MementoMori: Tier List (March 2024 Update): A Complete Ranking of the Best Characters

More new faces in our roster means we need to sit back and evaluate our Witches once again; hence this updated tier list for MementoMori.

Notes and Limitations

A few things to note before we begin.

• N-rarity heroes will not be included on this list. I would also strongly advise against using SSR+ heroes.
• Characters will be sorted into tier lists based on classes – Warrior, Sniper, and Sorcerer.
• This tier list does not include builds where a character’s unique weapon comes into play.
• Characters are sorted by letter grade, with S-tier being the highest and D-tier being the lowest. More or less, the letter grades mean:
• S: Superb unit that can be expected to excel in virtually every aspect of the game
• A: All-around great unit that provides reliable performance.
• B: Decent unit that doesn’t particularly excel in any aspect but isn’t bad.
• C: Usable unit with some reservations that hold her back or is too gimmicky or unreliable.
• D: Don’t.

Now that all that’s said, let’s get started with the tier list!

MementoMori Warrior Tier List

S	Florence, Ophelia
A	Mimi, Amleth, Fortina, Rean, Olivia, Sabrina – Soldier of the Summer Breeze, Cerberus, Sophia, Sivi, Iris- Attendant Tainted in Black, Fia, Stella
B	Sabrina, Natasha, Valeriede, Luke, Illya (Witch), Elfriede, Richesse, Claudia
C	Illya, Zara, Iris
D	Arianrhod

S-Tier

Florence

+ High damage multipliers coupled with multi-hit random targeting
+ Has a passive crit boost, ramps up each time she lands a crit
– Wants a crit buffer

Florence is still hilariously good. Even with a lot of new faces in MementoMori’s roster, it’s hard to beat the sheer simplicity and damage output she brings to the table. Scaling crits, high multipliers, and extra bonuses when she crits.

I’ll repeat this here: while Florence is highly powerful on her own, she shines when paired with somebody who can boost her crit and help her reach full throttle sooner. Someone like Merlyn, preferably.

Ophelia

+ Decent multipliers on her skill 1
+ Guaranteed ATK debuff
+ Passive taunt, crit resistance, and 2 turn immortality that also grants a party buff
– Chaos character

“Amleth on steroids” is the best way to describe Ophelia. She takes everything Amleth has in her kit and makes it better. Her attacks hit decently hard, but long slogs are where Ophelia shines thanks to her guaranteed ATK debuff, passive taunt, and immortality passive that also grants buffs to her team. Note that Ophelia needs skill investment to unlock her immortality. But while indubitably powerful, Ophelia’s Chaos typing means that her higher LR levels are pretty much the exclusive domain of spenders.

A-Tier

Mimi

+ Linking enemies together is a very good effect
+ Great 2^nd skill that can ramp up quickly based on number of buffs
– Needs lots of buffs to be effective
– ATK boosting passive requires her to not get hit for 2 turns (good luck)
– Florence exists

Mimi is…decent, after playing with her for a while. She’s a decent to good damage dealer who, like Florence, thrives off her multi-hitting attacks. The thing with Mimi is that Florence exists and surpasses her in almost every role; as Mimi wants kills to maximize her Wild Claw, scoring those kills can be a problem if she serves as a secondary DPS.

Amleth

+ Nanomachines, son
+ Hates mages, dealing 50% more damage to them with her 1^st skill
+ Potent passives attached to skills: 10% more damage on enemies, undispellable ATK scaling based on self’s missing HP
– Kind of slow

Amleth is a slow and steady type of warrior who – on the surface – is just decent. The real kicker here though is her undispellable ATK boost as she loses HP (the less she has, the stronger she becomes; couple this with her passive where she literally cannot die and you’ve got a very disruptive melee fighter, all told.

Fortina

+ Good support skills: shield and regen
+ Targeted nuke with lifesteal
+ Bulky
+ Good survivability
– Damage isn’t too great
– Needs speed investment to maximize her shields
– Radiance character

Fortina is a hybrid warrior character who packs some damage and some support in her kit. The result is…surprisingly cohesive, given how easy it is to mess up hybrid characters. The problem with Fortina. Radiance character. Again, have fun raising her.

Rean

+ Enters battle with a powerful shield
+ Gains ATK buff on crit
+ Gains crit as she loses health
– Requires crits to maximize her kit

Rean is kind of like Florence. A smaller, weaker Florence, but a Florence nonetheless. Rean’s biggest advantage comes from her undispellable shield, which can start with a whopping 5x of her ATK. This shield gives her time to to do her job – critting enemies to proc her 30% ATK buff which allows her to kill more. Finally, Rean gains more crit as she loses health, helping her land a comeback.

Unlike other crit-dependent warriors like Sabrina, none of Rean’s passives distract her from her role of killing the enemy as much as possible, and because of her frontal approach to combat (shield), she’ll often see moderate to great success in landing a few crits before she finally gets taken down.

