As For Honor has recently entered the Off-Season of its Faction War, now is a perfect time to re-evaluate your faction allegiance, without losing any rewards. Here is a Tier List for For Honor's four playable factions to help you decide.
For Honor's Faction War has never been a massive part of the game's appeal, or function, really (the main things it affects are your emblem shape and the rewards you get at the end of a season). If we were to judge each faction simply by its actual impact on your For Honor experience, the only faction that would matter would be the Vikings (because they almost always win and have an easily customized circular emblem shape). It also doesn't help that there is no restriction or incentive to make you play as the characters from the faction you're a part of.
So, if we're going to rank each faction, we ought to have different criteria than strict practicality, or for that matter, aesthetic appeal. Aesthetic appeal is a completely subjective and therefore pointless ranking, as it's entirely up to each player whether they enjoy being from the frozen north, the swampy Myre, or the forested Ashfeld.
Then what criteria should we use for this list? Well, let's base it on a thought experiment, since no other foundation presents itself:
What if there was a reason to pick a faction based on its actual roster?
You can imagine it however you like, be it an XP/Steel gain boost for playing characters from the faction you're part of, or straight up not being allowed to play characters from other factions (however extreme that may be). What matters is, if you had to base your choice on which set of characters offered the most in terms of variety and viability ON TOP OF faction war performance, which would it be?
#4: The Wu Lin
It should come as no surprise that the Wu Lin come in dead last in this, and virtually every other For Honor Faction tier list (at least that I've found). They are barely even considered a faction, as they have no presence in the war or story mode, a smaller roster than everyone else, and have never boasted the strongest characters.
That said, Wu Lin still have a very unique and creative design for each of their warriors, and since the Core Combat Update (CCU), they have become considerably stronger. From Nuxia's traps becoming unreactable to Zhanhu's stamina management improvements, many of their critical flaws have been addressed, making them far more fun to play overall.
However, even if they weren't severely numerically disadvantaged and had more of a developed history within the For Honor universe, you can't choose the Wu Lin as your faction to fight for, so they barely even have a place on this list to begin with. Still, their characters are worth a try now more than ever, and I personally recommend doing so.
#3: The Samurai of the Dawn Empire
Coming in at the bottom of the ACTUAL factions of For Honor, with a developed backstory and territory in the Faction War, the Samurai have a long history of weak/badly designed characters and poor performance in the Faction War. They've only won twice, out of 14 seasons.
While the Samurai do boast better fighters nowadays (in general), here's a list of game mechanics they've poisoned the game with:
- Passive Hyper Armor
- Insta-Kill Demon's Embrace
- Hyper Armor Light Attacks
- Guard Break-Invulnerable Hidden Stance
- 85-106 damage knockdown/parry punishes
- Ranged Guard Break
- Super Sprint
- 300 Millisecond Neutral Hyper Armor
- Orochi Light Spam (just kidding, but seriously, this character's design has almost always revolved around reactable attacks with horrible risk-reward ratios and awful counterattacks)
However, the Samurai do have Kensei to show off, whose design has always been the best of his faction (even if it has major flaws). And it's not as if the other characters are all bad for the game through-and-through. It's just that by and large, the Samurai cast has usually not been the strongest, but had access to most of the gimmicky, gamebreaking mechanics in the title's life.
Overall, the Samurai are still a worthwhile set of characters for you to try and master. They're each interesting and unique from each other to a much larger degree than within some factions.
#2: The Knights of the Iron Legion
In the middle of our short tier list is the Knights of the Iron Legion. There's a much smaller gap between them and the faction above them than anywhere else on this list, but let's get into why the knights are this high before we get into why they aren't at the top.
First off, the Knights boast the most powerful selection of characters, and they always have. On top of that, they possess the most numerous selection (8 compared to the Viking and Samurai's 7, and the Wu Lin's 5). With ranks full of powerhouses from Warden to Warmonger, the Knights are icons of in-game viability and strength.
However, that starts to fall apart when you realize that while the Knights may have the most characters, they have what is easily the least variety out of the four factions. All but one of them has a bash attack, and whether it's variably timed, functions as a dodge, or is just really fast with virtually no punish (or all of the above), it gets old fast and makes it much less interesting to switch from knight to knight. This is also where a large part of their strength comes from, so the problem poisons their viability as well.
Lastly, the Knights cannot possibly be the best faction when they have the worst track record possible for the Faction War. Out of 14 seasons since the game came out, the Knights have triumphed in exactly one of them. That's even worse than the Samurai, and while the Wu Lin are the Faction War equivalent of a participation award, the Knights aren't far off.
#1: The Warborn Vikings
The hairy, angry warriors of the frozen north win this round, just like they have won literally every single Season of the Faction War with the exception of 3, totaling 11 different seasonal victories. If you're a part of the Viking faction, you've secured yourself a steady source of seasonal rewards and military superiority.
The Vikings are just 1 character short of the Knights, but they vary far more from character to character. The closest comparison you could feasibly make would be between the Raider and Berserker for their chain hyper armor and light attack feints, but even that is a stretch. Both characters have very different roles on any battlefield, and play entirely differently, which is more than can be said for the Knight cast.
It's not as if the Vikings are that weak, either, especially since the release of the CCU. The Vikings can brandish fighters like Shaman and Warlord with a deserved sense of pride and confidence, and without nearly as many frustrating mechanics as the Samurai. Yes, Raider and Warlord's old sprint attacks existed, and so did Jormungandr before the stamina changes of the CCU, but by and large, the Vikings have always had the least frustrating mechanics in the game while still being varied and interesting to play.
So, without a doubt, the Vikings of For Honor come out on top of the others. Thankfully, For Honor doesn't make a tier list like this one super important, so you're free to choose whoever you want to play and swear allegiance to. Just know that if you ever start taking this narrow aspect of the game more seriously, this is our verdict as of Season 14 of For Honor.
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