Tekken 8 Tier List: All Characters Ranked

It’s still too early to talk about a Tekken 8, as the game is still far from a confirmed release date. But with the confirmation of new characters by Bandai Namco Entertainment and the recent news, we felt like creating our Tekken 8 Tier List to give our impatient readers a glimpse of what the new roster will be like.

Sony’s September 15th State of Play revealed a trailer for the game, in which we were able to identify both returning and new characters in the game. The number of characters who will return and how many will be new is unknown, but we’ll keep our readers informed as more information becomes available.

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Key Points

• There are a total of 10 confirmed characters in Tekken 8 so far.
• We will be ranking each of them based on their previously used stats.
• In the higher tiers, you can find Devil Jin, Jin Kazama, and Paul Phoenix.
• Among the lower ranks, you will see Nina Williams, Lars Alexandersson, and Jun Kazama,

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Summary

We have created the table below to provide a summary of each entry.

S Rank	A Rank	B Rank	C Rank	D Rank
Devil Jin	Marshall Law	Kazuya Mishima	Jack-8	Lars Alexandersson
Jin Kazama	King		Nina Williams	Jaun Kazama
Paul Phoenix

S Tier

As anticipated, the strongest characters on the list will be placed in the S Tier. Due to their impressive stats, abilities, and combos, the following confirmed characters find the top spot in our Tekken 8 Character Tier List.

Devil Jin

Devil Jin was among the strongest fighters in the previous game, and keeping into account that performance, we predict in the upcoming game, he will be placed among the strongest characters. We may see him in even better shape, but that remains to be seen.

Devil Jin is one of the standout fighters because of his easy and quick movements, which many Tekken players find very comfortable. In addition, Jin has a variety of strong moves with those; he can take down many challengers without breaking a sweat. Of course, all of these depend on the player’s experience, too, but a highly skilled Tekken player will breeze past anything while using Devil Jin. It’s not easy mastering his combat style and combos, so the players must be highly patient with him.

Evasiveness	7/10
Combo Damage	8/10
Mobility	7/10

Jin Kazama

Jin Kazama first appeared in Tekken 3 and is up there with the best characters in the Tekken universe. With every new release in the series, we have seen a massive improvement in his game, and we anticipate Tekken 8 to follow suit.

Jin’s strengths include a variety of moves, like excellent poking, evasive movements, subtle stance changes, and exceptional countering. His poking techniques are the most difficult to read, and if they are used effectively, they can place the opposition in a very difficult position.

Another of Jin’s unique abilities is “circumnavigating,” which can be very challenging to implement. It will require a lot of patience and experience to grasp, but once you’ve achieved that, it will feel like a cheat code. For this to be performed, the opponents must be physically moved away from the strike for Jin to counterattack them while they are still recovering from the move.

Evasiveness	6/10
Combo Damage	7/10
Mobility	7/10

Consider Reading: Tekken 7 Tier List: Ranking All Characters

Paul Phoenix

Paul Phoenix barely needs any introduction as he has been one of the most known Tekken characters. He is one of the 2 characters that has appeared in every Tekken game. Given how long Paul has been a part of the game and how many new characters have been added, it is impressive that he has managed to maintain his position as one of its best fighters.

If we talk about Paul’s abilities, he is an extremely adaptable character with only a few minor weaknesses, making him a popular choice for many players. It’s incredibly dangerous to approach Paul because of some of his horrifying keep-out techniques, which may produce a devastating combo with only one missed blow. This, coupled with his strong defensive skills and an array of blocks, will make it incredibly difficult for opponents to get through his defenses.

Evasiveness	6/10
Combo Damage	10/10
Mobility	6/10

A Tier

While the characters in A rank of our Tekken 8 Tier List 2023 are among the best fighters in Tekken, they fall short of those in S Tier in terms of strength and a few minor defects, due to which we placed them in a lower rank.

Marshall Law

Marshall Law is one of the returning characters who was seen in the trailer for Tekken 8. We placed him in the A Tier because we think he will be one of the game’s strongest characters based on his stellar performance in the previous game.

As his name hints, he specializes in Martial Arts and is a very strong fighter in the game. His game style and combos are fairly easy to hang, but players still need more time to master them. He is an excellent fighter all around, and we anticipate him to deliver the same level of performance in the upcoming game.

Evasiveness	5/10
Combo Damage	5/10
Mobility	5/10

King

What will be a Tekken game without the famous Jaguar Mask character, King? He’s among the returning characters, and it will be his 5th appearance in the series. At first, King might appear to be the most robust character in the game, but that’s mainly due to his appearance. He has a few shares weaknesses in his game, which prevented him from getting a place in the S Tier. One of them is his slow movement, which can put him in challenging positions in many scenarios, and escaping can prove very tricky.