Olivia

+ Party-wide ATK and DEF buff that scales with her own stats
+ Shields allies
– ATK debuff requires her to get hurt

If you’re looking for somebody that buffs wide rather than tall, then Olivia’s a decent choice. While her buffs will never reach ridiculous levels – 30% ATK and DEF at most – the fact is that she buffs everyone, which in some cases is preferable to buffing just your carry.

Sabrina – Soldier of the Summer Breeze

+ AOE attack that stuns the highest ATK target
+ Carries her base form’s “if one crits all will crit” multi-hitter; dispels buffs and hits with a final big nuke on 4 crits
+ Great survivability passive

This version of Sabrina has less clothes; rather fittingly, in this form she sheds her tankier gameplay for more proactive control-style combat. The result is very nice as she can serve as a nice complement to any team with her array of decently hard-hitting disables.

Cerberus

+ Multi-hitting ATK that shreds through foes, especially Sorcerers and Snipers
+ Snipes lowest-HP foe
+ Auto-dispel on turn 4
+ Passive ATK and crit chance boost

Wailing Lightning Claws can hit up to 6 times at 480% and inflicts 50% P.DEF reduction for a turn if the foe’s STR is lower than Cerberus’s. Cerberus also has a passive that boosts her ATK and crit rate, as well as a built-in dispel, making her a prime candidate for a main or sub-DPS.

Sophia

+ Good all-around utility and damage
+ Can snipe lowest HP enemy if you don’t have one yet; snipe skill increases her ATK before launching so the buff is pretty much guaranteed

Sophia doesn’t particularly stand out in any aspect because she’s relatively good at all of them. While she’s no specialist, she’s easy to splash into any team and can provide both offensive and support utility.

Sivi

+ Can potentially reach huge amounts of bonus damage for herself and 2 slowest party members
+ Buffs and heals slowest party member(s)
+ Built-in dispel
– Buff/nuke is dependent on getting hit and Sivi doesn’t have a taunt
– Dispel requires 2 debuffs to set off and trigger incoming damage reduction

Sivi takes the opposite approach to buffing; instead of going for speed, she buffs the slowest party member, rather than the fastest. Her Fortifying Blade is a potentially powerful buff/nuke that grants Sivi and her 2 slowest allies (with investment) up to 75% more damage (damage, not attack, and again, with investment) while the rest of her kit facilitates this slow, steady grind to the end-of-turn payout via increased DEF for Sivi and an adjacent ally, as well as healing and debuff cleansing for the slowest ally – which basically everything you’d want, sans crit.

While she does take a bit of Speed adjustment to get used to, the result is well worth the effort.

Iris – Attendant Tainted in Black

+ Can carry if you whale, can serve as a secondary DPS/shielder if not

Iris came back strong after her base version fell off. Tainted Iris is a great character who can serve as your carry if you invest enough in her (read: whale), though to be honest, she doesn’t offer anything outside of the usual Florence/Cordie composition. Iris, does, however, also have quite a bit of utility under her belt as a secondary DPS – Fatal Crush hits hard and lowers ATK, Outpouring Feelings creates a force field for Iris and the allies with the highest ATK and Speed (at maximum investment), and Indomitable Spirit creates a shield for Iris when her HP dips too low.

Fia

+ High survivability and a way to capitalize on said survivability
+ Life drain
+ Gives adjacent ally more HP

Despite her Warrior status, Fia serves better as a support with her HP adjacency bonus, life drain, and powerful counterattacks. The counter is more of the cherry on top as it’s Fia’s max HP bonus that people use her for, enabling squishy carries like Cordie to wreak havoc.

Stella

+ Targets weakest foes with a silence that uses a STR comparison
+ Nukes strongest enemy and heals most injured ally
+ Bulky
– Slow

Stella is a great utility unit held back by her own Speed stat. Spell of Chaos is an okay nuke that targets the foes with the least HP percentage (with a 20% silence chance), allowing Stella to push for advantage. More importantly, if the targets’ STR is lower than Stella’s, the silence chance is doubled to 40%. As this both targets the foe with the lowest HP percentage and is more effective on Snipers and Sorcerers (without heavy STR building), you’ll need to carefully manage the Speed of your team so that Stella’s silence comes out at the best possible time. Unleash the Evil Eye, on the other hand, is a single-target nuke against the enemy’s carry that also heals Stella’s most injured ally.

All in all, Stella offers a good mix of utility and offensive prowess.

B-Tier

Sabrina

+ Becomes bulkier as battle continues
+ Can clear debuffs on herself
+ Multi-hitting 1^st skill that can cascade into a bunch of crits
– Buffs survivability rather than killing power
– Crit dependency doesn’t pay off as well as Florence

One day, someone probably said “Florence but defense”. The end result is Sabrina, another crit-scaling character who is…rather lackluster. I think they may have been going for a tank character, as in another game, Sabrina would definitely have the tools for the job: a major DEF buff, self-debuff cleansing, and progressive tankiness. The trouble here? She’s got no way to pull aggro to herself in any case, leaving us with a unit that hits decently hard but lacks the follow-through to complete the task.

