A HoloCure tier list helps players get a sense for the relative strength of each character in the hit free fan game.
Since HoloCure made its debut on Steam in 2023, the game has quickly become one of the most popular and well-received freeware games.
Although its gameplay takes after Vampire Survivors, HoloCure distinguishes itself with its focus on a vast cast of distinct characters with unique mechanics.
HoloCure tier list: the criteria
Based on the popular VTuber company Hololive, HoloCure‘s cast are all equally adept at beating even the most difficult Stage 3 Hard.
As a result, this tier list will categorize the HoloCure characters based on the following assumptions:
- The player has maxed out the passive upgrades in the Shop
- The player has all talents at the max G-Rank so their character has max skills and starting stats
- The player is attempting to complete Stage 3 Hard
- The player will take the Halu difficulty multiplier item and upgrade it to max rank
Thus, the tiers are based on how well each character can handle the (at time of writing) most difficult challenge in HoloCure with their character starting as strong as possible.
With that said, here’s the HoloCure tier list:
SS-Tier
- Gawr Gura
- Ninomae Ina’nis
- Hoshimachi Suisei
- Yozora Mel
- Yuzuki Choco
- Kaela Kovalskia
This tier list is the HoloCure characters who are practically guaranteed success.
Importantly, almost all of these characters have innate healing in their skills. This means they’re less reliant on items to recover from damage.
Gura is extremely slippery with an innate dodge mechanic that gets stronger with the Headphones item. Her whirlpools also help to thin the hordes, and her attack buff doubles as a heal.
Ina is one of the tankiest characters in the game, so she can outlast the horde’s buffed damage. She’s also quite easy to itemize, simply taking the various tank items. Additionally, her Forbidden Wah and Ancient One skills are excellent at dealing with the Halu-boosted number of enemies.
Suisei greatly benefits from the Beetle item, but even without it she naturally deals large AoE damage with multiple offense-focused skills. Somewhat rarely among the offense-orientated characters, Suisei has an innate heal that really lets her itemize fully into pure damage to nuke enemies as soon as they spawn.
Mel and Choco are similar as characters who convert healing into damage. What takes them above others is their damage output is very consistent. Mel’s Special is also a great panic button in a pinch, while Choco’s Brainwashing abilities help to CC the horde.
Kaela is unique among the list of SS-tier HoloCure characters in that she doesn’t have an innate heal, meaning she will need to dip into a healing item. However, her effectively infinite scaling means she can always out-damage enemy’s health. Additionally, her anvil spawning means that, with luck, Kaela can reach full build extremely quickly, outpacing the enemy scaling.
S-Tier
- Amelia Watson
- Takanashi Kiara
- IRyS
- Hakos Baelz
- Nanashi Mumei
- Inugami Korone
- Tokino Sora
- Roboco-san
- Sakura Miko
- Minato Aqua
- Moona Hoshinova
The HoloCure characters listed in this tier will, barring bad luck, almost always beat Stage 3 Hard with max Halu.
Ame, IRyS, Bae, Mumei, Roboco, and Aqua are all similar. With no or conditional healing, they likely will need to dip into a healing item. While all have highly offensive-orientated skills that let them out-damage the buffed health, they all need some time before they come online. In particular, their primary weapon tends to be all-or-nothing: powerful at Level 7, but very weak in the lead-up.
Kiara and Korone are bruisers: tough but with good damage output. Kiara will need a good Collab weapon for when her primary starts falling off in the late-stage. This is something she shares with Miko, who has a solid kit but does need some strong Collab weapons to keep up in the late-game.
Meanwhile, Korone will need something to help overcome her lack of range: something that can be very dangerous as the screen gets filled with projectiles.
Sora and Moona are similar in that they are highly reliant on their Special to do damage, so bad luck on itemization can really hurt them.
A-Tier
- Ceres Fauna
- Tsukumo Sana
- Shirakami Fubuki
- Nekomata Okayu
- Natsuiro Matsuri
- Aki Rosenthal
- Oozora Subaru
- Ayunda Risu
- Kurejii Ollie
These characters can fairly reliably clear Stage 3 Hard. However, in this tier list, the characters need to meet a certain condition to beat the hardest HoloCure challenge.
In general, all the characters in this tier heavily rely on getting specific items or stamps to unlock their full potential. For example, Sana wants the Knight’s Milk item while Risu wants the Projectile stamp.
This means that bad RNG can seriously hurt their chances.
Additionally, while they all have generally good area-of-effect to deal with the hordes, they can struggle against the buffed bosses with their default kit. An obvious example is Matsuri, who wants to tank hits from the horde but can’t really do so against Bosses.
This means they need good collab weapons to overcome certain challenges.
B-Tier
- Calliope Mori
- Ouro Kronii
- Akai Haato
- Nakiri Ayame
- Pavolia Reine
- Vestia Zeta
For B-tier, the HoloCure characters in this list have suboptimal kits that can’t handle the buff that Halu gives to the already difficult Stage 3 Hard enemies.
These characters basically rely on their items more than their innate skills to try for victory, meaning that with bad luck they can struggle to beat the Stage.
For example, Calli is powerful early but her Death skill doesn’t scale into late-game. This is because it relies specifically on her getting kills with her starting weapon. Since it’s tricky to proc this skill, it means Calli in late-game only has two skills, not three.
As another example, Kronii and Zeta can survive against the hordes with their skills. They have good survivability and spacing abilities. However, their abilities don’t necessarily let them defeat their enemies.
C-Tier
- Ookami Mio
- AZKi
- Murasaki Shion
- Airani Iofifteen
- Anya Melfissa
- Kobo Kanaeru
The characters in the C-tier list are the ones who are outright unlikely to beat the hardest HoloCure challenge. Due to generally underwhelming kits, they can’t handle the buffed enemies even with strong collabs, weapons and items.
This can be due to inherently weak abilities like Shion, Iofi and Anya where parts of their kit are too situational to be consistently useful.
In other cases like Mio, AZKi and Kobo, most of their character’s power is put into an ability that loses usefulness against buffed enemies. They either fall off in terms of damage against enemy health (Mio’s Special or AZKI’s Encore!) or are unviable against the higher incoming damage (Kobo’s Tantrum which needs her to get hit).
