Sea of Conquest Tier List: The Best Heroes to Invest in for Every Ship

For Sea of Conquest Gang leaders and big accounts who want to know which heroes deserve Conches for the long run, which older heroes are fading as seasons roll over, and which SP and collab heroes are worth the premium.

Echo Conches and Hymn Conches are the backbone of hero progress in Sea of Conquest. Every summon either builds a formation that still wins two seasons from now, or goes into a hero who sits on the bench after the next big update. That is not luck. It is whether you follow a plan or pull on whatever banner is live.

Most tier lists rank heroes by raw kit strength. That says very little once your account is past the first month. What matters is return over time: how long a hero stays relevant as new seasons arrive, which ship they anchor, and whether you can still get the duplicates you need for competitive star ranks.

That is what this Sea of Conquest hero tier list ranks, with the current season meta, the best heroes for each ship, and an honest take on SP and limited collab heroes.

Why hero investment order matters

Two reasons. First, hero investment is deep and it stacks. Reaching competitive star ranks on a Legendary takes steady duplicate pulls, and every Conch spent on a hero you later retire is a Conch that did not go into your core. Nothing gives that back.

Second, seasons. Sea of Conquest releases new heroes on a steady schedule, and the newer the hero, the longer they stay competitive. A hero who ruled Season 1 and 2 can be mid-tier by Season 5. Their kit did not change. Everything after them was simply tuned higher.

The most common expensive mistake is building deep into a hero who was S-tier when the account started, and still feeding them duplicates two seasons after the meta moved on. A tier list that ignores this will cost you.

So the rules here are simple:

• Rate every hero by how long they stay relevant, not how strong they look today.
• Fund your Flagship core and your main damage type first.
• Treat SP and limited collab heroes as an upgrade for a finished core, not a starting point.
• When a hero falls out of the meta, stop feeding them, even if it stings.

Sea of Conquest hero tier list

Build your Flagship core first

A Flagship that does not sink lets every damage ship in your formation work freely, and the current defensive core is the strongest it has been. Chien is still the pillar. His damage mitigation is so strong that there is no realistic formation where he does not help a lot. Callahan Durrach adds shields on top of that and pushes Flagship durability even further. Together they force opponents to pour volley after volley into a ship that will not go down while your side ships do the work.

The Captain slot has options at different price points. Kenshiro, the limited collab release, is the newest aggro-pulling defensive Captain and the top pick for the role while his window runs. Toothsome Tom is still the strongest standard-pool aggro Captain, and the right call if you missed the collab window or want to stay in the permanent pool. Elizabeth Sheen and Rikiishi Yuji both hold top late-season ratings in Flagship roles and give you options as the extra Flagship slots open up.

Then your support layer

Cecilia Schafer is, by community agreement, the strongest support kit in the game right now. She heals the fleet, buffs it and drains enemy rage at the same time. Her value grows with investment, so she widens the gap most for accounts that can build her properly.

Cordelia is the rare launch hero who keeps a strong rating in every season bracket, which makes her one of the safest long-term picks in the game. Mind her placement: she heals more when her ship takes more damage, so she does better on a side ship under pressure than on a Flagship built to take nothing. Laila and Linea round out the top supports for dedicated support ships.

The anchors for each damage type

Once the Flagship core and supports are funded, build one main damage type deep. The current top picks are consistent across the competitive community:

• Artillery: Long John Silver, with Fortuna right behind him.
• Cutthroat: Fifi and Euryale carry the standard pool. The collab release Mamiya sits at the very top while her event runs.
• Blaze: Demona Rood is the standard-pool anchor. Mai Shiranui is a top limited pick for accounts that built her.
• Drowning: Mari Itxaso is the new season enabler, with B Jenet and Verdania also rated at the top. Drowning has leaned on limited releases, so it is harder to finish if you skipped those windows.
• Strategic: Kalomira and Vantanos are the pair to build around.

Notice that the anchors are almost all recent releases. That is the season rule at work, and it is why chasing all five damage types at once is spending out of order. One type built deep with current heroes beats three built shallow with older ones in every mode, from Showdown o' Gangs brackets to open-sea PvP.

