It's Time To Countdown To The Best Quake Champion
So, which champion in Quake Champions is going to give you the most bang for your buck?
Before deciding from this list, it’s important to remember that the champion you choose is not going to dramatically change how you are playing; large or small, fast or slow, you are still trying to land those rockets, keep that lightning gun trained on your opponent, or hit those railgun headshots.
However, choosing a champion will add unique flavor to this formula.
Before making your own decisions, understand that in public matches, just about any character can defeat another character, provided one player is better at the game’s fundamentals. Instead, this ranking is based on competitive duels and 2v2 performances, with professional players ultimately being able to show which champions perform best at the highest level of play.
15. Scalebearer (Weakest)
CHOO CHOO
This is Scalebearer, a champion who has the playstyle of a freight train. He’s a heavy class champion whose playstyle involves running fast and smashing faces with his considerable bulk. His unique passive allows him to gain ground running speed if he continuously runs without turning too sharply, and the damage he’ll deal on impact increases with his speed. His ability is simple; it immediately puts him in a high-speed running charge with much better turn rate and a much higher speed cap, but you are unable to use any weapons during its duration.
While this may sound strong, his large hitbox and the predictable paths a player will have to take to keep his movement speed high make him an easy target in a tough matchup. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing this guy in public free for all matches, but a large hitbox moving towards an experienced player is simply going to get creamed by long distance fire, and if you are charging, you won’t even be able to return fire.
Champion Power Rating: 65/100
14. Slash
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Too bloodthirsty for the X Games, not bloodthirsty enough for roller derby.
Slash is one of the two punk rockers of Quake, riding around on her laser-edged skates. She’s a light class champion whose combat style mainly involves using her excellent mobility to get where she wants by taking winding paths that would slow less agile characters down. Her movement passive allows her to slide on her skates for short distances, which maintains her speed during tight turns. Her ability lets her move in any direction, including backpedaling, without losing speed, while leaving behind a glowing trail that explodes after the duration ends, dealing heavy damage to anyone inside the area.
Unfortunately, while her mobility sounds like a powerful tool, it’s ultimately overkill in many of the game’s maps. This leaves Slash in a place where she can reach items as fast as stronger characters, but she has few tools to aid her once she is in an actual fight, especially with her low health pool. Her ability can be used for area denial, but a highly experienced player is not likely to just wander into its highly visible glowing area.
Champion Power Rating: 66/100
13. Keel
Just imagine the chafing from wearing that armor all the time.
Keel’s overall playstyle will probably be familiar to anyone who has played Halo. He is a slow-moving heavy class champion with no special movement techniques and a large hitbox. However, he has a very high maximum armor capacity, and his ability lets him fire up to 5 grenades on demand. These grenades can be fired whilst firing weapons, meaning that he can throw quite a bit of damage out if his grenades and shots are all landing on their target.
The problem with Keel in high-level play is almost the same as Scalebearer’s. He has a huge hitbox, and he is probably the least mobile character in Quake Champions, making it easy to keep Keel at bay if he is after a kill. His grenades can be used for area denial, but Keel isn’t going to be able to get anywhere fast enough to need to keep someone else out. Instead, Keel is often left behind, firing his grenades impotently at the heels of speedier combatants.
Champion Power Rating: 68/100
12. Strogg
Strogg officially has Peeker registered as an emotional support animal.
Strogg has a unique playstyle for a Quake character, prioritizing a predatory, stealthier approach. His passive allows him to eat capsules that drop from enemies he kills which heal him, meaning that he can be difficult to wear down if he’s getting kills. Strogg’s ability camouflages his position and gives him direct control of a flying Peeker drone, which has a effective gun and can charge at a spot to detonate and do considerable damage. This allows a good Strogg player to always shift a fight in his favor before even engaging himself, meaning that a clever Strogg player will be able to stay healthy without risking himself contesting healing items on the map.
Unfortunately, in competitive play, this act is very tough to pull off. His camouflage is not hard to spot when you are close to his position, he cannot move while his ability is active, and his Peeker drone is made of tissue paper. Against a skilled opponent, a fight with Strogg mainly involves taking out his drone with a single shot, but the same can also be done to Strogg himself, as engaging Peeker gives away his position if you know it was activated recently.
Champion Power Rating: 70/100
11. Anarki
Anarki has a full skeleton cosmetic set, which may make him too spooky for some players.
Anarki is the other punk of Quake Champions, riding around at high speed on his hoverboard with a steady stream of intravenous amphetamines in his bloodstream. His passive is a special movement style seen in games like Counter Strike, called CPMA (from a Quake 3 mod called Challenge ProMode Arena), which allows quick turns to be performed while strafe-jumping at the moment he touches the ground. This special movement style arguable defines the character more than his ability, which heals Anarki for a sizable chunk of his health pool, and slightly increases his max HP with each injection, allowing him to rocket around the maps at high speed while not needing to stop for health as often as others.
