Looking for the best characters in The First Descendant? In this third-person shooter, you always play as one of the Descendants, with the option to switch between your unlocked Descendants whenever you like. Although each Descendant character deals damage, choosing from a wide array of weapons, they have four unique active skills and one passive skill to set them apart. Thanks to those skills, some Descendants are among the best DPS characters, while others are better at team support.
Here’s an overview of the best characters in The First Descendant, from what I tested in the open beta.
Best starter characters in The First Descendant
- Lepic – S Tier: Uses a normal grenade and a traction grenade. Can call upon an extra-powerful Overkill weapon and inflict Burn damage. Lepic has fatal damage protection.
- Ajax – A Tier: Can place shields, knockback enemies, and stun enemies. Ajax uses Void Energy to enhance his skills.
- Viessa – A Tier: Slows enemies with her Ice Shackle skills, including two forwards-shooting frost shards, a larger area-of-effect blizzard, and an ice trail.
At the start of the game, you have to choose one of three Descendants as your starter character: Viessa, Lepic, or Ajax. The ones you don’t pick, as well as every other Descendant, can be unlocked by completing missions later in the game. The question is: which First Descendant character is the best to get started?
As Lepic relies on relatively straightforward DPS skills, he’s a particularly suitable First Descendant character to take you through the first stages of combat. The grenade, his first active ability, can easily take out small groups of enemies. Furthermore, Lepic has a passive ability that shields him from damage for a short amount of time and recovers a large portion of his HP upon taking fatal damage. If you’re doing your first missions in solo mode, this ability will greatly improve your survival chances – just be mindful of the ten-minute cooldown time.
Ajax is a good choice if you prefer a tanky character. He has a stronger shield and higher HP than Levic, but he comes without the forgiving fatal damage protection. Instead, Ajax accumulates Void Energy while using his skills, thereby enhancing the skills’ strength. Beware that his first active skill, his Orbit Barrier shield, can be a bit tricky to use correctly – it’s stationary, so it needs to be placed in the right spot at the right time. On top of that, due to having a longer cooldown than Lepic’s grenade, early-game Ajax players won’t be able to call on their first active ability quite as often.
Viessa has the most complex kit and requires the most careful positioning in combat, which makes her the least suitable starter character in The First Descendant. To use her Ice Shackle skills, she’ll need to be near the frontline of battle, but unlike Lepic and Ajax, she doesn’t have strong defensive abilities. If you’re up for a challenge though, she’s still a great choice.
Best DPS characters in The First Descendant
- Bunny – S Tier: Builds Electricity by moving, which is used to charge a multi-target orb, a laser beam, and a surrounding electrical pulse effect.
- Lepic – A Tier: Uses a normal grenade and a traction grenade. Can call upon an extra-powerful Overkill weapon and inflict Burn damage. Lepic has fatal damage protection.
- Valby - A Tier: Shoots Bubble Bullets that leave behind Small Puddles, creates Big Puddles while knocking back opponents, and can temporarily switch to a Laundry Bomb weapon. These attacks inflict the Laundry status on her opponents. Finally, Valby can enter a Liquefied state to increase her movement speed and leave a water trail. She uses less MP whenever she’s standing on water.
- Gley – B Tier: She has no shield and consumes her own HP to become stronger. Defeated enemies drop HP-recovering Life Spheres. She can enter the Rampage stage, which decreases her HP recovery but increases her attack power. Her skills consist of a Life Siphon ability to recover HP, a Sensory state that either recovers HP (non-Rampage) or doesn’t consume ammo (Rampage), and a Massacre state that deals increased damage when HP is low (Rampage) or stuns opponents (non-Rampage).
- Sharen – C Tier: An assassin who deals increased damage against opponents who don’t target her. She has a Camouflage ability to help her hide. Her attack skills consist of an electrical sword slash, an electrical grenade, and electrical throwing knives.
Bunny builds Electricity by moving, an effect enhanced by using her Speed of Light mobility skill. The Electricity is then used to enhance her remaining skills, including an auto-targeting electro bomb, an automatic electrical pulse, and a laser beam. Bunny also deals area-of-effect damage during her landing after performing a double jump. While this may sound complicated, Bunny’s auto-targeting skill and surrounding pulse effect don’t require amazing aim – just good positioning. As long as you’re comfortable with her high movement speed, she’s one of the best DPS characters in The First Descendant.
As mentioned before, Lepic’s abilities are easy to understand. You can pull enemies in with the traction grenade, then hurt them with the normal grenade and the Overkill enhanced weapon. If you use his Overclock ability, Lepic deals extra Burn damage with his grenade and Overkill ability. While this makes him a great choice for newer players and solo players, the only strong teamplay ability he has is his traction grenade, preventing him from becoming one of the best DPS characters in co-op. Furthermore, his fatal damage protection isn’t that valuable in late-game, when you’re (hopefully) too experienced to need it often.
