ARKNIGHTS: ENDFIELD TEAM TIER LIST (V1.2)

This tier list ranks 12 team compositions for the current Arknights: Endfield meta. Rankings are weighted on Umbral Monument Agony Mode clear time, rotation difficulty, gear and weapon investment cost, F2P accessibility, and elemental coverage against the patch's bosses. The character-level tier list tells you which operators are strong; this page tells you which four-operator squads actually win fights.

SS-tier compositions define the meta's fastest clears and are built around a single T0 carry. S-tier teams are elemental resonance engines that trade peak burst speed for consistency. A-tier teams are specialised hybrids that excel in narrower scenarios with stricter rotation execution. B-tier teams are accessible F2P starters that clear most content with less roster pressure. Treat the list as a planning lens, not a checklist — if you cannot pull a team's T0 carry, the tier-down sections built around accessible anchors usually outperform an under-invested top-tier comp.

The refresh cadence is once per patch (roughly every six weeks), with mid-patch revisions when a new banner reshuffles synergies. The "Updated" timestamp at the top of the page is the canonical date for any specific clear-time number or investment estimate cited below. Arknights: Endfield is developed by Hypergryph; tier opinions on this page are community-derived and not officially endorsed.

Before going further, the most common mistake to avoid: copying an SS team without its T0 carry. That route almost always produces a team weaker than a tier-down comp built around an operator you already own. The team archetype matters more than the headline name — the roles, the rotation, and the matchup do the work, not the rarity stamps.

Quick Answer

The best team in Version 1.2 is Wuling Authority, the Zhuang Fangyi hypercarry comp, which posts roughly a 58-second clear on Rhodagn and defines the patch's pull priority. Melt Queen (Laevatain + Wulfgard + Akekuri + Ardelia) is the strongest accessible alternative and the best F2P-friendly meta team because it only needs one 6★ DPS to function. Cryo-Nature Executioners rounds out the SS tier as the cleanest single-target boss-killer.

If you are pulling, prioritise the carry for whichever SS team your existing roster already supports — synergy matters more than tier. Most teams build around Ardelia, who is free to all launch players, so the floor for entry into any tier on this list is one premium DPS plus the right supporting cast.

The Team Rankings

3 SS-tier, 3 S-tier, 3 A-tier, and 3 B-tier compositions cover the full Version 1.2 meta. Each card below lists the team's core DPS, the full four-operator roster, the strategy in one line, the investment band required, and the typical clear time we recorded during testing. The f2p-friendly badge marks teams whose carry is either free at launch (Ardelia, Endministrator) or has appeared on a standard rate-up that did not require a limited pull.

Read the tiers as bands rather than strict orderings. A top A-tier team frequently outperforms a bottom S-tier team once you factor in roster comfort and gear maturity. Use the cards for quick lookup, then read the methodology and archetype sections below for the reasoning that drove each placement.

👑 SS Tier — Meta-Defining Hypercarries

SS-tier teams are the meta-defining hypercarries of Version 1.2. Each one is built around a single T0 damage dealer whose ceiling is high enough to define the patch's pull priority, and each one posts the fastest current clear times in Umbral Monument Agony Mode. If you can field these, you can clear anything in the game.

Wuling Authority is the highest-ceiling team in this group thanks to Zhuang Fangyi's Sunderblade rotation, which collapses single-target boss fights inside a single Empyrean of Truth window. Melt Queen and Cryo-Nature Executioners cover the wave-clear and single-target Cryo lanes respectively, so the three SS comps between them handle every content profile the patch ships with.

⭐ S Tier — Elemental Resonance

S-tier compositions are the elemental resonance engines. They trade peak burst speed for sustained reaction loops, which means the rotations are easier to pilot and the clears stay consistent even when RNG doesn't cooperate. These teams are also where most invested rosters end up settling once the SS-tier carry pulls are out of reach.

Cryo Burst Control and Premium Electro are the two S-tier teams that scale into Umbral Monument Agony Mode with sufficient gear investment — both rely on a clean two-element burst window rather than a single-operator detonation. Pure Physical Gold is the option for rosters built around Endministrator and Pogranichnik that never pulled a premium Arts DPS.

🎯 A Tier — Specialized & Hybrid

A-tier teams are the specialized and hybrid compositions. Each one wins in a narrower band of scenarios than the higher tiers — usually a specific element matchup, a specific stagger window, or a specific boss profile — but inside that band the clears can rival S-tier output. Rotation execution matters more here than in any other tier.

The advantage of an A-tier comp is that it almost always rewards a niche your existing roster already covers. Treat A-tier as the bracket where roster shape, not roster depth, determines viability — if you already own three of the four operators, the team is worth investing in even if it would never beat the SS list head-to-head.

💪 B Tier — F2P Starters

B-tier teams are the F2P and budget starters. None of them require a limited 6★ pull to function, and several work entirely off launch-rate operators plus Ardelia. They are slower than the higher tiers, but they clear most current content with enough patience and the right gear path.

Every account starts here. Build a B-tier squad first, use it to farm gear and progress story, then promote individual operators into the higher tiers as you pull them. The biggest mistake new players make is delaying clears to chase an SS-tier carry — a fully invested B-tier team beats an under-invested SS team in almost every real fight.

