Ranking all the characters for Platinum

I've had a chance to use every single character on Platinum, played on all the maps including Aqua, try some different builds on some of the more difficult characters, and this is an OPINION on how the characters currently behave with Platinum the way it is now (horrible hack, bullet sponges, running for your life half the time).

It's sorted by tiers, so you get an idea of how a character can work against enemies and what they can do.

One important thing to note is weapons.  There are a few guns right now that are your best choices for platinum.  Hurricane, Rozerad, Shadow, PAW etc.  But I'm not going to get into the whole, match a character with the right gun discussion.  Use whatever you feel kills enemies the fastest and whatever variant you may have of that gun.

FINAL thing to note... this is for the majority of the community which falls in the middle of section of the bell curve of talent.  If you can solo platinum with any character, cool... good for you.  This is a list to help people who are testing the waters right now, and wondering which characters they should take and how they perform.

Breakdown:

Tier 5: Most useful characters in platninum.  Your runs will be significantly easier with these characters
Tier 4: Very good characters, they just need a bit of help from Tier 5 characters at times
Tier 3: You'll do some damage, debuffing.... but you need Tier 4 & 5 characters to complete games
Tier 2: You're going to struggle.  You will survive, but you're going to struggle and rely on teammates to do the heavy lifting
Tier 1: Just not viable on Platinum right now.  Either platinum needs changes or the characters need some help, but these characters will not make a significant contribution to team


TIER 5:
Avenger - Probably the go to class right now for obvious objective reasons
Huntress - Same as Avenger, but doesn't have the inherent escape ability with avenger strike
Salarian Infiltrator - Invisibility and 3 ways to heal & replenish shields.  A bit squishy, but still an excellent choice
Human Infiltrator - Invisibility is the theme here
Turian Agent - Recon Visor REALLY helps with a team hunkered down in a bad spot.  You can see what's coming around corners and warn the team before shit hits the fan

TIER 4:
Krogan Mercenary - You will have a hard time maintaining rage, but flak cannons & damage resistance will certainly keep you in the fight longer
Turian Havoc - Probably the best DPS character you have with Turbocharge and flak cannons.  Jumping for the character isn't recommended too often
Batarian - Debuffs with snap freeze, damage with flak cannons... probably rivals the Havoc in terms of damage & DPS you can add to a team
Turian Soldier - Loading up with defense & resistance, doesn't absorb that much damage on platinum, you feel pain.  Consider more points in frag grenades
Human Soldier - Not as lethal as the aliens, but does significant gun damage with the right loadout

TIER 3:
Human Sentinel - Barricades will help on some objectives with smaller enemies, but by the later rounds, bosses just walk right through them.  Energy drain helps
Human Engineer - Cryo Beam is a great debuff, especially freezing the floor at major choke points.  Your turret won't last long, but at least provides some extra damage
Angara Insurgent - Trip mines are great, but you need A LOT of them.  If you could camp an area with 2-3 ammo boxes, that would work... but most maps don't offer spots like that.  You're also going to shield boost often
Salarian Operator - This is in between tier 2 and tier 3.  Mainly because Invasion isn't going to jump very often with so many boss level enemies.  Shield boost of course is an excellent team helper

TIER 2:
Human Adept - I want to like this character, but they're only effective on certain maps.  You can't pull that many enemies for health, and NEED shockwave distance to detonate explosions.  The biggest downside is you need to be close to the action, but you don't have a way to heal yourself effectively to explode Singularity & Shockwave often enough
Angara Exemplar - The cooldown nerf really hurts him.  Without that nerf, he would be a Tier 3 or 4 character.  But most the effective way to detonate means ignoring barricade, so his skill set starts falling down the line
Krogan Engineer - Without cryo beam, it's mainly just the downsides of the human engineer.  You can detonate all game long, but enemies have massive amounts of health and absorb all those detonations
Salarian Architect - Remnant VI gets absolutely torn up in the later rounds.  All you're doing is sending him to his death.  Barricade is decent, but he has too little health with no healing ability
Asari Sentinel - If it wasn't for energy drain, she would be Tier 1.  The Aegis gets crushed fast, and backlash becomes useless in later rounds
Human Vanguard - Oddly, the best setup is to NOT charge enemies.  Nova to prime, shockwave to detonate...... and charge something close to stay alive.  Otherwise this power set is not meant for platinum

TIER 1:
Krogan Vanguard - Unlike the Human Vanguard that has alternate powers, Kroguard would have to sacrifice his health to detonate his own explosions.  You can't charge headfirst into Platinum enemies like you can do on Gold... he just doesn't survive
Asari Duelist - Backlash is worthless, charge is a death sentence.... so you can throw Lance all game long.  Not effective at all
Human Kinetcist - With few red bar enemies to Pull & Throw, this character just doesn't work.  The amount of damage you take, pretty much strips her barrier all the time... which is the whole point of her unique power set
Asari Adept - You can't run around like Gold.  You have to wait for enemies to come to you to explode them, and usually it's a giant boss getting close.  She is entirely reliant on proximity, and Platinum is not the mode to be getting up close & personal with enemies.  Most low level enemies will be killed before they get close, so all you're detonating are the bigger enemies.
Krogan Gladiator - Probably the most useless class for platinum.  You can't pull most enemies, don't want bullet sponges right on top of you for Annihilation Field to work, Nova doesn't do much, you can't explode combos on your own and the hammer is so slow, that other enemies will tear you up while you melee 1 enemy (who probably will need 2-3 melees to kill).  It's sad how useless this character really is.


Can you get a good score with lower tier characters?  Absolutely.  Chances are the others players are not using top tier characters with top tier weapons.  If you outscored 3 Avengers (who were all using Zalkins, Widows, Phalanxs etc), while you had a hurricane, that's because your gun did the work.

All things equal, same gun loadouts as teammates, this is a fairly accurate pecking order of how the classes stack up to one another.