February 2024 Tier List Update

Our Tower of God: New World Tier List is a comprehensive (Adventure, PvP, bossing) endgame tier list that is frequently updated by expert Monkey, designed to be helpful for all players. Check out what's new since the last update!

New Characters

• [Gemmed Rings] Yeongsuk
• [Flail] Tin

Tri-Essence Stat Meta

While the previous meta was Acc Eva, since the release of F45 the accuracy needed to reach enemy evasion has been massively increased. With how IWs work by giving you the ability to hard focus on 1 stat, it is therefore optimal to focus on accuracy over evasion, because splitting would result in the worse of both worlds.

I had still previously recommended Acc Eva build, due to devs saying that there would be nerfs to adventure accuracy and evasion stats, but with the nerfs coming in the F50 patch being not enough, it is clear that they plan to keep the maximum evasion on enemies right above the range of the reachable accuracy, even for whales.

Thus if you are accuracy focused on IW, evasion is no longer stackable to the point where you are not getting hit, which means a pivot to another stat in tri essence is the play. For most people, I would recommend this to be swiftness, due to how it is useful in all 3 gameplay types.

Rumors of a Tank Meta - My Thoughts

There has been recent sentiment among many of a new tank meta, deriving from the fact that you are able to stack double resistance slot 4 and 5 IWs, and with similar substat rolls on other IWs, reach close to an average of 100% on both resistance types on characters without inbuilt resistance buffs. Because of this, you would be taking essentially 0 damage against all characters without inbuilt pierce, which is especially useful in adventure, given the stat differential.

This is true, because mathematically, pierce scales infinitely (with diminishing returns past 100%), whereas building resistances over 100% does not actually do anything given no enemy pierce. This means that building resistances will actually give you compounding returns as you build more, instead of the diminishing returns pierce gives.

For example, if I were to want to do 2x my original damage, I would have to build 100% pierce. However, I would only have to build 50% resistance to 1/2 my original damage taken. There is attempted balance with the fact that there is both physical and magical resistance, which means that 50% of both resistances/100% pierce is the break even point if both resistance types have equal value, which is a whole other conversation. But pierce can only be guaranteed on slot 5, whereas resistances can be on both slot 4 and 5, which makes it easier to stack resistances.

There are a couple of things to take away from this. Many think that characters like Kurdan/Ren with inbuilt resistance buffs would become better because of this, but is actually the exact opposite. If you were to be following my tierlist in building characters, you should be building Zahard then Urek then Evankhell. The role of a tank is to protect your carries, but what if your carries themselves are tanks? These 3 characters with magic resistance and bergamot builds in addition to inbuilt invincibility, lifesteal, stat buffs allows them to be both the tank and the dps, meaning that characters like Kurdan and Horyang that pretty much do nothing but tank are obsolete.

What about yellow and purple? Yes Durek cannot tank, and neither can Yeon, but yellow has Evan, which makes your Yeon a tank. Purple has the old tank/cc combination of Karaka Endorsi Khun, but even if that does not allow your Gustang/Hoaquin to survive, purple should be your last concern, because it is currently the weakest element that can only be used against weak enemy teams. Whenever an actual S tier purple adventure carry releases is when the support purple has will already be enough. This is not even taking into account that if you resistance stack on Gustang/Hoaquin, you would also be the tank, further making regular tanks obsolete.

Another takeaway is that there is now branching patches between adventure builds and pvp/boss builds. The current optimal build in adventure is to stack resistances and accuracy, whereas for pvp/bosses you want pierce and much less accuracy. Personally, because I focus on pvp specifically, this would mean that my build makes the real deficit I can push in adventure lower than someone who is focusing on adventure, although even then I am pushing 3.5x real deficit.

So with all of this being said, do I recommend you to resist stack? No. I tested stats a day after initial IW release and arrived at a conclusion that pierce/magic resist on slots 4 and 5 are optimal for most characters, and I stand by that conclusion.

