Solo Leveling Arise tier list: Best Shadow Soldiers ranked

Choosing the best Shadow Soldiers to unlock, use, and level up in Solo Leveling: Arise is vital, so here’s the ultimate Shadow tier list, ranked from best to worst.

Each Shadow in Arise provides its own unique skills and Shadow’s Authority benefit to aid you in your fight while clearing Gates and fighting high-level bosses in Solo Leveling Arise. This makes certain Shadows much stronger than others and better suited in a team with particular hunters.

Here’s a guide to help you select the best units to join your team and how to unlock them.

Solo Leveling: Arise best Shadow Soldier tier list

Our tiers explained

• S: The best
• A: Very good
• B: There might be situations where these can perform well
• C: Best to avoid unless you find yourself drawn to them

There are seven Shadow Soldiers in Solo Leveling: Arise. However, Netmarble has revealed that Shadow Soldiers will often join the gacha game in future updates as per their official Arise 2024 Roadmap.

This tier list is fully updated as per the September 12 patch, which added Bigrock as a brand-new Shadow Soldier.

Meta analysis

Despite the hunter character meta constantly changing with Netmarble’s regular content updates, for Shadow Soldiers it has remained pretty much the same. New additions have had little impact on changing the meta, and instead, it has just been dominated by the same S-tier and A-tier Shadows.

Each Shadow has also barely received many balance adjustments, and so the higher-ranked shadows have remained leagues above the rest with their superior DPS output benefits.

However, it is worth noting that in some cases, certain choices can still be better suited for specific team compositions, or characters, depending on their Shadow’s Authority and skill benefits.

S-tier Shadow Soldiers

Igris

Netmarble

Igris is the most powerful Shadow Soldier you can get in Solo Leveling: Arise.

Igris is by far the best Shadow Soldier you can get in Solo Leveling: Arise. The iconic Gate boss turned Shadow, has not only proved to be a fan-favorite from the original series, but his immense power has sealed him as the ultimate and only S-tier Shadow in Arise.

Shadow’s Authority: All team members’ Critical Hit Rate increases by 5%.

Pros:

• Easy to unlock
• Very effective when fighting bosses
• Major Critical Hit buff from his Shadow’s Authority
• High DPS output
• Earth Slash skill applies the Bleed effect to deal significant damage over time.

Cons:

• Igris’s Shadow’s Authority will not benefit Choi Jong In due to being the only hunter who can’t deal Critical Hits
• His skills are more effective in one-on-one battles

A-tier Shadow Soldiers

Blades

Netmarble

Blades is one of the best Shadow Soldiers you can get in Solo Leveling: Arise.

Blades is the second-best Shadow Soldier you can get in Arise. Before leveling up Igris, you will instead want to save up your Traces of Shadow and unlock Blades due to his strong Shadow’s Authority team buff.

Shadow’s Authority: All team members’ Attack increases by 3%.

Pros:

• Strong support Shadow’s Authority that buffs the entire team’s DPS
• Versatile skills that can deal single-target and AoE damage.
• Spinning Strike attack increases his Attack by 100% for 10 seconds

Cons:

• Compared to other Shadows, he can’t grant any debuffs
• One of the hardest to unlock

Tusk

Netmarble

Fan-favorite Tusk from the original series has finally arrived in Solo Leveling: Arise.

Tusk is a one-trick pony, with his Shadow’s Authority being arguably the best of every Shadow Soldier, but his skills have proved to be lackluster. This stops him from being ranked any higher than third place, although if you want to just go all-out attack, then he’s the Shadow for you.

Shadow’s Authority: All team members’ Core Attack damage increases by 20%.

Pros:

• His Shadow’s Authority provides an incredibly powerful DPS buff for all team members
• The best Shadow to use when Choi Jong-In is in your hunting team.

Cons:

• Hard to unlock
• Standard DPS skills with no unique effects applied
• Needs a lot of upgrades to make effective

B-tier Shadow Soldiers

Cerbie

Netmarble

Cerbie presents an alternative to Igris featuring similar Critical Hit buffs.

The three-headed Shadow Soldier Cerbie was added as part of Arise’s July 31 update. He does have solid utility in his skills, such as his unique Combustion effect, and his Shadow’s Authority is similar to Igris, making him reasonably strong overall.

