Slotbound Tier List: Roles Ranked After Launch Week
A Slotbound tier list built on roles and launch-week data: S-tier carries, A-tier front lines, B-tier flankers and the units that are only ever food.
S tier is the ranged carry and the armoured front line. A tier is the flanking rider and any unit with a strong promotion branch. B tier is support casters and bodies you keep for coverage. C tier is everything that exists to be absorbed. The ranking is by role because individual units roll their own stats.
Tier lists for a two-day-old roguelite are usually fiction. This one avoids the usual trap by ranking what the game actually exposes: classes confirmed by the store page and the board, roles confirmed by how waves behave, and rarity behaviour confirmed by achievement data. Where a ranking is an inference, it says so.
The list
| Tier | Role | Why |
|---|---|---|
| S | Ranged carry (archer or mage) | Fights every second of every wave, scales hardest with stars |
| S | Armoured front line (shield or warrior) | Without it the carry dies at the first ranged wave |
| A | Mounted rider | Covers wide and flanking waves that static armies miss |
| A | Any unit with a defensive promotion branch | A branch that keeps a unit alive is a branch that keeps a lane |
| B | Support caster | Enables the carry but does not scale with stars |
| B | Spare body kept for coverage | Worth one slot, never worth three stars |
| C | Off-role units with bad rolls | Food. Feed them before wave 10 |
Why the ranged carry is S tier
Placement decides damage uptime. A melee unit walks to contact, trades hits and dies; a ranged unit starts shooting on the first frame of the wave and keeps shooting until something reaches it. Stars multiply damage, and damage that is applied continuously multiplies across the whole wave.
The catch is that a ranged carry is a glass investment. It needs at least one body in front of it at all times, which is why the front line is also S tier: the two S-tier roles only work as a pair.
Why the front line is S tier even without stars
A front-liner's job is time, not damage. It buys seconds for the carry, and seconds are what clear waves. The Pride of the Commons achievement, won with Normal-grade units only, is the cleanest evidence that a well-placed body matters more than a rare one.
Feed your front line last, replace it when it dies, and never absorb it into the carry unless you have already placed a replacement. This single rule fixes most losing runs.
A tier: the rider and the good branch
Riders earn A tier because of the battlefield change in version 0.2.5. Wider maps mean more angles, and a mobile unit covers angles that a static formation cannot. The achievement list supports this indirectly: One Against Many asks you to win wave five or higher with a single unit, which is a lot easier with a unit that can reposition.
Promotion branches earn A tier as a category. A defensive branch on a front-liner turns a body into a wall, and a damage branch on a carry turns a good run into a clear. The launch hotfix that fixed the promotion card's stat arrows is a hint that these choices are meant to be read closely.
B tier: support and coverage
Support casters do not scale with stars, so their ceiling is low, but their floor is high: a slow, a debuff or a shield effect can save a wave that raw damage cannot. Give them one star and move on.
Coverage bodies are the units you keep because your army would otherwise have a hole: a second melee unit for a two-lane wave, a cheap ranged unit for a wave that spawns behind you. They are insurance, not investments.
C tier: food
An off-role unit with bad rolls is not a bad unit, it is material. The absorb system is designed around this: the board generates units, and the carry consumes them. The mistake is keeping C-tier units on the field because they were expensive to summon. They were not expensive; spins are cheap, and stars are what cost waves.
Rarity versus tier
| Rarity | Tier impact |
|---|---|
| Normal-grade | Can be S tier if the role and rolls are right |
| Special (Jester) | Unknown ceiling, treat as A until tested |
| Legendary | Stat floor makes it at least A in its role |
| Prism | Run-defining, but only once per jackpot |
A Legend Appears sits at 6.1 percent, so legendary units are rare enough that a tier list built on them would be useless to most players. The list above is built on what a normal run can actually field.
How the tier list changes on Hard
Hard mode raises the cost of every mistake:
- S-tier carries become mandatory. A B-tier army does not survive the damage check.
- Front-line replacement becomes a routine. Bodies die faster, so keep one spare.
- Support moves up a tier. A defensive effect that saves a unit saves a life, and lives are the real currency on Hard.
- Flankers move down. On Hard, a rider that dies alone is a wasted slot, so only field one if the stage spawns wide.
The hard mode guide→ covers the difficulty-specific rules.
What would change this list
- Published stat tables. If the developer releases real numbers, role rankings can become unit rankings.
- A balance patch that changes star scaling. The launch hotfixes already tuned difficulty twice in three days, so the list is dated on purpose.
- A discovered synergy that breaks a role. Faction synergy is still beta, and a strong top-tier synergy could lift a whole family.
Until then, rank roles, not names, and let your own rolls decide which unit deserves the stars.
Sources
Official source: Slotbound on Steam ↗
- Steam store page ↗ for classes, absorb, cores and the difficulty settings.
- Steam achievement stats ↗ for Pride of the Commons, One Against Many and A Legend Appears.
- Steam news hub ↗ for the 0.2.5 battlefield change and 1.0 balance hotfixes.
FAQ
Is this tier list based on win rates?
No. Slotbound does not publish per-unit win rates. The list is built from official class information, achievement data and how the wave and absorb systems behave, which is why it ranks roles instead of names.
Will there be a unit-by-unit tier list later?
Yes, once the community or the developer publishes a full roster with stats. Until then, a name-by-name list would be invented, and this site does not publish invented numbers.
Does rarity beat tier?
Not reliably. A Normal-grade unit in the right role with good rolls outperforms a badly rolled legendary in the wrong role, and the 94 percent unlock rate on the Normal-grade boss achievement suggests most players already know it.