assasin is really good and the archer is great so he should at least be B, however I do see a problem with the single hit basic attack which needs to to mash X

[Snusenberg]

Shit ass

[Chack Nutcracker]

but ghoul is better be in tier c

[melms]

LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THIS TIER LIST CANT BE REAL

[JOVER9000]

Thank you! This tierlist has brought me to the light of skulls. I didn't realize up until this point that my takes have been utter trash but this tierlist... its all factual (with the exception of living armour). I just wanna say you're the first person to never miss (well almost).

[Coffee]

Coming back to this. Yeah, the list is still complete garbage.

[Abstract]

lmao the image for minotaur is the mage

[Coffee]

I completely do realize it, and I'm judging the list as it were at the time. Carleon Recruit, even *before* the buff, wasn't as bad as people made him out to be. Ent and Warrior, I totes get, but the point stands.

[chmielu1337]

You do realise it's outdated at the moment, right?