Natasha

+ Powerful multi-hitting, random targeting nuke
+ Is free for everyone (as of writing on October 28, 2022)
+ Undispellable ATK and damage reduction passives
– Damage reduction passive requires health to be below 50%
– Requires investment to maximize number of targets
– Radiance character

Physical nuker. That’s about it. Simple and effective.

What holds Natasha back is the difficulty of investing in her. You want to get her skill levels and multipliers up as the attack boost is generous…but you’ll need to sacrifice Radiance characters. Notice the lack of low-rarity Radiance character? Yeah.

This means that while Natasha is amazingly good in the early game, she’ll rapidly drop off later when she can’t break the level cap quite as easily as her peers.

Valeriede

+ Decent assassin
+ Life drain on her first skill
– Needs a dedicated healer in her team to maximize her passive
– Chaos character

Like fellow Witch Natasha, Valeriede is a generically good character; unlike Natasha, Valeriede prefers to direct her efforts against single targets, either randomly or against the enemy with the lowest health. To assist her in this endeavor, Valeriede’s passives give her more ATK based on how much HP she starts her action with, with more HP giving her a boost of up to 70% ATK. Do note, however, that despite all of Valeriede’s tricks to recover HP (life steal on her first skill at level 3, as well as regeneration), she wants a dedicated healer in her team to help her maintain her massive attack boost.

Unfortunately, like Natasha, Valeriede suffers from being a Chaos character. Have fun with the level cap.

Luke

+ Decent all-around fighter, better against Snipers and Sorcerers
+ Strips shields
+ Critical hits add an increased damage taken debuff to an enemy
– Doesn’t particularly stand out

Luke is another all-around fighter who, while not standing out in any regard is still an okay addition to a team. Her Herald’s Flash is a random multi-hitter that procs guaranteed crits on foes with STR lower than hers, so Snipers and Sorcerers beware. This ties in with her My Sword is Yours passive, which adds a stacking damage taken debuff on a foe each time Luke crits on them.

Illya (Witch)

+ Very strong off the bat
+ Targeted nuke lets you snipe an enemy of your choice
+ Wards allies, powerful 0-cooldown active skill 2 if the trigger is met
– Chaos character

Illya’s witch form is very formidable fresh out of the box. Surge of Providence is a strong, multi-hitting attack that, uniquely, always targets the foe opposite to Illya, meaning you can snipe a foe of your choice. God Curses the Light is essentially a normal attack augment that triggers once Illya takes 10 hits. Oh, and she comes with a survivability passive that ensures that she stays around to deal a lot of damage…

…all of which are let down by the fact that she’s a Chaos character. Because of her main DPS role, Witch Illya needs those extra levels badly. And again, good luck augmenting her since there are no common Radiance nor Chaos characters.

Elfriede

+ Capitalizes on both your party’s buffs and debuffs
+ Passively enhances debuff hit rate for your team
– Slow
– Radiance character

Elfriede is a character who relies on buffs and debuffs to get the job done. Both her Angelic Decimation and Demonic Judgment play off the party’s (and the enemy’s, if I’m reading this right) buffs and debuffs, so Elfriede thrives when placed with team members who can reliably spread their debuffs. To help her allies help her, Elfriede also packs a passive that boosts debuff hit rate while her own survivability is greatly improved by her stacking DEF, P.DEF, and M.DEF buff that gains even more stacks each time she receives any buff.

…however, she’s a Radiance character. Pretty much every Witch is either Chaos or Radiance, so unless you’re willing to shell out mucho dinero for copies, Elfriede will have to play second fiddle to your main DPS. There’s also the issue of her being very, very slow, meaning that she thrives in going second teams. It’s easier to just blast through everyone with the usual setup of Florence/Cordie/Primavera.

Richesse

+ Boosts survivability via DEF buffs and shields
+ Can silence
+ Fast

Like Sivi, Richesse is a character who works in tandem with your slowest party member. Unlike Sivi, Richesse focuses on defensive buffs and shields. She also has some utility as a debuffer with FlabbyCaptain! CHARGE! which packs a low silence chance, though it does get much better with investment.

Claudia

+ Fantastic multipliers and ATK boosts
+ Has some damage mitigation
– Must have low HP to maximize her kit

The brightest lights fade the fastest, and that aptly sums up Claudia’s kit. Claudia is very much a berserker character who wants to be on low health as her passives and skills output obscene numbers depending on how low on the HP bar she’s sitting. This is also her downfall as trying to squeeze out the most of her high-risk, high-reward gameplay usually just ends up with a dead Claudia. Your DPS is 0 if you’re dead.

C-Tier

Illya

+ Guaranteed stun, which is useful in some campaign stages
+ Free
– Random targeting on her stun

Not too great, but has a guaranteed stun, which can be handy as you progress through the campaign. She does get better in her retrain.

