Best heroes, kit by kit — what the stats tables can't rank

24heroes, every kit read from the data

4kit archetypes in the roster

1,140pieces: the 2★–6★ skill ladder

1,150–1,240pieces: full 1→6★ climb (by tier)

The rulebook we ranked by

Base stats, milestones and the star ladder are identical within a rarity tier — proven here — so a kit is judged on its architecture, in this order:

Team contribution — team-wide buffs, cleanses and shields multiply everything your other five slots do. Solo-only value caps. (Every kit's above — note how many Lv2 → Lv3 jumps flip the effect from “melee allies / ranged allies” to “all allies”.)
Control — stuns, taunts and debuff frequency decide fights your stats alone won't.
Sustain — healing and shields turn lost fights into winnable ones, and tanks keep your damage dealers standing.
Conditions — kits that demand specific board states earn credit when the condition is self-service, and lose it when it depends on the enemy or on teammates keeping specific debuffs up.

One honest limitation

The game's own data ships every kit magnitude as a runtime placeholder — "Deals X damage", "X%" — filled in at runtime by code we can't extract. So nobody, us included, can honestly print a "%-based kit DPS spreadsheet." What follows ranks architecture: what a kit does, to whom, under what conditions — the part the tables do show. When a fight changes your kit's uptime, your window changes; the DPS calculator holds the raw stat numbers per tier.

The roster, kit by kit

Same stat curve per tier, weapons as shown, skill ladder uniform: Lv1 is the unlock itself (10 pc at the bottom tiers, 100 pc at the top ones), Lv2 at 3★ (60 pc), Lv3 at 6★ (600 pc) — the 2★–6★ ladder is a flat 1,140 pieces for everyone, so the full 1→6★ climb runs 1,150–1,240 by tier:

Hero	Rarity	Weapon	Skill (Lv1)	Tier
Berserker	Normal	Morningstars	Protection Strike	U
Cactus	Normal	Daggers	Thorn Strike	U
Guardian	Normal	Swords	Immunity Strike	U
Me	Normal	Swords	Purifying Strike	U
Barbarian	Fine	Swords	Death Spiral	C
Daisy	Fine	Morningstars	Graceful Stomp	C
Princess	Fine	Wands	Healing Bomb	C
Ranger	Fine	Crossbows	Stun Bomb	C
Drake	Rare	Daggers	Dragon's Flurry	C
Jhin	Rare	Guns	Burst Barrage	C
Magma	Rare	Morningstars	Taunt Headbutt	C
Bellen	Epic	Crossbows	Heartpiercer	B
Katarina	Epic	Guns	Weigh Anchor!	A
NingNing	Epic	Daggers	Shuriken Flurry	C
Phoenix	Legendary	Wands	Pillar of Flame	B
Punisher	Legendary	Guns	Bootcamp!	B
Ellyn	Ancient	Crossbows	Forest Arrow	B
Storm	Ancient	Morningstars	Wide Lightning	A
Azio	Mythic	Daggers	Leap Combo	A
Blaster	Mythic	Guns	Bullet Barrage	A
Solarius	Mythic	Swords	Divine Path	A
Freyja	Exotic	Wands	Ice Storm	S
Hana	Exotic	Swords	Black Blade Dance	S
The Skull	Exotic	Morningstars	Strike of the Dead	S