For pvp and bosses, pierce is the obvious choice. For adventure, despite resistance stacking being currently optimal, I predict that this will change in the future. Considering that it takes a full +20 on slots 4 and 5 with high level IWs with good resistance rolls to resist stack, If this is changed, this will mean that you will have wasted building a slot 5, and have suboptimal stats on your other 4 slots. We all know netmarble is prone to adventure buffs/nerfs, and meta shifts as a result of new systems. If everyone were to resist stack, then that would mean you can push real deficits infinitely up to a point where you do you not have enough to outdamage potential healing. I would estimate this to be something like 6-7x real deficit.

Seems extremely unlikely that Netmarble, an experienced gacha milker would allow such an obvious loophole to continue existing. To combat this, they can either release almost all future characters with inbuilt pierce, or just add new IW stats, including pierce to adventure enemies, which would making resistance stacking useless. As for which one is the more obvious and logical choice, I'll let you decide. You know my thoughts.

Reason for January Tier List Update Gap

It has been a while since I have updated the tier list, with no updates in January 2024. Part of that was because of lack of time, but the other part was because of certain theories I had unrelated to gameplay testing and the meta, that I wanted to confirm.

I have now confirmed those theories, and with the timing on this tier list update, I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions on what those theories were.

Changelog

• Added "Tri essence stat meta" section to the Intro and FAQ
• Added "Rumors of a tank meta - my thoughts" section to the Intro and FAQ
• Added "Reason for January tierlist update gap" section to the Intro and FAQ
• Units that were only optimal on event bosses are now universally moved down to D tier, due to the uniqueness of the event bosses we have had so far. Explanation remains unchanged
• Units that can be used on certain bosses, but are not optimal on any are universally moved to D tier
• Khun Edahn boss A>S, explanation updated
• Khun Edahn pvp explanation updated, no tier change
• Mascheny pvp explanation updated, no tier change
• Mascheny boss A>D, explanation updated
• Karaka boss explanation updated, no tier change
• Evankhell boss explanation updated, no tier change
• Viole boss C>D, explanation updated
• Zahard boss D>B, explanation updated
• Zahard adventure explanation updated, no tier change
• Yeon boss C>D, explanation updated
• Wangnan boss C>D, explanation updated
• Vespa adventure B>D, explanation updated
• Vespa pvp B>D, no explanation change
• Vespa boss explanation updated, no tier change
• Shibisu adventure explanation updated, no tier change
• Hunter Rak adventure B>D, explanation updated
• Goseng boss C>D, explanation updated
• Hoaquin boss explanation updated, no tier change
• Khun Aguero boss explanation updated, no tier change
• Khun Kiseia boss C>D, explanation updated
• Khun Kiseia adventure B>A explanation updated
• Narae boss B>D, explanation updated
• Lurker Kim boss D>B, explanation updated
• Amigocharz adventure C>D, explanation updated
• Amigocharz pvp B>D, explanation updated
• Michael adventure D>B, explanation updated
• Michael pvp C>B, explanation updated
• Michael boss C>D, explanation updated
• Apple adventure C>B, explanation updated
• Lero Ro boss B>D, explanation updated
• Khun Ran boss B>D, no explanation change
• Khun Ran adventure A>B, explanation updated
• Kurdan adventure B>C, explanation updated
• Kurdan pvp A>B, no explanation change
• Horyang Kang adventure B>D, explanation updated
• Horyang Kang boss D>B, explanation updated
• Quant pvp C>D, explanation updated
• Quant boss C>D, explanation updated
• Ha Yuri adventure C>D, explanation updated
• Ha Yuri pvp B>C, no explanation change
• Laure boss C>D, no explanation change
• Miseng Yeo adventure D>A, explanation updated
• Miseng Yeo pvp C>S, explanation updated
• Edin Dan pvp C>D, explanation updated
• Yeonhee boss C>B, explanation updated
• Shane pvp B>C,  no explanation change
• Leeron 3 adventure D>B, explanation updated
• Leeron 3 boss explanation updated, no tier change
• Blanc boss B>D, explanation updated
• Gustang boss B>D, explanation updated
• Added [Dollmaker] Verdi
• Added [Data] Urek
• Added [Mad Dog's Angel] Ron Mei
• Added [Punisher] Ren
• Added [Compressed] Rak
• Added [Gemmed Rings] Yeongsuk
• Added [Flail] Tin