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The early picks at a glance
No official developer ranking settled the question. The strongest available answer is an editorial synthesis of two secondary sources: a Highguard.app tier list dated to patch v1.0 and January 29, 2026, and a GamesRadar+ assessment written from its author’s play experience. The table below combines what each source said about the four characters they singled out.
| Character | Tier in the January 29, 2026 list | Role emphasized | Notable strengths cited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atticus | S | All-around; strong on attack and defense | Shockspear for poke damage and area control; Powerstorm for area denial. GamesRadar+ also ranks him among the strongest attackers and defenders. |
| Scarlet | S | Flanker | Flanking, stealth, wall phasing, and an ultimate whose cooldown can reset after eliminations. |
| Redmane | S | Breacher | Smashing walls and repositioning. |
| Kai | Not stated in the list | Defense | Ice Wall, Frost Giant form, and wall repair. GamesRadar+ called him the best defensive character at the time. |
Why Atticus is the safest single answer
Atticus is the only one of the four who appears as a strong pick on both the attacking and defensive side of the evidence. The tier list rated him S tier on the strength of his poke damage and area denial, and GamesRadar+ placed him among the strongest characters for both attack and defense. That combination is why he is the answer that holds up if you do not care about a specific role.
Scarlet and Redmane are stronger answers only when a team needs a specific job done. Scarlet suits players who want to flank, and Redmane suits teams that need to break structures and force repositioning. Kai is the choice for a defensive base, and the sources treat that role as his clearest identity rather than a general ranking.
#1 Best Overall
Other characters were mentioned as close behind the leaders. GamesRadar+ said Slade, Kai, Mara, and Ekon were not far behind Atticus and Scarlet, but the reporting reviewed did not give them a published tier, so they should not be ranked against the S-tier picks.
Why the answer depends on which source you trust
The two main sources reach different conclusions for different reasons, and neither is a balance dataset. The Highguard.app list says its criteria include win rates, pick rates, bans where applicable, and pro preferences. The opened page, however, does not publish the underlying numbers, so readers cannot verify the ranking from the page alone. GamesRadar+ instead judges characters by role and by the author’s hands-on experience.
If you are comparing characters yourself, these are the axes that matter most:
- All-around strength: the best choice when a team has no fixed role, which is where Atticus leads.
- Attack and flanking: Scarlet is the main example in the sources.
- Structure breaching: Redmane is the main example in the sources.
- Defensive base control: Kai is the main example in the sources.
- Team utility: the sources reviewed did not rank characters on this axis, so treat any claim here as unverified.
What the final update changed
PC Gamer reported that the March 2026 final update added Koldo, a new weapon, account progression, and skill trees before the shutdown. The reporting available does not document a complete final roster or the game’s final balance state. The early eight-Warden lineup should therefore be read as the roster that the January 2026 list covered, not as the last roster the game had.
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The shutdown and the player-count figure
Wildlight said it had not been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long term. In the statement, as quoted by GamesRadar+, the studio wrote: “Despite the passion and hard work of our team, we have not been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long term.” The statement was published on the official Highguard account, and the report does not name an individual author.
The same announcement said that more than two million players had entered the game’s world. That is a company-reported lifetime figure, not a count of concurrent or active players, and it should not be read as a measure of how many people were playing when the game closed.
Rank #4
Because the shutdown date has passed, choosing a character now matters only for reading old guides, comparing early-season opinions, or understanding how the developer’s balance was judged at launch.
Several characters may still be discussed by fans, but the strongest evidence for any ranking remains the January 2026 list and the GamesRadar+ piece. Community complaints such as a Reddit thread asking whether a character was low tier are informal opinion, not evidence of how a character performed overall.
When readers ask which character was best, the honest answer is that Atticus was the most broadly supported choice in the early meta, while Scarlet, Redmane, and Kai were the strongest picks for specific roles.
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