So scrolling through the forums and noticing a serious lack of respect for best girl Giant Naga, so time to put on my professor hat, step up on my soap box, and start pontificating with a tier list of my own. For my tier list predators will be ranked mostly based on how generally useful they are, their opportunity cost, and if they fulfill a niche then how important is that niche and easy is it to get them doing their job. As such, a pred that can be reliably used in every situation without much investment will rank highly, where as a pred that might be extremely useful in specific scenarios but requires careful positioning/timing and a higher investment will likely be mid to lower rank. This way a player going in blind, or one without indepth knowledge of each map, could just stick to high tiers and still reliably 3 star it. It won't be a tierlist for getting the highest possible wave count in the endless maps, because frankly by the time I'm 40 waves in to those I usually get bored and start spamming out the random summon spell from the economancy spell book instead of actually trying.
Before getting into it though, an explanation, and a bit of math, about the 2 best units in the game, Nagas Vs Fairies:
Fairies I doubt anyone would contest as being at least very near the top of the tier list. With the -2 mana cost especially, they are cheap, spammable, quick eaters, and are often necessary in the early waves to quickly fill rings when in a low mana economy. I am going to contest one thing though: the chance to eat without tease perk is really good, but it's also really unreliable. My rough estimate of the trigger chance is probably around 20%, so to begin with it will only activate on every 1 in 5 tinies. On top of that, since tinies almost never come in a steady, single-file, line, even if it activates there's no guarantee it'll do anything. If the tinies are in a group then, outside of spaces with multiple contact points with sufficient spacing, then you'll still only end up eating 1 whether it procs or not, and for a spot to have sufficient spacing it needs a contact point at a front and back (not just a corner) which will likely be only about half the spots. As a result, on the fairies at least, its a perk that at best is going to come in handy about 10% of the time, but to compound matters even if you get an extra tiny out of it, in the early waves when fairies are at their most effective, outside of rare exceptions, you just need to have enough rings filled to grab every tiny anyways so whether you get use out of it doesn't matter anyways. As such while this is a perk that can come in extremely clutch its too unreliable for general use to give fairies a leg up by itself. Frankly it'd be a lot better for the unique units, which have much longer teases, the two default sylvan class uniques don't make great use of it. Melany is better used as a backliner for catching stragglers and playing around her traps, and tinatalan is just not very good in general.
Nagas, meanwhile, are super good for one thing: efficiency. By default, a fairy and a naga both have a net mana cost of 5 (inital cost - rebate) but a naga can consume 12 tinies before leaving as opposed to a fairies 8, making the naga 50% more mana efficient. With the -2 mana cost perk fairies become slightly more efficient than a default naga (a net 2.66 tinies per mana as opposed to the net 2.4 on nagas), however both the increased hunger AND the chance to gain mana on digestion (which by my estimate has around 10% chance of activating) tip the scales back in the favor of nagas, and on top of that they stack, putting the naga up to a net 3.88 tinies per mana, still a nearly 50% efficiency increase (albeit for an investment of 5 more stars). The mystic line also has the -1s spell swap cd reduction perk, which I found to be fairly strong, though I lacked the APM to actually make proper use of it in high volume waves.
For a more direct comparison: fairies are great for the first few waves, when all thats need is to fill rings as quickly and as cheaply as possible, and their lower capacity also makes them better for getting popularity up. However nagas become better in all subsequent waves, once you have the mana to fill out the map with them, as they leave you with much more mana for spell casting or bringing it unique units and don't require as frequent card usage to maintain giving more freedom to shuffle your hand. The advantage fairies have past the early waves is the possibility for faster dining with the tease skipping perk, though without that the two have the exact same consumption speed (2 seconds per tiny).
With that long ass ramble out of the way, onto the tier list:
S Tier (Reserved for preds that are simply a cut above the rest, combining high reliability and impact while also providing something exceptional):
Naga: I think choosing between naga and fairy for the best unit in the game is a little silly. They are both S tier for their mana efficiency and reliability in every situation, and are the baseline which all other units must be compared to. However if I had to choose a number 1 it'd be naga, for their higher efficiency and more enduring use cases.