Heroes to stop investing in

Most tier lists skip this part, so here it is plainly. Several heroes rightly rated S-tier in the early seasons have dropped hard in the late-season meta, and more duplicates for them are wasted.

Cursed Ed is the clearest case. His Cursed debuff makes him arguably the best Epic at server start and through the early seasons, but his late-season rating has fallen to mid-tier as newer damage boosters outscaled him. Build him early, enjoy the value, and plan his retirement. An earlier version of this guide called him a permanent keeper. The meta has moved, and this is the update.

The same applies to Old Ahab, whose fleet-wide shields made him the early Flagship king before Chien and Callahan took over the role, and to the early damage carries Griffin, Sharky and Bones, who now sit well below the current anchors in late-season play. None of them are bad heroes on a young server. All of them are bad places for your Conches once your account is past the early brackets. Launch-roster filler like Henry Hell, Betty, Jango and Armstrong should not get real resources at any stage after the first weeks.

The best heroes for each ship

A hero only turns into power on the right ship, so here is the mapping in one place.

Your Flagship runs the defensive core: an aggro Captain (Kenshiro or Toothsome Tom), Chien for mitigation and Callahan Durrach for shields. The Flagship now takes up to five heroes, and the two newest slots are role-locked. The Master-at-Arms slot only takes defense heroes and the Surgeon slot only takes supports, so put your strongest spare defense hero and a healing or mitigation support there. These extra slots reward exactly the deep defensive rosters that big accounts already own.

Your damage ships follow the anchors above:

• Artillery ship: Long John Silver or Fortuna.
• Cutthroat ship: Mamiya, Fifi or Euryale.
• Blaze ship: Demona Rood or Mai Shiranui.
• Drowning ship: Mari Itxaso, B Jenet or Verdania.
• Strategic ship: Kalomira with Vantanos.
• Support ship: Cecilia Schafer, Cordelia, Laila or Linea, depending on what your Flagship's Surgeon slot already took.

Ship items, stats and full lineups per ship are in the flagship formation guide, the companion piece to this tier list.

Are SP and collab heroes worth it?

SP heroes and limited collab releases are the strongest units in Sea of Conquest by kit, and the hardest call in the game, because everything about how you get them pushes your decision into a countdown. They are not in the standard Conch summon pool. You build them through dedicated event spending with their own currency and milestone tracks, and when the window closes, so does your chance to build that hero until a rerun that may or may not come.

The deciding point: at low star ranks, an SP or collab hero often does not beat a fully built current Legendary. The premium only pays off if you can build the hero to the rank where the kit scales, inside the window, without starving your core.

If your Flagship core and main damage type are complete, the current collab releases like Kenshiro and Mamiya are real upgrades at the very top of their roles. If you are still building the core, the timer is there to push spending, and the right move is to let it run out. The meta favors patience too: collab windows keep coming, and the newest releases keep landing at the top, so missing one window never ends an account.

How Gang leaders should coordinate hero investment

The most expensive roster mistake is every big account in the Gang building the same three heroes. A Gang where five top accounts run the same Flagship core and the same Cutthroat carries looks strong on paper and plays predictably, because one counter formation answers the whole top of the roster. The fix is free: map who builds what, and assign damage types so the Gang goes into Showdown brackets and server wars with Artillery, Cutthroat, Blaze, Drowning and Strategic all covered at depth.

Limited windows are a Gang problem too. When a collab track opens, the leaders who get the most from it already know which members have complete cores and can afford the milestone spend, and which should skip the window and keep funding foundations. One message in leadership chat before the event, sorting the roster into build-it and skip-it, stops most of the reactive spending these timers are built to trigger. Share the list of fading heroes from this guide too. A member still feeding Conches into Griffin late in the seasons is a member whose part in your rallies shrinks every week.

Where Packsify fits

Packsify buys Sea of Conquest Gleamstones and the hero and Conch packs you pick through the official Apple App Store or Google Play, usually with 10 to 30% more pack value for the same budget. If you have not used it before, start with the Sea of Conquest top up guide and how we keep accounts safe.