However, his Critical Hit Damage buff is lackluster without a higher Critical Hit Rate, therefore Igris’s Shadow’s Authority that increases the rate is much more useful and he’s also far easier to get.

Shadow’s Authority: All team members’ Critical Hit Damage increases by 4%.

Pros:

• Major Critical Hit Damage buff
• Combustion effect deals 50% of his Attack every 3 seconds for an infinite duration
• Combustion also applies a debuff effect that increases Damage Taken by 5%

Cons:

• Hard to obtain
• Igris’s Critical Hit Rate Shadow’s Authority is more beneficial to all hunters

Bigrock

Netmarble / Dexerto

Bigrock was added as part of the September 12 patch update.

Overall, Bigrock is a solid choice for players looking to enhance skill damage, but he is not as versatile or impactful as higher-tier Shadows. Despite being the newest addition, he is not going to shake up the meta anytime soon.

Shadow’s Authority: Increases entire team members’ Basic Skill Damage by 11%.

Pros:

• High skill damage buffs will benefit all hunters
• Sustained DPS output thanks to skill damage buffs

Cons:

• Standard DPS skills with no unique effects applied
• Less beneficial for hunters who use skills less often

Iron

Netmarble

Iron is a tank-like Shadow whose strengths come from his Health benefits.

When using Health-based hunters that scale off their Attack damage or give buffs to the rest of your hunting team according to their Health, then Iron will be key here.

These include several A-tier hunters, such as the best support in Arise, Min Byung-Gu, as well as high DPS dealers Seo Jiwoo and Silver Mane Baek Yoonho. However, Arise favors DPS stats over Health and Defense, which restricts his effectiveness, and therefore we have not ranked Iron as high as others.

Shadow’s Authority: All team members’ Max Health increases by 6%.

Pros:

• Tanking abilities make him and your teammates hard to beat
• Defense debuff makes enemies easier to eliminate
• When upgraded you can activate his Shield skill to buff Max Health further

Cons:

• Fairly hard to unlock
• Limited to Health-based hunter teams
• Weak DPS output

C-tier Shadow Soldiers

Tank is the worst Shadow Soldier you can get in Solo Leveling: Arise and that’s why we’ve ranked him as our lowest C-tier Shadow.

This is down to his Shadow’s Authority ability being easily the least effective of them all, as it boosts Defense. Defense has proved to be a significantly weak stat in comparison to the more attacking options since Solo Leveling: Arise launched and so the benefits of all three other options are simply far superior.

Netmarble

Tank is the weakest Shadow Soldier you can get in Solo Leveling: Arise.

Shadow’s Authority: All team members’ Defense increases by 6%.

Pros:

• Second easiest to unlock behind Igris
• Defense buffs increase your team’s overall survivability
• Unique Stun effect immobilizes targets when Tank Press skill is used

Cons:

• Weakest Shadow’s Authority of all Shadow Soldiers
• Lack of DPS output

How to unlock Shadow Soldiers in Solo Leveling: Arise

Once you complete Chapter 9: The Birth of a New Monarch in the main story mode, you will unlock the Army of Shadows feature. From here, you will be able to change Sung Jinwoo’s job status to “The Shadow of Monarch” and this will allow you to unlock and use Shadows Soldiers in Solo Leveling: Arise.

Netmarble

There are six Shadow Soldiers you can unlock in Solo Leveling: Arise.

However, each Shadow Soldier has main story quests that you will need to complete as Sung Jinwoo before you are able to unlock them. Once these are complete, you’ll be able to purchase them in-game with the Traces of Shadow currency.

Here is how to unlock each Shadow Soldier and how much Traces of Shadow they will cost to obtain.

Here are all the ways you can earn Traces of Shadow in Solo Leveling: Arise:

• Completing Story Quests on Normal difficulty.
• Completing Story Quests on Hard difficulty.
• Clearing Gates.
• Completing Battlefield of Time dungeons.
• Exchanging Medals of Time in the in-game Exchange Shop.

For Solo Leveling: Arise, we have created complete guides for the best build for Sung Jinwoo and ranked all the best hunter characters in a tier list. We have also provided the best Artifact sets and weapons for every hunter character.

If you need free Arise codes or are wondering what the current and next banners are, then we also have you covered.