Darktide tier lists usually rank the four classes, which tells you almost nothing because a full team wants all four. What actually varies is how much a class carries on Auric difficulty and how badly a bad player on that class hurts the team.
Two rankings below: classes by how much they contribute at the top difficulty, and weapons by whether they are worth the Armoury Data.
Classes
| Tier | Class | Carries because | Falls off when |
|---|---|---|---|
| S | Veteran | Ranged damage plus ammo for the whole team. Solves specialists and gunners, which is what actually downs people on Auric. | Never, really. Weakest pick is still useful. |
| A | Psyker | Deletes specialists outright with Brain Burst and controls crowds. | The player does not know which enemy to delete. |
| A | Ogryn | Absorbs damage nothing else can and holds a corridor alone. | Ranged pressure from multiple angles. |
| B | Zealot | Highest melee ceiling in the game and reaches enemies nobody else can. | The player is not confident, at which point it dies constantly. |
Zealot at B is about consistency, not power. In good hands it is the strongest class here. In a random group it is the one most likely to be on the floor.
Weapons worth your Armoury Data
| Tier | Weapon | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| S | Bolter | Deletes everything, ammo-starved, needs a Veteran to feed it |
| S | Plasma Gun | Handles armour and hordes both, punishing heat management |
| A | Power Sword | The horde-clear standard, still excellent after nerfs |
| A | Thunder Hammer | Slow, enormous, wins boss damage checks |
| A | Shotguns | Consistent and forgiving, poor against carapace |
| B | Lasguns | Efficient and unexciting. Genuinely fine, never a highlight |
| B | Chain weapons | Good against unarmoured, bounce off everything else |
| C | Combat Blades | Fast and fragile, badly outclassed at Auric |
The thing tier lists here get wrong
Blessings matter more than the weapon. A B-tier weapon with two good blessings beats an S-tier weapon with none, and the ranking above assumes both are reasonably rolled.
That is why spreading Armoury Data across six weapons is the actual mistake, rather than picking the wrong weapon. Take two to the top and branch later.
Difficulty changes the answer
Everything above is written for Auric and Damnation. Below that the rankings flatten out completely and anything works, which is worth saying because most tier lists do not.
If you are on Heresy and struggling, the fix is coherency and toughness management rather than a weapon swap. The Darktide builds guide covers that.
Curios, briefly, because they are ranked wrong everywhere
Most lists rank curios by their base stat. The stat is the least important part.
Wounds is the one that matters at Auric, because an extra wound is an extra time you can be picked up before the run ends. After that, corruption resistance for grimoire missions and whatever resistance the modifier you keep failing demands.
A curio with a high base stat and no blessings is worse than one with a lower stat and three. Three small blessings beat one larger number, and people get this backwards constantly.