Fairy: That being said, if I had to choose only a single unit and had to 3 star every map with only that unit, then I'd choose fairy, so maybe it deserves the top spot. Honestly the two are a great compliment to each other and, since mana is such a universally necessary resource, act as the foundational pieces of basically every playstyle.
Vivian: Who takes the top spot among unique units, albeit barely, for her combination of incredible mana efficiency and relative positional independence. While you want her towards the back (or at least somewhere with low traffic) to keep her around longer, her main function is equally served no matter where you place her. While her long ass tease (about 6 seconds by my count, which I believe ties it for the slowest eating speed in the game) means she kinda sucks for actually thinning the waves, even in the worst of cases her half priced spells more than makes up for that, since mana efficient units backed up by spells is the simplest and easiest way to 3 star every map. To top it off, her placement mana cost is on the lower end for unique units, and she even comes with mana battery (which is admittedly largely irrelevant). Her Feasting popularity requirement is a downside, but on the bigger maps even that won't matter much as you'll likely have reached it, or at least be close, by the time you've comfortably filled in enough of the placement slots.
Anna: Who much like with fairies vs nagas could very easily be argued to beat out vivian as the best unique unit. I placed her lower due to her MUCH stricter placement requirements. A frontline vivian is suboptimal while a frontline anna is a huge waste outside of late waves in endless maps (and even then her enrage timing can be unreliable if she's feeling particularly oblivious, assuming she doesn't just bug out and freeze when entering it). Also in a spell centric playstyle vivian's mana efficiency probably beats out Anna's. However, Anna's ability to outright generate mana, rather than just make existing mana more efficient for one usage, as well as her lower popularity cost could very easily get her the top spot depending on your preferences and playstyle.
A Tier (For preds that are strong and reliable but don't provide an x factor to make them truly exceptional):
Crisis: With 0 star investment required, available right from the beginning, a bite of two, and sporting a low popularity requirement on top of multiple good abilities, crisis easily takes the top of A tier. Her infinite range grab means you can put her anywhere and she'll still be effective, and ambidextrous means her bite of 2 won't be turned into a bite of 1 just because a single tiny happened to be walking a little bit ahead of the pack. As an added bonus if you are super lucky she might grab a tiny that slipped past all your other defenses in the early levels. Only major gripe I have against her is that way too often she just uses her grab to steal a single tiny out from some other pred's nose. Oh, and though rarely important her attack range including corners can sometimes come in handy.
Devilin: Only thing holding her back from being the top dog of A tier is how late she arrives, both in game and (of lesser importance) in maps. However massive hunger, great coverage, and what i think might be the highest eating speed of any unique already make her an excellent unit. Combine that with the fact she can ignore armor and you have the only remaining unit I considered for S tier. However, while she is a very strong unit, she doesn't really go beyond just being strong (where as the uniques of s tier are playstyle defining) and she comes in after you've basically beaten the game and isn't needed, or even THAT helpful, for 3 starring any of the levels that come before her. Really just there for endless levels, where in my limited experience I found her super good but not to the point of carrying the level.
Melany: A great backline defender who is first available in the early game, where she's a great help for 3 starring levels. That being said the only thing you need to 3 star the first few chapters is fairies, snakes, and luban's door (which I put my money where my mouth is and tested myself) and she's honestly less useful than the s tier uniques which come at effectively the same point in the game, so she's definitely not s tier. Also struggles with positional dependency, since she's pretty bad vs the consistent streams of tinies encountered at the front lines.
Anko: The best midgame power unit, IMO. A tad expensive, but her range, both on her melee and tongue attacks, bite of two, and mid to low (mid on the grab low on the bite) tease lengths make her just all around effective. Certainly improved with precise positioning, but at least doesn't require it to be useful.