CPMA movement allows for some very agile plays, and there are some die-hard devotees of this movement style from an older time in Quake’s history. Unfortunately, Anarki’s overall kit doesn’t allow this movement style to catapult him to the top, as he is very squishy, and his ability simply means the other player will just need to fire one more rocket to kill him while he recovers from the dose.
Champion Power Rating: 75/100
10. Sorlag
Why didn't they name the lizard Scalebearer?
Sorlag is basically a slower, but somehow more agile Anarki. She is a heavy class champion, but her CPMA movement is very tight, allowing her to reach much higher speeds than the other heavies while also being able to turn corners too tight even for Anarki. This lets you play Sorlag like an agile beast, hunting her prey by bounding around the maps. Her ability vomits up four acid projectiles that do moderate damage and applying one of the game’s few damage-over-time effects. The real beauty here is that the acid pools from her vomit stay on the ground for some time, meaning that if another player steps in the area, they are given the damage over time effect, and the damage numbers that pop up over the victim’s head, allowing Sorlag to track the now-poisoned enemy.
Sorlag and Anarki have a similar playstyle, but that tracking ability her acid spit grants her is more useful than anything Anarki can do. Positioning and awareness of your enemy’s location is what wins fights at a high level of play, and there have been a few times where a good Sorlag has been surprisingly effective, being able to get where she wants easily while also keeping tabs on her opponent.
Champion Power Rating: 77/100
9. Doom Slayer
When he was a kid, dad just called him "Doom Boy.”
Doom Slayer has one of the most aggressive playstyles in the game, which matches his overall personality as a silent berserker who pulls apart the forces of hell with his bare hands. His passive allows him to double jump, which opens new movement options for him, and can give him the high ground in any fight; firing rockets from double jump height is sublime. His ability brings up his fists and gives him very high movement speed, allowing him to dodge and weave while also dealing almost as much damage as a railgun shot with each punch.
Doom has gone up and down the various tier lists on the internet, having once been far stronger than he is now. However, with his passive allowing for both greater aggression and higher mobility, and his ability being useful both for finishing off damaged enemies and escaping dangerous fights, Doom is a solid all-rounder who can always fight his opponents on their terms. The music that plays during his berserk state is also a pleasant reminder of how fun the game DOOM from 2016 was.
Champion Power Rating: 80/100
8. Nyx
I doubt that hair is very useful for subterfuge.
Nyx is the obligatory invisible character that most class-based shooters seem to have some interpretation of. She Is a light champion who relies on her ability to stay alive, which makes her both invisible and invincible for a short time, while also making her unable to deal any damage for its duration. Her passive allows her to jump off walls, which is useful for changing her position even after being bumped into the air by a rocket.
Unfortunately, Nyx’s playstyle is centered around her ability, which means that she has few ways of controlling a fight once it’s used up and she is being pursued. She is very squishy and has no special movement tricks on the ground, so if she can’t go invisible, she can’t easily gain an advantage. The element of surprise is no small thing, though, so if Nyx gets the jump on you she can quickly get the kill before you even know where she is coming from.
Champion Power Rating: 83/100
7. Athena
The only thing she can't grapple with is her low self-esteem.
Athena is the closest thing the game has to Spider Man. She is all about moving around in ways that no other champion can come close to with her grappling hook. She can store three charges, and these physics-violating hook shots will immediately pull her towards the point of contact at high speed. Combined with her passive, which allows her to use the tops of stairs or ramps to jump extra high, and the secondary function of her ability that lets her swing around on her hooks, Athena can reach top speeds almost twice that of the average character on the ground.
It’s difficult to gauge Athena’s overall strength, as she has been recently added to the game, but she has the same problem as other light characters with a very small health pool. However, her very unorthodox movement style means that she can totally invalidate many of her opponent’s expectations, which is fundamentally useful. However, her grapple is only useful on the maps that actually have the open space it requires, and some maps, like Lockbox, are simply too small for Athena to have any fun.
Champion Power Rating: 87/100
6. Death Knight
His “Death Knight” title never made sense while he was alive.
Death Knight is another recent addition, with a simple but flexible playstyle. His passive is simple, turning his melee gauntlet into a fiery saw, which deals extra damage and puts a flaming damage-over-time effect on whoever was hit. His ability is what makes him as strong as he is currently. With a swing of his sword, he fires 3 fireballs in a cone pattern, meaning that someone close to the start of the fan receives full damage immediately. Being close to an enemy and popping his ability can kill nearly the entire cast in a single shot, which has caused the community to cry foul.
Death Knight’s strength and high pick rate in competitive matches is based entirely around the high damage potential of his ability. Unfortunately for Death Knight players, the developers have announced that they plan to change this ability in the future, so his position in rankings like this one may change in the future. However, as he is right now, Death Knight is a solid pick, having no great disadvantages in up-front combat and being more dangerous the closer he gets to his opponent.