Zara

+ Can debuff Speed
+ High multipliers, splash damage
– Chance-based debuffs
– Survivability passive is laughable
– SSR

Usable and not entirely terrible…but there are better characters.

Iris

+ Easy to raise rarity as new player quests give more of her
+ Shields your carry
– Quickly drops off in power and relevance

Good as a starter but quickly falls off in relevance as the game continues. But like Illya, see her retrained version.

D-Tier

Arianrhod

+ ATK debuffer
– Dependent on debuffs to maximize damage
– SSR

She’s an attacker that literally wants to have low ATK. Never mind if the payoff was fantastic, but it’s not.

MementoMori Sniper Tier List

S	Cordie
A	Ivy, Amour, Primavera, Lea, Amour – Holy Night’s Gift
B	Dian, Nina, Sonya, Cordie – Summer’s Reverb, Armstrong, Fenny
C	Hathor
D	Libra, Loki, Petra

S-Tier

Cordie

+ Great snowballing potential with excellent damage multipliers
+ Hard to pin down due to Unhindered (Debuff Immunity with investment)
+ Undispellable ATK and DEF Break passives

Big damage, Unhindered (Debuff Immunity should you max out her skills) and a very large amount of undispellable ATK and DEF Break keep Cordie at the top of the Sniper tier list. Again: simple but effective.

A-Tier

Ivy

+ Ridiculous multipliers on her skills
+ Potent comeback mechanic that scales with the number of dead allies
– Requires multiple buffs and a debuffer ally to maximize her damage

A little girl with a bear. How many times have I seen this in a game? Anyway, to business.

At first glance, Ivy doesn’t offer too much apart from a higher multiplier triple random-target (plus one) nuke. Where she really shines, though, is her 2^nd skill: at max level, these attacks are guaranteed to hit, attack once more per buff Ivy has to a maximum of 3 attacks, and deals an obscene 810% damage per hit to enemies with debuffs!

While Ivy hits incredibly hard, you do need quite a bit of setup to get her going. For one, she needs at least 2 different buffs to maximize her nukes – and she has no self-buff. You’ll also want a debuffer that can ideally hit all enemies with a debuff (even a minor one) just to get the higher multiplier on Ivy’s nuke. Is it worth giving up those character slots to help Ivy shine? That’s your call.

Amour

+ Great assassin
+ Good party-wide damage skills
+ REVENGE
– Revive only triggers from direct damage

Amour is a good unit who has just one role: kill the enemy as fast as possible. To that end, she’s got an incredibly potent focus-fire skill that specifically targets the enemy with the least HP. Amour also has powerful party-hitting attacks, both off her 1^st skill and on her 2^nd skill by default. Last, but not least, Amour self-revives once per battle and immediately hits the enemy in her lane for 10% of the damage she’s taken over the past 20 turns (which is basically the whole battle). She’ll get her storybook ending, by hook or by crook.

Primavera

+ Passive ATK and Speed buffer
+ Can lower DEF on crit
– Passive buffs reliant on how many of your characters are still alive
– Doesn’t actually strip buffs
– Low stun chance

Passive ATK and Speed buffer is all you need to know. With investment, it’s a 15% increase to both. Take note – passive Speed buffs are rare!

Lea

+ Insanely huge bonk on the enemy carry that packs either a stun or a secondary nuke
+ Double taps with enough skill investment
+ Innately high Speed

Sometimes all you need to end a fight is to whack the enemy’s carry as hard as you can. With her Shut Up, Shut Up!! dealing a truly staggering 700% damage nuke on the foe with the highest ATK, as well as 30% evasion reduction, Lea often ends fights before they’ve begun in earnest.

But just to be sure, her skill 1 has a lot of extra utilities attached to it: an 80% stun rate that, if it fails, triggers an unavoidable 900% damage nuke on the same target. And at max level? Lea does all of that AGAIN. And just in case they try to outspeed Lea, she has a very high innate Speed stat, meaning that she’ll often start – and win – fights with a decisive blow. All in all, an incredible PVP pick and great for stages where you need to shut down one powerful enemy.

Amour – Holy Night’s Gift

+ Massive crit rate buff to ally with highest Speed
+ Decent damage, becomes stronger at half health
+ Revives once, makes strongest allies even stronger
– Wants crit herself to maximize her crit rate buffs

This version of Amour gives up her assassination potential for buffs. Holy Night’s Gift is an okay nuke, but most importantly, it gives the ally with the highest Speed (except Amour) a base 30% crit rate buff, which can get even higher if the skill itself crits.

That’d be good enough, but Amour also still retains some damage potential in Red Thorns of Fate which rewards her for having less than 50% HP. She also self-revives once, and with investment, it comes with a buff. Finally, Amour also has a 30% damage reduction for adjacent allies, though it only works once.