Methodology

Teams are scored against a fixed evaluation rubric covering damage ceiling against current endgame bosses, rotation reliability across a sustained five-minute fight window, survivability under heavy boss damage profiles, flexibility against multiple element matchups, and clear-time consistency when piloted by an average player rather than an optimal one. Each team's letter tier is the rounded average of those category scores; ties are broken by damage ceiling because the most binding constraint in current endgame is "can you out-damage the boss's enrage timer."

The list re-bakes on every major patch and after any rebalance that touches a featured team's core operators or weapons. We deliberately do not move tiers around between patches based on small meta shifts — a team's tier reflects its standing across the full content of the current version, not the last weekly Joint Operations rotation. If a team's signature operator gets nerfed mid-version, the team is flagged "under review" with a date stamp until we can re-run the rubric end-to-end.

The criteria that drive every score are not weighted equally. Damage ceiling carries the most weight because the toughest current bosses gate behind DPS checks rather than survivability checks. Rotation reliability is second because a team that lands its damage 90% of the time clears faster than a team with a higher ceiling that whiffs every third rotation. Element flexibility matters more in long-term planning than in any individual clear: a team that handles three matchups cleanly is more valuable than one that ceilings on a single boss. F2P accessibility is the tie-breaker that moves teams up when their carry is free or low-rarity, and down when they require multiple limited pulls to function.

The actual SS/S/A/B framework on this page maps directly to those weights. SS means meta-defining — a team that clears every current Agony Mode boss inside the enrage timer with optimal play, and ceilings the patch's damage chart. S means elemental resonance engine — slightly slower clears than SS, but easier rotations and stronger consistency under non-optimal RNG. A means specialised — strong in specific matchups, stricter execution, narrower viable content profile. B means F2P-accessible — clears most content, slower than the higher tiers, but no limited carry pulls required.

Common Compositional Archetypes

Arknights: Endfield's damage profile rewards operators in synergy more than operators in isolation. A 6★ DPS without their buffer support typically deals 60–70% of their potential damage; with the right buffer plus an SP-battery support, the same operator can hit 110–130% of their solo ceiling. Element matchups stack on top: a DPS hitting the boss's vulnerability matters less than the same DPS being buffed by the right team. The tier list captures this — it ranks the full four-operator team, not the headline DPS.

Most teams on this list fall into one of four compositional archetypes, and understanding the archetype is the fastest way to read the rankings. The burst window archetype runs one main DPS, one SP battery (typically Perlica), one buffer or damage amplifier, and one survivability anchor. The squad wins fights by stacking buffs into a single burst window and dropping the boss before it can enrage. Wuling Authority is the canonical burst-window team this patch.

The sustained DPS archetype runs two damage dealers sharing rotation pressure, plus a healer and a stagger specialist. Squads in this band win through consistency rather than peak damage — the rotation never drops, the boss never gets a clean recovery window, and the damage delta compounds over a four-to-five minute fight. Most of the S-tier resonance engines follow this template, which is why S-tier is the easiest band to pilot at sub-optimal RNG.

The element-stacked archetype runs three or four operators of the same element, exploiting a boss's vulnerability for the maximum elemental damage swing. These comps punish off-matchups but ceiling extremely high on the right boss, and they are the source of most patch-specific speedrun records. Melt Queen (mono-Heat) and the Cryo-leaning SS teams sit here. The stagger-focused archetype is the fourth — built around draining the boss's resilience bar fast and amplifying damage in the downstate window. These teams shine against high-Poise bosses where normal DPS pressure gets interrupted by boss attacks, and they trade ceiling for reliability against the hardest mechanic checks.

Reading the List With a Limited Roster

If you do not own every operator in a tier-S team, look at the team's archetype and substitute. The roles matter more than the names — a different SP-battery support, a different elemental DPS, a different healer can all keep a tier-S team within 5–10% of its listed ceiling. The team comp dropdown on the operator builds page is the right place to test substitutions against simulated DPS, and the character tier list covers each operator's role-fit in detail.

A practical rule of thumb: if you own three of a team's four members, the team is worth building toward, and the fourth slot can be filled with any operator that matches the missing role at one tier below. If you only own two of the four, look at the next tier down on this page first — there is almost always a comp that overlaps with your existing roster and lands within striking distance of the original team's ceiling. Investing into a team where you already have synergy beats chasing a team headline by name.

The single highest-leverage decision new players make is choosing which SS-tier carry to chase. Wuling Authority requires Zhuang Fangyi, Cryo-Nature Executioners centres on Yvonne, and Melt Queen runs on Laevatain. The other three slots in each comp are interchangeable across rosters, so the carry choice locks you into a content profile for the next patch cycle. Look at which boss profiles you struggle with most and pull accordingly — Zhuang Fangyi for single-target burst checks, Laevatain for wave clear, Yvonne for sustained boss kills.

Frequently Asked Questions

That is the full Version 1.2 team meta — 3 SS-tier hypercarries, 3 S-tier resonance engines, 3 specialised A-tier hybrids, and 3 accessible B-tier starters. For pull planning, the character tier list ranks each operator individually so you can match a carry to the team you are aiming for. The Umbral Monument guide covers the specific stages these teams were tuned against, and the operator builds tool models substitution math for rosters that cannot field the full original lineup.