Yet Another Zombie Survivors Survivor Tier List (v1.0)
Last updated: 2026-08-30
All nine survivors, ranked for 1.0. Be clear about what this ranking is built on: Awesome Games Studio publishes ability descriptions and unlock gates, not damage numbers, so there is no official DPS table to sort by. Tiers here weigh three things that can be checked — whether the survivor's kit buffs the whole squad or only itself (stated in the 1.0 announcement), how late the game gates them behind Survival Level, and how often they anchor the builds that launch-window creators actually published. Individual rank thresholds are not public and are not guessed at below.
S Tier
Name
Role
Why
Ranger
Squad buffer / healer
The only survivor the studio describes as boosting every other survivor: the 1.0 post credits her with raising all Survivors' Critical and Luck stats plus healing allies. Ninth and last unlock, gated at Survival Level 175 — the one hard number the studio published. Her Good Boy and Falcon companion abilities were loud enough to be volume-nerfed in patch 1.0.0b.
Engineer
Turret control
Deploys stacking turret abilities; the Yet Another Zombie Defense achievement asks for three different turret types out at once, which is the studio signposting the build. Turret-spam squads were the most-published team comp in the launch fortnight. Ice Turret damage typing was bugged at release and fixed in 1.0.0a.
A Tier
Name
Role
Why
Mechanic
Ice conversion
Cooling Mods converts killing blows to Ice damage — patch 1.0.0b reordered the damage instance specifically so a one-shot kill registers as Ice. That makes him the reliable route to the million-Ice-damage achievement, and a clean answer to elemental-tag builds.
Pyro
Fire stacking
Burn stacking scales with the status-effect changes 1.0 made to spread and activation chance. Straightforward to pilot as leader, and the fire damage type has the widest item support.
Ghost
Melee burst
Kunai Dance is the signature ability (visually reworked in 1.0.0b). High ceiling, low margin for error — the ghost build is one of the most-searched builds for the game and one of the least forgiving.
B Tier
Name
Role
Why
Huntress
Single-target ranged
Bow line, unlocked early — The Hunt Is On! sits seventh in the achievement order. Consistent rather than explosive; her value goes up in Boss Rush, where a single target is the whole mode.
Medic
Sustain
Medical Drone heals while stationary and attacks while moving; a 2025 patch slowed the mode switch from 0.25s to 0.75s, so it rewards planning position rather than kiting. Sustain matters most on Hardcore and in no-healing achievement runs.
Tank
Frontline / explosive
Bombing Strike and its Bioweapon evolution carry the kit. Forgiving to learn, and the obvious leader for the million-Explosive-damage achievement, but brings less to the rest of the squad than the A-tier picks.
C Tier
Name
Role
Why
SWAT
Starter / kinetic
The survivor you start with, built around Ricochet — whose Shattering evolution was mis-typed as non-Slashing until 1.0.0c fixed it. Nothing wrong with him, and Semper Fi and the whole first questline assume you use him; he is simply the baseline the other eight are balanced against.
Tier list revised:
Building one of these classes? Start with the beginner guide
then check how each survivor unlocks on the survivors page.