B-Tier

Dian

+ Potentially very powerful front-loaded nuke (requires a lot of fiddling)
+ Can gain Invisibility which helps her durability a bit
+ Evasion and ATK buff for herself and her carry.
– High-risk, high-reward

Decent damage. Her front-loaded nuke wants you to invest in her (for 100% lost HP to damage) but will require math on your part. If you don’t want to mess with that, you can instead look to Dian for her simple evasion/ATK buff on herself and the ally with the highest ATK at the start of combat.

Nina

+ 5 random target nuke off the bat that can very reliably steal buffs with investment
+ Throws her own debuffs at enemies, punishing them for hindering her
+ Surprisingly sturdy due to evasion and strong damage reduction passive
– Lower damage multipliers on her skills compared to other SRs

Nina is a pretty decent character: she hits multiple targets decently hard. But what really makes Nina stand out is her ability to both steal enemy buffs and throw her own debuffs at her enemies instead. While the buff steal caps at 80%, the debuff transfer is guaranteed, and enemies that rely on status ailments to hinder your progress may find that they don’t like the taste of their own medicine.

Additionally, Nina is surprisingly sturdy despite being a Sniper. Not only does she pack a 30% evasion and damage reduction passive, but she also has extra damage reduction against attacks that would do more than 10% of her HP as damage.

Sonya

+ Big single-target skills
+ Passive ATK and max HP party buff
– Overshadowed by AOE damage and Amour

Sonya is…average. She admittedly has huge single-target skills, but keep in mind that she both targets the enemy with the highest HP and that better Snipers like Amour and especially Cordie exist. Sonya does have niche use as a passive ATK and max HP buffer though.

Cordie – Summer’s Reverb

+ Anti-evasion
+ Bulky
+ Buffs her carry
– Accuracy buff comes with an evasion debuff

Summer Cordie’s main use is to counter foes with high evasion by buffing her carry with more accuracy. This does come with an evasion penalty, so watch out. Apart from that, Cordie grants her strongest ally with an ATK buff based on her own, which is nice. Summer Cordie is also reasonably tanky due to her Resounding Applause passive giving her more DEF each time she attacks – which adds up quickly thanks to the multi-hit nature of her skills.

Armstrong

+ Double tap but against multiple targets
+ Innate damage reduction that improves each time she crits
+ Crit buffs
– Competes against Lea in the “one big hit” department
– Chaos character

Armstrong’s kit almost resembles Lea’s in that she prefers to deal a single, decisive blow. Unlike Lea, Armstrong hits two foes at once with reduced strength. She also has a double-tap, like Lea, though I would argue strongly in Lea’s favor as Lea is either a 700% + stun or 700% + undodgeable 900%, while Armstrong’s is a simple 500% * 2 (600% with investment). Your choice in which is better for your PVP needs. Armstrong also has a surprising amount of durability in her incoming damage reduction that gets stronger each time she crits, which is a very nice bonus, and she does grant a 20% crit rate buff to the ally with the highest speed.

However, Armstrong suffers from the usual Witch success in that she’s a Chaos character. Again, unless you’re a whale, she’s unlikely to be your main DPS.

Fenny

+ Facilitates debuff infliction, also slaps on buff immunity for extra injury
+ Focuses fire on enemy carry
– Agonizingly slow so making use of her buff immunity debuff is hard

Fenny has a decently disruptive kit – buff immunity is annoying to get around, and she also hits foes with debuff resistance down for good measure, thus allowing her to thrive in debuff-heavy compositions. Magic Permeator hits the enemy carry decently hard and has a good chance of inflicting the unique erosion debuff, forcing them to take a percentage of the skill’s initial damage when they act. High-Speed Loader helps Fenny greatly here as it allows her to reuse Magic Permeator again by removing its cooldown on turn 3.

While powerful, note that Fenny is very, very slow.Study enemy compositions carefully and calibrate her speed to get the most mileage out of her jamming shells.

C-Tier

Hathor

+ Big multipliers…
– But no ramping.
– Iffy debuffs, though ATK debuff is always good
– Technically a powerful passive but good luck not getting hit for 2 turns

Can be powerful, but super, super niche.

D-Tier

Libra

+ Decent assassin
+ Guaranteed DEF down with investment
– Why can’t I skip upgrading her 1^st skill
– SSR

It’s a shame that she’s SSR – that 100% DEF down is very nice. Sadly, it’s not worth giving up the slot to a well-built LR unit.

Loki

+ Low rarity sniper
+ Passive Speed buff
– Chance-based silence
– No multi-hitting options
– SSR

Decent early on, at least until you find an LR Sniper, at which point Loki’s lower multipliers and lack of a 4^th skill bite her hard.

Petra

+ High multipliers
+ Surprisingly big ATK buff that scales with remaining HP
+ Boosted normal attacks
– Requires high HP to maximize
– Lower payoff than Dian
– SSR

SSR Dian with a more sustained but ultimately smaller payoff.