The tier table

Tier	Hero	Kit verdict
S — build around	Freyja	AoE stun + a team-wide Skill Damage buff that is unconditional at Lv3, plus a cooldown refund on the same skill — one button does four jobs.
	Hana	A boss-killer engine: Lv3 pulls enemies in and strips their buffs, and both halves of her kit hit harder on a clean board — self-cleanse and buff-strip as damage.
	The Skull	The roster's only true sustain kit: taunt on every cast, lifesteal, and Lv3 turns excess healing into a shield that scales his damage.
A — strong with the right team	Katarina	Team-wide Crit Rate buff (ranged first, all at Lv3) — the best simple output multiplier in the game for crit-built teams.
	Storm	AoE lightning with an embedded stun - control and wave-clear in one cast, no conditions to maintain.
	Azio	Teleport strike with a conditional Attack Speed buff; infinite uptime if your team keeps debuffs flying. Strongest with a control partner.
	Blaster	Team-wide ATK buff (ranged allies first, everyone at Lv3) stapled to a long multi-hit — the 'carry the carry' kit.
	Solarius	The anti-buff tool: wipes enemy buffs (and shields at Lv3) every cast, plus a self-cleanse. Value spikes exactly where boss buffs live.
B — good, conditional	Bellen	Piercing arrow that gains damage per enemy hit — a wave-clear kit that scales with enemy density and rewards careful lane setups.
	Punisher	Team-wide Cooldown Reduction at Lv3 — only as strong as the skills on your team; dead weight next to pure auto-attacker comps.
	Phoenix	Burn DoT — damage that keeps ticking through stuns and boss rotations, favoring long fights over burst windows.
	Ellyn	Rapid-fire piercing volley with a crit-scaling kicker — the natural partner for any Crit Rate buff, and wide waves pay out doubly per volley.
C — fillers	Barbarian	Single-target stun; the starter-tier version of one of the game's most crowded effects.
	Daisy	Self-cleanse + self-heal: keeps herself alive, ships nothing to the team.
	Princess	Heals the lowest-HP ally from damage dealt — welcome in thin comps, but single-target support at start prices.
	Ranger	Single-target stun on crossbows — identical kit architecture to Jhin and Barbarian, one tier cheaper to raise.
	Jhin	Single-target stun with no added utility — a slot, not an engine.
	Drake	Single-target stun, same story as Jhin; daggers give him the flashier animation, not a stronger kit.
	Magma	AoE taunt with damage reduction — a real tank kit, but taunts trade aggro control for no offensive DPS output upside.
	NingNing	Single-target Attack Speed debuff; real vs auto-attackers, invisible vs skill-cycle bosses.
Utility bench — cheap niches	Me	Team cleanse (all allies at Lv2) — a cheap insurance policy in debuff-heavy fights, at the game's minimum unlock price.
	Berserker	Team shields scaled to damage dealt (all allies at Lv2) — an intro version of The Skull's sustain.
	Cactus	Healing-reduction debuff on a starter — a niche answer to healer enemies, which most content doesn't field.
	Guardian	Team debuff immunity (all allies at Lv2) — shuts down a whole boss mechanic class for a few seconds.

The three S-tier engines

Freyja — the everything skill. Ice Storm is AoE damage with an embedded stun, and her embedded team buff is a Skill Damage bump for all allies — HP-conditioned early, unconditional when the skill hits Lv3, which also cuts Ice Storm's own cooldown. She is the only hero whose kit makes its own next cast better, every cast.
The Skull — the wall that grows. Taunt built into the skill cast, damage absorbed back as HP, and excess healing converted into a shield at Lv2+. The shield then scales his own smash damage at Lv3. Sustain kits never rot: the same board-state that holds a raid front also carries a long solo grind.
Hana — the board cleaner. Lv3 pulls enemies in and wipes their buffs; both her damage multipliers demand a "clean" board — and she scrubs her own debuffs, so the condition serves itself. Against bosses with buff-armor buffs she is virtually a compulsory pick.

Synergy recipes

Katarina → Ellyn: Katarina's team Crit Rate buff is printed for crit-built kits like Ellyn's crit-scaling volleys and crit-bonus arrows — a crit-lane pair that shares the same multiplier.
Azio × control squads: Azio's Attack Speed buff requires the target to be debuffed — pair him with any stun kit (Storm's AoE stun is the cleanest) and the buff is always on.
Punisher × skill-loop comps: team Cooldown Reduction pays exactly in proportion to how often your team's kits cycle — strong next to buff-stripping loops (Solarius, Hana), wasted on auto-opt comps.
Solarius/Hana × boss kits: buff-wipe tools are the direct counter to the fights that harden themselves — checking a boss's buffs is checking your own DPS ceiling.

How to spend pieces, if you're picking one

Free-to-start: every kit above levels the same 1,150-piece 1→6★ ladder — the tier list describes what you get at the end, not the price of admission. The grind map holds the per-tier evolution costs to the Exotic curve.
Team-first advice: pick one S-tier kit as your main project, one control kit as its partner, and let the rest of your roster be whatever pieces arrive first. Don't bench your starters on anyone's say-so — for the specific reason that kit value is comp-relative, the starters' cleanse/immunity/shield kits are cheap answers whole content types.
Test your own comp in the Hero Builder and DPS calculator before committing pieces — the calculator holds the exact per-tier stat curve, the builder the upgrade slots.

Data from heroes_full.json (CostumeData / SkillData / StarGradeOptionData / locale tables, game v26.2.0), extracted from the APK — names, weapons and skill descriptions quoted live at build time. Tier placements, synergy picks and verdicts are editorial: the game ships kit magnitudes as runtime placeholders, so no extraction can encode them. XP Hero is developed by Supercent — XPHero Fans is unofficial, not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and the tier calls are editorial opinion, not game data.