Champion Power Rating: 90/100
5. BJ
Mr.Blaskowicz, just go home. You haven’t run into a single Nazi out here.
BJ is one of those champions who can flex between playing defensively and offensively. His active ability is taken right out of the recent Wolfenstein games, allowing him to pull out a copy of his current weapon, with no drawbacks; he simply gets twice as dangerous. His passive lets him regenerate health up to the next gate of 25 HP—if he’s at 1 health, he can regen back to 25, 26 to 50, etc. This regeneration, when combined with the healing blood pools on every map, mean that he can get himself back to full health more easily than just about anyone else in the thick of a fight.
If BJ was more mobile, he’d be competing for the top spot on this list. Being able to whip out another lightning gun or rocket launcher is devastatingly strong, totally changing the flow of a fight. Since he can stay healthy for longer than most others, this makes him excellent at either getting that extra bit of damage to make a fight fair or being able to survive just enough more damage to survive. One of his only noticeable downsides is how obvious it is when his health is low, as his near-death screams of pain are something of an in-joke at this point.
Champion Power Rating: 92/100
4. Clutch
His senior quote: BEEP BOOP
Clutch is the most-picked heavy champion in the game. His ability is very effective in duels, as it puts an impenetrable shield in front of his giant hitbox that can soak any amount of damage until its duration runs out. Clutch can even fire his weapons while this shield is up, though this does put the shield down until he stops firing. This means that it pairs well with weapons that require careful aim, allowing Clutch the proper safety to aim something like a railgun without being punished. Plus, if his opponent is low on health, Clutch can simply turn his shield into a precision laser from his hand which functions like a stronger lightning gun. This ability alone is strong, but Clutch also has a passive ability to dodge in mid-air, allowing him to quickly change direction while also suddenly increasing his speed in that direction if he follows with a bunnyhop.
This robot is simply one of the strongest duelists in the game, with his large hitbox being his biggest weakness. However, a smart Clutch player can keep himself out of harm’s way while also having decent mobility and a wonderfully useful ability. And to top it off, the shiny finish of his character model simply can’t be beaten.
Champion Power Rating: 94/100
3. Galena
Not the face of someone you’d expect to heal the sick.
Galena is another strong duelist who has good supportive function in 2v2 as well. Her ability is the reason for this good synergy with another player—it drops down a totem with a wide area of effect that can either be used as a mine which deals heavy damage to an enemy that triggers it, or a healing circle that instantly grants a good deal of HP to a friendly player that steps into its area (the healing function also doesn’t use up the mine, so it’s a win-win). Her passive also makes collecting health items on the map reduce the cooldown of this totem, and any player in a game of quake is trying to grab those health bubbles all the time.
Galena is another champion who has a thousand uses for a strong ability. She can either be aggressive, trying to drop the totem right on enemies she has cornered, tricky, dropping the totem in front of teleporters or gravity lifts, or supportive, healing her teammates. Her lack of mobility is pretty much the only weakness of her kit.
Champion Power Rating: 95/100
2. Ranger
He played college ball, you know.
Ranger is the champion all players have access to by default, so it’s fitting that he would be one of the most reliable picks. He has decent health, armor, and speed, and his passive makes him take less self-damage, which is useful for veterans trying to be more aggressive and rocket jump around without a care, as well as for new players trying the game out for the first time. His active is simple but elegant: he throws his dire orb in whichever direction he is aiming, and when the button is pressed again, he teleports to that spot. This ability deals damage in an area wherever it impacts, and if the Ranger teleports inside of an enemy, it’s an instant kill (called a telefrag). Even without the damage potential of his ability, it’s terrific for reaching high places and taking unorthodox paths; you can even throw the orb through tiny windows for a tricky escape from danger.
The all-around good stats and strong damage and utility of his ability make Ranger one of the game’s best champions. If you don’t know where to start in Quake Champions, sticking with Ranger will let you go far.
Champion Power Rating: 96/100
1. Visor
If the face under that mask looks as pretty as the rest of him...
Visor plays similarly to the ranger, but his ability, while more passive, is simply the most useful ability in the game for duels and 2v2. When activated, he can see through walls temporarily with his enemies highlighted in red. His passive is similarly subtle: his has no speed cap when strafe jumping. Most characters hit a speed cap after a few good strafe jumps, but Visor will just go faster and faster, meaning that if he outstrips you, you’ll never catch up. Say goodbye to those mega healths and mega armors, because Visor just zipped past and grabbed it, and is now waiting for you, knowing exactly where you are coming from.
Being able to see exactly where your opponent is coming from sounds minor, but it allows players who are familiar with Quake to have an enormous advantage. Always being able to set up the perfect ambush by being able to go faster than anyone and knowing exactly where they are approaching from makes Visor a character who becomes more powerful in more practiced hands. Is it any wonder he’s picked more than just about anyone else?
Champion Power Rating: 97/100
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