Subeta: Belly warp is probably the best direct combat ability a unique (outside of devilin) has. Her high hunger, mystic class, and mana battery also make her pretty mana efficient. Unfortunately she's very position dependent, since if she's put into too high traffic an area she'll just start meleeing instead, making her a more mana efficient naga with half the eating speed (and that ain't worth). Fortunately belly warp's massive range makes positioning her in most maps pretty easy
B tier (preds that are good but not great, with equally high upsides and downsides):
Zycra: Agile tongue is super good. An effective bite of 3 with slightly increased range and a fast consumption animation will never not be good. The problem is its on a 7 star cost, 30 mana dark class (which frankly have a pretty bad star investment to payout ratio on their upgrade line as a whole), with a bite of 1 who (outside of spots where her tongue can reach long a part of the path her melee straight up can't, which isn't even in every map) will probably spend too much time just using her melee. Positionally dependent to the point where if you can get her in a spot where she basically only uses her tongue then she's high A. If she gets stuck in a spot where she ends up just non-stop meleeing then a naga (which has twice the eating speed and im willing to be greater mana efficiency even without upgrades) would just do her job better in every way and I'd have to make an F tier for her (which spoiler, I don't have). However, since with only a bit of positioning you can be confident in nearly every situation that she'll get at least pretty good use of her tongue ability she goes in B tier.
Deertaur: I don't like deeraturs. If how often it showed up in your hand when you really didn't need it and prevented you from getting the units you did need was part of the grading scale for this, then d-taurs would go down to d-tier. However its not, and I will acknowledge that they have a use in every map, and their usefulness only goes up the more intimately knowledgeable you are about each map and the wave compositions. The problem with deertaurs is that, outside of slapping armor, they fucking suck, to the point where if deertaurs didn't eat tinies and only slapped them they'd be s tier. A deertaur's mana efficiency is abysmal for a default unit (a net 1 tiny per mana by default, compared with the default fairies net 1.6 and default lamia's net 2.4) and is not even particularly worth the stars to improve as it only increases it by .2. On top of that the deertaur has half the consumption speed of the other 2 default units taking 4 seconds per tiny instead of 2. And outside of sped up tinies (or a playstyle based on clumping tinies up and hitting them with aoes, which I've theorized about but only given a couple tests) the stun on its slap is pretty meh, only in rare cases making enough time for any units behind it to finish in time to grab a tiny they otherwise wouldn't have (and if you are running the "eat without tease" sylvan perk, which despite me ragging on it is still pretty good, then clumping tinies up with deertaur slaps makes it even less likely to be useful). Now, granted, being able to 1 shot armor while also stunning the armored targets long enough for the deertaur to then be able to grab one is super good. The problem is that the deertaur doesn't actually prioritize armor, so if there is even a single tiny ahead of the armored ones (which will happen often because unarmored tinies run faster) the deertaur will just grab it instead and its half-speed eating animation means the armor will pass unmolested. As such, outside of waves you already know contain large amounts of armored units, or waves that have a caster sitting there applying a spell to every tiny that comes through (which is the scenario where deertaur shine the most), deertaur are extremely unreliable, ranging from often at best pretty good to utter trash (literally less than half the value of the naga in every respect) depending on how many times their placement allows them to smack an armored or spelled target. Still, there isn't a single map I've found that can't be reliably (and often easily) 3 starred without using a single deertaur, so unless you are going hard into trying to optimize an endless map they are a trap best avoided.
C tier (for preds who are still decent but outside of maybe a super specific niche are just totally outclassed by others):
Iridan: Who would be A tier if the range on her ability was increased by 2-3 times. In the hands of someone who is extremely familiar with the wave compositions, or on any map where she can be placed towards the back yet have her ability still hit the front (which I think I've only found one of) then she's probably a, maaaaaybe s tier. In every other situation she's a 7 star dark class unique who will spend far too much time just grabbing a single unarmored tiny that speeds ahead of the armored ones and then playing with it for far too long while all the armored ones move out of her reach. Only reason she stays out of d tier is because the main competition she has for armor breakers is deertaur.
