Universal Tower Defense Z Tier List

Full ranking table

Every unit in the tier board above, in one sortable-by-eye table with its raw score inputs visible. Use this when the tier board's chip layout is not detailed enough for a side-by-side read.

How the tier score is calculated

Score = 45% normalised Level-5 DPS (each unit's dps_l5 divided by the highest dps_l5 in the roster, times 100) + 35% normalised DPS-per-cost (same normalisation against the roster's best value ratio) + 20% a fixed role weight (boss-killer 100, utility 90, hill-dps 80, ground-dps and hybrid 75, support 70, farm 40). The role weight exists because raw DPS alone under-ranks control units like Water God: their damage number is modest, but they raise every other carry's effective uptime, which the DPS-only columns cannot see.

The board tier letter (S/A/B/C) is a straight quartile split of that score across the roster: the top quarter is S, the next quarter is A, and so on. With 17 verified units that puts roughly 5 units in each tier. This is a transparency choice, not a marketing one: you can recompute every number in the rank table above from the public units list data yourself.

The wave-band tag is a separate, simpler heuristic: it buckets units by placement cost alone (under 1,500 gold = Early, 1,500-2,999 = Mid, 3,000-4,499 = Wall/boss-wave, 4,500+ = Endgame). It is not derived from the site's wave-threshold model used on the wave guide, because that model measures team totals, not single units, and applying it unit-by-unit produced misleading results in testing. Cost tier is the honest, simple signal instead of a falsely precise one.

What Update 4.0 added that this tier list does not cover yet

Public trackers: Pro Game Guides' Update 4.0 tier coverage and Destructoid's tier list: name a new top of the meta built around crossover banners: Iron Spider (a Synchro unit combining Iron Man and the Symbiote), paired with Venom for boss-killing pressure; Joker anchoring a Persona team with Trickster (Phantom) as a burst pick; and Moonless Sky plus Blanco Beast anchoring a Bleach-themed DPS core. None of those units are in the board above.

That is a coverage gap, not a ranking verdict. This site's tier score only runs on units we have verified stats for in our own dataset, and we have not yet measured base damage, fire rate, or cost for any of the Update 4.0 crossover units by direct testing. Adding them with numbers copied from a tracker we have not cross-checked ourselves would be exactly the kind of unverified claim this site avoids elsewhere: so until that testing happens, treat the S tier above as "best of the roster we have measured," not "best in the current patch, full stop."

One more honest hedge worth flagging: the Update 4.0 unit named King Sailor (Unrivaled) may simply be the Evolved or Etherealized form of the King Sailor already in this dataset: the naming pattern matches how this game has always labelled evolved units, in parentheses. We have not confirmed that link ourselves, so King Sailor (Unrivaled) is not merged into the King Sailor row above. Treat it as a plausible guess, not a fact.