MementoMori Sorcerer Tier List

S	Fenrir, Mertillier, Rusalka
A	Merlyn, Moddey, Freesia, Soltina, Belle, Carol, Artie
B	Lunalynn, Tropon, A.A, Veela, Chiffon, Priscilla, Liselotte
C	Theodora, Skuld, Gil’uial, Moddey – Gravekeeper’s Summer Holiday, Tropon – Holy Night’s Prayer
D	Cherna, Rosalie, Soteira

S-Tier

Fenrir

+ Excellent cooldown reduction skill
+ Removes debuffs
+ Semi-reliable (requires investment) off-heal
– Adjacency gimmick

Cooldown reduction. That would be enough, but Fenrir also has debuff removal and a semi-reliable off-heal – though you will need to invest in her if you plan to use it at all due to it only healing 5% max HP at base level.

Mertillier

+ Incredible buffer for her carry
+ Reduces skill cooldowns
+ Very hard to shut down
– Lackluster damage options

Mertillier supercharges your carry with a triple-action buff: 65% ATK buff on the ally with the highest ATK, debuff cleansing, and up to 2 less turns for cooldown. In hypercarry compositions, Mertillier is a prime support candidate.

Rusalka

+ Powerful plug-and-play debuffer
+ Enables her own damage multiplier condition
+ Revives once when killed, becomes a shield for allies with investment.

Damage reduction (not ATK reduction) is very powerful, and just like Soltina, Rusalka makes it a point to use a MAG comparison to check for debuff infliction; as the majority of carries in MementoMori are physical warriors, Rusalka’s debuff will often pierce through. This also ties into her Vodnik’s Mire Dragon skill, which deals more damage against debuffed foes. Not the main selling point of her kit, but the extra damage is welcome.

Like Soltina, Rusalka also makes use of the multi-barrier buff – but only when she dies and with enough skill investment. At level 3, Maiden of Sacrifice actively punishes your foe for killing Rusalka as not only does she come back with her cooldown refreshed and with 5 layers of multi-barrier, but she also provides 1 stack of the buff to all her comrades. And just in case they decide to focus her down anyway, Rusalka’s Witch of Torrential Sorrow improves her PM. Def Break, forcing foes to take even more damage from her already-respectable skills.

A-Tier

Merlyn

+ Dispels debuffs, buffs ATK for your carry
+ Has an off-heal with her damage skill
+ Crit and regen buffs for both Merlyn and her adjacent ally
– Strict positioning requirements

Merlyn brings a slew of utility to your team –  she dispels debuffs, buffs the crit rate of her adjacent allies, also gives adjacent allies a regen buff. The only thing holding her back is her limitation on positioning…which shouldn’t be a problem if you throw her in the first or last slot so that Merlyn only has a single legal target. You can also make a case of Merlyn versus Mertillier in terms of sheer utility; I believe both of them have their use cases hence their rankings.

Despite her array of buffs, take note that you should not depend on Merlyn to keep your party alive. Give that job to someone with a more reliable heal.

Moddey

+ Can provide long-lasting debuffs
+ Self-sustain via regen
+ NO MORE HEALING
– Poison by itself is meh

It’s been a whole year and MementoMori still doesn’t have in-game explanations for what buffs do in a character’s info screen. Thankfully, we’ve had time to suss most of them out ourselves by tapping on the icons during combat, and the long short of it is that Moddey’s Blight debuff prevents foes from healing. This immediately bumps her up by quite a bit as denying your opponent one damage mitigation channel is a very powerful effect.

The rest of her kit isn’t too great apart from a dispel on crit and long-lasting debuffs that can synergize with some other characters. Really, it’s the anti-heal that makes Moddey valuable.

Freesia

+ Potent heal
+ Passively makes team harder to kill
– Iffy lifesteal
– Super underwhelming 1^st skill

Freesia is one of the few dedicated healers in MementoMori, with her 2^nd skill healing the 3 allies with the least HP, and conditionally giving them even more health and DEF. Freesia’s 3^rd skill also provides allies with blanket protection, and while it’s not much, damage reduction and increased evasion on 100% uptime are always pretty good.

Freesia’s 1^st and 4^th skills may as well not exist though – the former deals piddling amounts of damage, and the latter has a 30% chance to activate off normal attacks for a pittance of health. Freesia’s 4^th skill is especially egregious, as her major party heal scales off MAG, while this lousy lifesteal hit scales off ATK.

Soltina

+ MAG-based disable
+ Stuns and sleep
+ Surprisingly sturdy thanks to barrier and debuff cleansing
– Snow Dream needs crit to reliably disable

You get two copies of Soltina for free just by doing your release missions, and you really should. Soltina is a surprisingly bulky debuffer who packs stuns and sleeps; of these two, her stuns are more reliable as they check against the target’s MAG, while most carries are ATK-based warriors. Snow Dream is still a good debuff with its sleep, but isn’t as solid due to sleep being dispelled if the target is hit (very easy thanks to MementoMori’s AOEs and random target skills) and requires Soltina to crit.