If we look at his strengths, his grappling ability is his strongest; once it’s timed well, you are guaranteed to cause heavy damage to the opponents. Our verdict on him is that he is a top fighter in the game, but he isn’t quite on par with others covered in the S Tier.

Evasiveness	6/10
Combo Damage	6/10
Mobility	6/10

B Tier

As we go down the ranks, the characters will get slightly weak. As for the B Tier, we only have one entry, occupied by Kazuya Mishima.

Kazuya Mishima

Another character that has returned is Kazuya Mishima, who gave an average performance in Tekken 7 and games before that. Our best prediction is that he might be at the same level if there isn’t a substantial change in the coming game.

Similar Article: Street Fighter 4 Tier List

Despite having a move set that emphasizes strong single attacks, he can do much raw damage with them. Kazuya mainly relies on punishing opponents with blocks rather than surprises to get the most out of his attacks. He has one of, if not the strongest, punishers in every game he plays is his greatest strength. Overall, he works best as a defensive fighter too, so if you want to play him for a while, you will need to master your timing.

Evasiveness	5/10
Combo Damage	6/10
Mobility	7/10

C Tier

The C Tier will be our second last tier in the Tekken 8 Tier List. We will place some of the underperforming characters from our list in it. They are among the weakest fighters but aren’t the weakest, so we placed them one rank above the D Tier.

Jack-8

One of the new characters spotted in the trailer is Jack-8, a new robot in the Jack project. Although we don’t yet know how he will function, we can forecast how he will do so by comparing him to Jack-7, a previous Jack robot; we anticipate that he will function largely in the same way.

Evasiveness	3/10
Combo Damage	6/10
Mobility	4/10

Nina Williams

Nina is very aggressive with a move-set that leans strongly upon offense. She excels at rushing down opponents and applying constant pressure by canceling her pokes into other moves, which generates a barrage of assaults. Experienced Nina players will stick with their opponent and slowly drain their health while waiting for a chance to unleash a counter-hit launcher, even though it can be quite risky. Nina mostly plays it safe and sensible when defending, waiting for an opportunity to punish her opponent or move into her best range.

Evasiveness	5/10
Combo Damage	6/10
Mobility	5/10

D Tier

We finally reached the D rank of our Tekken 8 Character Tier List, which will be home to the last 2 remaining characters. These fighters are the weakest in the game and based on how poorly they performed in the previous games, we assume this will also be the case this time.

Lars Alexandersson

Lars has a very basic combat style with weak movesets, which are pretty easy to learn but have little impact in the fighting arena. As of the confirmed characters, Lars belongs to the list of weakest fighters.

Evasiveness	6/10
Combo Damage	6/10
Mobility	7/10

Jun Kazama

As one of the confirmed characters in Tekken 8, Jun Kazama returns to the game after a 27-year absence following her only appearance back in Tekken 2. Although we have seen many references to her in the main story of later games, she was not available as a playable character in them.

Keeping in mind her long absence from the series and considering how much the Tekken series has changed over the years, we think she’ll have a tough time competing with the present characters and have given her the lowest rank. Yes, we might be proven wrong if Bandai Namco Entertainment significantly upgrades her game, but that remains to be seen. Thus, she is given a spot in the D Tier for the time being.

Evasiveness	TBA
Combo Damage	TBA
Mobility	TBA

Comparison Table

Character	Rank	Evasiveness	Combo Damage	Mobility
Devil Jin	S	7/10	8/10	7/10
Jin Kazama	S	6/10	7/10	7/10
Paul Phoenix	S	6/10	10/10	6/10
Marshall Law	A	5/10	5/10	5/10
King	A	6/10	6/10	6/10
Kazuya Mishima	B	5/10	6/10	7/10
Jack-8	C	3/10	6/10	4/10
Nina Williams	C	5/10	6/10	5/10
Lars Alexandersson	D	6/10	6/10	7/10
Jun Kazama	D	TBA	TBA	TBA

Verdict

With that, we have concluded our Tekken 8 Tier List. With very little information on the confirmed characters, it wasn’t easy to combine and present a definitive ranking. The previous games highly inspired this article, and with each character’s performance taken from those games, we have ranked them in different tiers, which, of course, will give rise to a clash of opinions.

Many of our readers would have had a different experience with them, but as far as the particular subject of ranking lists goes, it’s always bound to result in a conflict of views. As further news breakdowns about Tekken 8, we will quickly deliver it to you, so till then, happy gaming!