Probably one of the most “fun” characters to play in The First Descendant, Valby uses her Liquefied movement ability and Puddles to quickly spread water across the battlefield, thereby inflicting the Laundry status upon her opponents. Her inability to use other skills while Liquefied can be a bit tedious, but her Laundry Bomb active skill more than makes up for it, as it deals continuous damage while completely immobilizing the target. As a bonus, Valby dives through her Big Puddles as she creates them, which not only knocks back opponents and deals damage, but is also an amazing way to evade damage.
Gley has a unique dual kit with a more powerful “Rampage” stance and skills that consume her HP in return for better damage. The problem? It’s very difficult to maintain the balance between a high damage output and staying alive. On top of that, Gley requires constant repositioning; although you want her to keep some distance from her opponents, she needs to pick up the Life Spheres dropped by the enemies she defeated. If you’re on the frontline but don’t manage to consistently defeat enemies, your Gley will be in trouble.
Thanks to her passive Assassinator skill, Sharen deals increased damage against targets who aren’t aiming for her. She relies on her Camouflage ability to ensure her undetected approach, then uses close- to mid-range electrical attacks to instantly deal a ton of damage. Since you want her to draw as little fire as possible, she’s not a great choice for solo players. And since it takes a lot of time and effort to maximize her damage (hiding, approaching the enemy, striking, then withdrawing again), she’s not that amazing in teamplay either.
Best DoT characters in The First Descendant
- Freyna – A Tier: Freyna deals increased damage against opponents affected by Poison. She can throw Poison bullets, switch to a Poisonous weapon, create Poison Puddles on the ground, and create Plague Body Armor that deals Poison damage to nearby enemies.
- Blair – B Tier: Blair drops Flame Zones on the ground that Burn enemies upon touch. He can recall the current Flame Zones to recover MP and increase his defense. Beware that the number of active Flame Zones increases Blair’s critical rate, while attacking enemies affected by Burn increases his critical damage. Blair also has a flamethrower and giant fireball ability at his disposal.
As The First Descendant’s number one arsonist, Blair’s whole kit consists of fire-blasting abilities. The idea is to apply Burn, then shoot while the opponent is weakened. While this can certainly lead to devastating damage, beware that Blair’s skills don’t have the best range, so you’ll need to stay close to your opponents. Combine that with the relatively slow damage-over-time buildup, low HP, and low defense, and you have a pretty vulnerable damage-over-time character.
All of Freyna’s attacks apply Poison to her opponents, making her a strong damage-over-time character. She’s arguably a bit better than her fellow DoT character Blair, as she doesn’t need to remove her Poison Puddles to activate her defensive ability, and neither does her passive effect depend on the number of Poison Puddles currently on the battlefield. Her Venom Baptism ability is particularly great at spreading Poison directly (through its bullets), thus allowing for maximum mobility.
Best tank characters in The First Descendant
- Ajax - A Tier: Can place shields, knockback enemies, and stun enemies. Ajax uses Void Energy to enhance his skills.
- Kyle – C Tier: This tank can use a small shield, a jetpack, and a knockback ability. He can also place an extra shield on himself, the Magnetic Force, which is depleted before his normal shield and HP.
Ajax has a small Orbit Barrier shield and a massive circular Hyper Cube shield at his disposal, both of which scale with his defense and HP. These shields, combined with his knockback and stun abilities, make him incredibly valuable to his allies.
Sadly, the same can’t be said for his fellow tank character Kyle. Although Kyle can move around while holding up his Magnetic Bulwark (small shield), he can’t use any attacks while doing so, making this shield quite useless in solo mode. He doesn’t have a large shield for his allies to hide behind either, and neither does he have a stun ability. If you’re looking for the best tank character in The First Descendant, pick Ajax.
Best support characters in The First Descendant
- Jayber - S Tier: He can place assault turrets and medical turrets on the battlefield. When both types are present, his attack will increase. Jayber can recall his turrets to deal area-of-effect damage and then replace more powerful ones. After activating his Multi-Purpose Gun ability, hitting active turrets will also enhance them.
- Viessa – A Tier: Slows enemies with her Ice Shackle skills, including two forwards-shooting frost shards, a larger area-of-effect blizzard, and an ice trail.
Support character Jayber has the ability to heal allies while dealing pretty good damage on his own. He can also recover allies’ MP with his enhanced medical turrets, thus allowing them to use their skills more often. Since no other The First Descendant characters can currently do any of this, Jayber is the number one support to have on your team.
Although Viessa can’t heal allies or recover their MP, she’s still a useful team support thanks to her ability to slow her opponents and, through her Blizzard skill, decrease their defense. True, she’s more of a hybrid support/DPS, but since there are already plenty of DPS characters in The First Descendant, Viessa is more useful when capitalizing on her freezing ability.
And that wraps up our list of the best The First Descendant characters. Have you found your next Descendant to unlock?
