Mortal Kombat 1 Character Tier List – Best Characters

Mortal Kombat 1 has 29 playable characters in total, not including Kameo characters. It’s important to note that of these characters—Shang Tsung—is a pre-order exclusive. Furthermore, six characters are only obtainable via the Kombat Pack 1 DLC. These six characters are Ermac, Homelander, Omni-Man, Peacemaker, Quan Chi, and Takeda. We’ve put together a Mortal Kombat 1 character tier list to highlight the best current characters in Mortal Kombat 1. The Kombat Pack 1 DLC has not yet released, so this will include the base 22 characters as well as the pre-order exclusive, Shang Tsung. Here is our Mortal Kombat 1 character tier list:

S Tier

The S Tier of our character tier list for Mortal Kombat 1 is essentially the best of the best. These characters can excel in most match ups, and you should consider learning them.

• Ashrah
• Baraka
• Geras
• Johnny Cage
• Kenshi
• Mileena
• Raiden

A Tier

Our A Tier characters are still strong and forces to be reckoned with when played right. If you like any of these characters and get good at them, you can compete with most S Tier characters in Mortal Kombat 1.

• Havik
• Kung Lao
• Liu Kang
• Rain
• Reiko
• Scorpion
• Sindel

B Tier

In the B Tier, these Mortal Kombat 1 characters are still perfect fine, just not as good as the others on this tier list. At this point you can still probably master these characters and be competitive in most matchups. Of course, someone who has mastered a B Tier character will still be better than someone that’s just good at an S Tier character.

• Li Mei
• Kitana
• Reptile
• Shang Tsung (Pre-order exclusive)
• Smoke

C Tier

Characters in the C Tier probably need some work before we’d really consider them too viable. Of course you can learn the right Kombos and mix with proper Kameos to make use of certain situations with these characters. But, overall, you’re probably better off learning one of the many above characters.

• General Shao
• Nitara
• Sub-Zero
• Tanya

This is our current Mortal Kombat 1 character tier list that highlights who we feel are the best characters at the moment. Of course as balance changes and updates are released, we may change this tier list accordingly.