Driders: I wish driders were better. Their function is pretty unique and I have a thing for spider girls. And theoretically they have a nice niche, its just in practice its pretty hard to make them work. They get completely outclassed by melany (who has an equal star cost) as a last line of defense and they are probably the most volatile unit in terms of impact. If you can get them in a spot where groups of 3 tinies consistently run into their webs, but infrequently enough that they can actually maintain a good number of webs up then they are amazing. Problem is if you put them in the back then they usually just catch single stragglers, and if you put them nearly anywhere else they get overwhelmed by the high volume of tiny traffic. In theory they could be put towards the front as an armor breaker, but unless you know a huge wave of nothing but armor is coming then they'll probably just have all their webs ruined by unarmored tinies, and probably at best only 1-2 at a time. What they need is a sweetspot in the middle that a lot of maps can't provide and even then without a lot of investment into the dark class (which isn't very efficient) then they themselves aren't likely to be particularly efficient even then. Only kept out of d tier because I'm pretty sure (or at least want to be) there are maps where enough of a sweetspot exists to give them that niche.
D tier (for all the remaining preds, who aren't total deadweight, but are just overall outclassed):
Linda: A theme of a lot of d-tier is that I like the design, and really wanted to like the unit, but couldn't justify putting it in a higher tier, and while this is true for linda she at least got the closest to making C. Her lower star cost, relatively low mana cost to hunger ratio, and high range with a bite of 2 make her seem good. The 1 less hit to take out armor would be a nice little cherry on top too. The problem is that her eating speed completely lets her down. If memory serves she has the average eating speed of 4 seconds, but unfortunately, unlike anko who is her most direct comparison, she ONLY EATS 1 TINY AT A TIME. This is capitalized because it is that ruinous, essentially turning her bite of 2 into a bite of 1, at which point she becomes an effectively classless (and therefore unbuffable) unique with a bite of 1, half eating speed, and only slightly better range and probably worse mana efficiency than nagas. The armor damage is also seriously undermined because if there is an unarmored tiny on top of the armored ones she'll just grab it instead, and her extra slow eating speed means she's even easier to distract with a couple unarmored tinies running ahead. However, she still does have her range going for her, and there are actually a decent few maps where there is a ring she can be placed in to take advantage of it. That keeps her out of F tier, while her low investment moves her to the top of d tier.
Tinatalan: Her animation when selecting her is hot. That's about the best I can say for her. If she danced more often there might be a niche for her on some maps to increase the mana efficiency of default units and/or keep high value unique units around longer. Unfortunately her dances are too infrequent for their actual effect to warrant the investment into her. Those stars could be better spent elsewhere. At best she's kinda alright if you get lucky and get her in a good spot with the economancy tome's random summon, but that's something best done for fun, not when you are actually trying. Really let down by just being a chunky fairy with half the eating speed when she's not dancing.
Pipril: Has my favorite eating animation in the game. Shame its also tied for the longest one in the game. A 6 star investment for a unique with 1/3 the eating speed of a naga and probably comparable mana efficiency (*edit: did the math and she has a net mana cost of 5 and can eat 14 tinies, so exactly equal efficiency to a naga with the +2 hunger and less than one with the +1 mana (and of course less than one with both)*), had better have a pretty damn good ability to compensate. She doesn't though. The slime is too easily removed and doesn't slow by enough to make up for her atrocious consumption speed in the vast majority of cases. Basically to make her worthwhile she needs to consistently slow tinies by enough that in the 6 seconds of her eating time 3+ tinies get consumed that otherwise wouldn't, and that just doesn't happen without super specific placement and wave composition. Even if she did manage to get 3 extra tinies eaten, at that point you are spending 6 stars to get 1 more tiny every 6 seconds around her, and its questionable if that's even worth. There is probably a wild class based strat focused around grouping tinies that could make her decent, but i have yet to find it.
Ivery: Only stays out of F tier because she's super low investment and could be used in an Anna rushing strat. Also she's cute. Problem is, rushing Anna like that is super unreliable and investing in it is in no way an optimal strat. Thus absolute bottom of D tier.