Soltina is also surprisingly hard to take down despite being a literal little girl, making her a decent counter to front-loaded damage.

Belle

+ Immensely powerful active skill that targets the enemy with the highest ATK
+ Also packs a very strong attack that cannot miss against the foe with the lowest health
+ Gains more ATK on normal attack crits
+ Hard to kill

Belle is an excellent Sorcerer who brings massive firepower to the table. Her Explosive End is a multi-hitting magical attack that targets the foe with the highest ATK and can bleed and dispel buffs under some conditions, making Belle well-suited for sniping and killing the enemy’s carry. She follows up with Fire Dragon’s Wrath, which unleashes guaranteed hits against the foe with the lowest HP, further amplifying her kill potential.

As if that wasn’t enough, Belle gains up to 15% (50% at full investment) ATK when her normal attacks crit. And despite being a squishy Sorcerer, Belle is hard to take down thanks to her Vengeful Blaze shearing off huge swathes of damage if she’s below 50% health.

Carol

+ Powerful disabler
+ Strips buffs, inflicts a hefty DEF penalty to those without buffs
+ Passively increases party DEF
– Wants big SPD investment to get the most out of her silence

Carol is a great addition to any team thanks to her arsenal of disruptive moves. Wings of Amnesia has a low chance to inflict the deadly silence debuff; losing access to your skills even for just one turn can spell defeat. Scales of Oblivion is not only a guaranteed 2-buff removal but also inflicts 40% DEF down if the foe had no buffs (needs skill investment). Carol also has better than average longevity thanks to both her Memento skill and her party-wide DEF boost.

Do note that Carol wants a lot of Speed to maximize the potency of her silence.

Artie

+ Enables magic attackers
+ Capitalizes on debuffs
+ Bulky

Artie is a good plug-and-play Sorcerer who enables the rest of her party by opening up foes with her It’s Do-or-Die! skill, which decreases M.DEF and adds an increased damage taken debuff. Artie herself can capitalize on her own debuffs via Sword of Calamity, which lands a guaranteed crit on debuffed foes. But really, it’s about increasing everyone else’s damage.

B-Tier

Lunalynn

+ Silence is nice
+ Innate 40% damage reduction at max investment
+ Makes allies tougher just by hanging around
– Silence is dependent on crit

Lunalynn is a support like her sister Soltina, but she takes a more passive approach. The biggest thing about Lunalynn is that her passive increases P.Def by 20% for all allies as long as she’s standing – I won’t debate whether that’s better or worse than Soltina’s shutdown kit against physical carries.

Lunalynn can also help with debuffs and damage with her silence and poison, respectively. Her silence, however, needs her to crit and there are way better characters to use a crit buffer with. Her poison is…not terrible, but it’s not great either. Think of it as a bonus while Lunalynn stands around.

Tropon

+ Steals buffs
+ Seems to have hybrid damage?
+ Has an innate Speed buff
– Buff stealing dependent on getting critted and is chance-based until maxed

If I’m reading this right, Tropon seems to have hybrid damage calculations, though her base stats aren’t great enough to warrant bringing her. The most reliable part of her kit is her debuff stealing, though it’s counterintuitive as she needs to get critted to steal a buff, not the other way around.

However, the best part of Tropon’s kit is her Liar’s Sting which increases in power every time it’s used. Thus, Tropon is capable of carrying a team if she’s given enough cooldown buffs. The thing is…you could also use cooldown buffs on a better carry.

A.A

+ Great front-loaded nuker
+ Good survivability thanks to life drain and passive damage reduction
– Chaos character

In some ways, A.A is similar to Belle in terms of both massive damage and surprising survivability. While A.A does win out in the raw multiplier department, she does have a major drawback, namely being a Chaos character. As with Radiance characters, there are (as of writing) no low-rarity Chaos characters, meaning that while A.A is undoubtedly strong, she’ll flag behind once the level cap starts to hit.

Veela

+ ATK and Speed debuffer
+ Passive increases debuff hit rate
+ Great base speed

Veela is a swift debuffer who can lower enemy ATK and Speed with her Undine and Nixie skills, respectively. Note that Undine gets big returns per level – at level 2, it increases the debuff from 15 to 35% and at level 3 gains a 100% base chance to inflict the debuff. Undine is also tuned to fight physical carries better as the debuff lasts an extra turn on foes with less MAG than Veela.

Nixie, on the other hand, is a multi-hitter that reduces speed each time it hits. While it’s powerful, it’s less relevant than her ATK debuff as it comes out later (at which point defeating enemies in Speed to inflict a Speed debuff isn’t as vital as the first turn has already played out).

