Borderlands 4 brings four Vault Hunters, each with their own playstyle and strengths. Choosing the right character can make a huge difference in your experience, especially when you're starting out or tackling the toughest content. Recent gameplay tests have shown clear differences between how these characters perform across different situations.
This tier list ranks all four Vault Hunters based on their overall effectiveness, ease of use, and ability to handle various content types.
Keep in mind that these rankings reflect our experience and community feedback. Your experience might vary based on your playstyle.
Table of Contents
Borderlands 4 Character Tier List
S Tier
A Tier
B Tier
C Tier
| Tier | Characters |
|---|---|
| S | Vex, Rafa |
| A | Harlowe |
| B | Amon |
S-Tier Characters
Vex
Vex dominates both solo and team play with her incredible versatility. Her Phase Covenant trait converts all her action skill and melee damage to match her equipped weapon's element, making her adapt to any situation instantly. This flexibility lets her exploit enemy weaknesses with ease.
Her three action skills offer different approaches to combat. Dead Ringer summons phase clones that can either taunt enemies or deal ranged damage. Phase Phamiliar gives her a permanent companion named Trouble, who can be teleported and transformed. Incarnate provides both healing and area damage.
The key to Vex's power lies in her minion control and elemental mastery. Maliwan weapons work perfectly with her kit. She handles large enemy groups easily while staying relatively safe behind her minions.
Rafa
Rafa brings straightforward but devastating firepower to any fight. His Overdrive trait activates whenever he uses an action skill, boosting his movement speed and damage output significantly.
His Peacebreaker Cannons action skill adds shoulder-mounted weapons that fire automatically while you use your regular guns. APOPHIS Lance gives him a powerful arm cannon with piercing shots. Arc-Knives switches him to melee combat with marking abilities that increase damage to tagged enemies.
Rafa works best with assault rifles and high-capacity weapons that let him maintain Overdrive for longer periods. His playstyle feels familiar to players coming from other shooter games, making him an excellent choice for newcomers to the Borderlands series.
A-Tier Characters
Harlowe
Harlowe fills the support role with her focus on crowd control and team buffs. Her Entanglement trait makes enemies share damage when hit by her abilities, creating chain reactions against grouped foes. This makes her extremely effective in the right situations.
Her CHROMA Accelerator fires energy projectiles that pass through enemies and explode on command. Zero-Point puts enemies in stasis, completely stopping them before slamming them into the ground. Flux Generator creates protective fields that shield allies while damaging enemies over time.
Harlowe excels in team play, where her crowd control and support abilities shine brightest. Her cryo and radiation focus works well against specific enemy types, but she needs Maliwan weapons to cover elemental weaknesses effectively.
B-Tier Characters
Amon
Amon serves as the warrior character with high survivability and close-range combat focus. His Forgeskill trait gives him different abilities based on his equipped action skill, adding depth to his gameplay. He can absorb massive amounts of damage while dealing it back to enemies.
Onslaughter gives him shield regeneration and bonus Incendiary damage while adding a rocket punch attack. Scourge provides a shield that converts absorbed damage into Vengeance energy for powerful counterattacks. Crucible equips throwable axes.
The main limitation holding Amon back is his elemental focus on cryo and incendiary damage. These elements struggle against shielded enemies, requiring players to carry shock weapons to cover his weaknesses.
This tier list reflects current game balance and may change as patches and updates arrive. All characters remain viable with proper builds and weapon choices, so don't hesitate to play whichever Vault Hunter appeals to you most.