Chiffon

+ Powerful DEF buff, adds shields and ATK
+ Can buff crit rate or disable foes
+ Shields your carry
– Falls foul of RNG as Spirit’s Aegis selects targets from all available characters still on the field

Chiffon is a support Sorcerer who excels in helping her teammates shine, whether that’s through her potent DEF + ATK + Shield buff or her random-targeting Spirit’s Aegis that heals allies and boosts their crit damage or damages a foe, reduces their crit resistance, and tacks sleep on them. While powerful, this skill can run afoul of RNG as it has up to 10 targets to choose from, so while crit damage buffs and crit resistance debuffs are unquestionably powerful, I wouldn’t rely on them too much.

Chiffon’s passive is also nice, as it immediately puts a shield on your carry that scales off of Chiffon’s ATK – great for weathering alpha strikes.

Priscilla

+ Generic healer and dispeller
+ Hardy

Priscilla is a heal/dispel Sorcerer whose main targets are her team’s carries. Not much to say here other than she’s generically good and splashable in any composition that needs a healer.

Liselotte

The crossover character Liselotte is a decent mage. Okay to great damage, a stun (though I will point out that it’s a turn 2 stun so it’s not as valuable), and more damage on Gungnir if her health is over half, made easier by her regeneration passive.

Liselotte does have a clunky passive in Let’s Pursue this Text in that she specifically requires the [Increased Chance to Deal a Critical Hit] buff for it to trigger, meaning you’re forced to slot in characters that can buff crit rate with that specific buff – at which point you might think to yourself that you may as well slot someone easier to build and play with, like Florence or Cordie.

Normally, I warn people against getting too invested in collaboration characters. However, Liselotte is a special case in that her home game Cryptract is by the same developers as MementoMori – meaning that the usual issue of needing to pay for a crossover is voided. I’m not saying she’ll rerun for sure, but there’s a better chance of it compared to a crossover with a different franchise.

C-Tier

Theodora

+ Always targets enemies with the most HP
+ Decent multipliers on her skills
+ Party-wide DEF debuff
– Chance-based debuff
– SSR

Gets a pass thanks to her DEF debuff, which isn’t terrible.

Skuld

+ Guaranteed ATK debuff
+ Low-rarity healer
– Debuff only targets 1 random enemy

An easy-to-access (due to rarity) healer. You’ll replace her as soon as you get someone better, I promise.

Gil’uial

+ Targeted, guaranteed dispel and that’s about it

Targeted, guaranteed dispels against the 2 highest ATK enemies is an okay effect. Mostly, I see Gil’uial used as an Amleth counter. Apart from that, Gil’uial doesn’t do much, and with how niche her application is, I can’t strongly recommend her for general use.

Moddey – Gravekeeper’s Summer Holiday

+ Mass poison
+ Becomes stronger the more enemies are poisoned
+ Takes much less damage from poisoned foes
– Needs time and poison to ramp up

Swimsuit Moddey is a gradual grinder who wants to poison foes and stay alive to maximize her ATK buff. Not too bad… but there are better, more efficient, and simpler game plans.

Tropon – Holy Night’s Prayer

+ VERY Niche but potentially powerful if you know who you can steal buffs from
+ AOE stun
– Low base stun chance

The Christmas incarnation of Tropon is a very niche character in that her strength is greatly (if not wholly) dependent on the enemy team. Where her base form only had a few ways to steal buffs, Christmas Tropon can both passively and actively steal buffs, with her Miracle Stars uniquely being able to leech both ATK and DEF from the foe with the highest HP.

She also packs a random target, multi-hitting skill with a very low stun chance, so you may wish to invest in debuff hit rate or pair her up with allies who can facilitate debuffs in order to get the most mileage out of her.

If your opponent doesn’t buff or has undispellable buffs, Tropon won’t be doing anything. Not recommended for general use.

D-Tier

Cherna

+ Multi-hitting attack
+ Can stun and bleed
– Stun and bleed is on a single-target skill
– SSR

Pass. While Cherna has a multi-hitting attack, it’s got a pitifully low multiplier: 230%, to be exact. This could be mitigated a bit by putting at least her bleed and stun proc on it, even at much lower values, but nope. And if you were wondering, yes, her stun + bleed proc is chance-based, and only hits one random target. Hoo-rah.

Rosalie

+ Has self-sustain and bleed
– Let down by poor multipliers owing to her rarity
– SSR

You can feed her to somebody else. I guess that’s a plus?

Soteira

+ Guaranteed SPEED debuff…
– …that is rarely relevant.

Let’s get this out of the way: yes, technically, debuffing SPEED is a good effect. The thing is it’s often easier to speed your own team up than it is to debuff your enemies – and you also need to play with SPEED if you want to use Soteira as she must have higher SPEED than the target (yes, only one target) she wants to debuff.

So much effort for such little payoff.

Play Who You Want to Play

That concludes my tier list for MementoMori, and I hope I was able to give you some ideas on who to build, as well as who is a perfect candidate for the meme queen team that breaks the meta. If you have anything to share, make yourself heard in the comments below!