Arknights: Endfield Class Guide: Every Role Explained

Every operator in Endfield belongs to exactly one class, and the class tells you three things at a glance: what weapon family the operator swings, what type of damage they deal, and what job they do in a fight. Use this table as your quick reference before diving into each class below.

Two pairs are easy to mix up at a glance: Guards and Strikers both look like melee attackers, and Vanguards and Supporters both look like backline utility. The difference is timing — Guards and Casters build up conditions on the enemy, Strikers cash them in, Vanguards feed the squad's Skill Point economy so those setup skills can fire in the first place, and Supporters lean into locking enemies down rather than paying for skills.

Guards are the class you build around when you want a reliable, self-sufficient physical damage dealer. Their kits are built to make enemies Vulnerable and to layer on Physical Statuses, then punish those conditions directly rather than waiting for a teammate to do it. Most Guards fight with a Sword or a Polearm, though heavier Guards can carry a Greatsword for more Stagger at the cost of attack speed. Because they generate and consume their own setup, Guards are the easiest class to run as a standalone main damage dealer without needing a full team built around them.

Representative Guards include Mi Fu, who combines Vulnerable consumption, Crush payoff, and Physical Susceptibility application in a single kit and is regarded as one of the most complete physical units in the game, and Rossi, a top-rated recent addition. The player-controlled protagonist, the Endministrator, is also a Physical Guard who wields a sword — free, always available, and strong enough to remain a viable main damage dealer well past the early game.

• Other known Guards: Chen Qianyu, Estella, Lifeng

Casters are the Arts equivalent of a Guard — they can shred enemies with high Defense but low Resistance, and they specialize in applying multiple Arts Inflictions and triggering Arts Reactions rather than relying on raw hits. Intellect is their defining attribute, and they typically fight at range using Arts Units or Handcannons rather than melee weapons. A well-built Caster is often the engine of an elemental team, since Arts Reactions (Combustion, Electrification, and similar combo triggers) are what let Strikers and other teammates deal their biggest numbers.

Perlica is a core piece of Electric-focused teams, applying Electric Infliction and triggering Electrification to set up teammates' Combo Skills. Tangtang ranks among the strongest operators in the game overall. Fluorite and Wulfgard round out the current Caster roster, with Wulfgard commonly run as an enabler in Heat-element compositions.

Strikers do not build their own damage conditions — they exploit ones your Guards and Casters already applied. A Striker's kit is designed to detonate Physical or Arts effects sitting on an enemy for a decisive burst of damage, which means a Striker's real output depends heavily on who else is in the squad. Run a Striker alone and their numbers look mediocre; run one behind a Guard or Caster that keeps enemies Vulnerable or Arts-Inflicted and the same Striker becomes the highest damage slot in the team.

Laevatain is currently regarded as having no close competitor for damage ceiling, built around Combustion and Corrosion reactions when paired with the right teammates. Last Rite and Avywenna sit just below her, with Last Rite excelling specifically in Cryo-focused teams thanks to strong burst damage and Cryo Susceptibility application. Zhuang Fangyi is another top-rated Striker.

• Other known Strikers: Da Pan, Yvonne

Because Strikers are payoff units rather than self-sufficient ones, they are not the best first investment for a brand-new roster — build the setup pieces first.

Skills in Endfield cost Skill Points, and nothing in the game generates a bigger burst of damage than a squad that can actually afford to cast its skills back to back. That is the entire reason Vanguards exist: their kits are built around recovering SP for the whole team, not for dealing damage themselves. A team without a Vanguard (or an equivalent SP source) will feel slow — big skills sit on cooldown while basic attacks do the heavy lifting.

Akekuri is the standout example: a fast-cycling Heat-element support whose SP recovery is described as one of the best in the game, and she is treated as close to mandatory for any Heat team built around Laevatain or similar Heat Strikers. Other Vanguards on the current roster include Alesh, Arclight, Camille, and Pogranichnik.

Vanguards are cheap to justify running even on a budget roster: their value scales with how skill-hungry the rest of your team is, so the more Casters and Strikers you add, the more a Vanguard slot pays for itself.

Defenders exist to make sure the rest of the squad survives long enough to do their job. They are described in-game as extremely tough, and their kits mix shielding, healing, and counterattacking rather than pure damage mitigation through stats alone. Most Defenders fight with a Greatsword — slower than a Sword but hitting harder and generating more Stagger — and Strength is their typical core attribute, though some Defender skills deal Arts damage on top of their physical basic attacks.

Snowshine is the most accessible Defender for new players: a Cryo Defender obtainable through pre-registration rewards, she provides shields and applies Cryo Infliction while keeping the team upright. Catcher and Ember round out the current Defender roster.

Every functional Endfield team needs at least one form of sustain — healing, shielding, or damage mitigation — and the Defender class is the most direct way to cover that requirement without sacrificing a damage slot.

Supporters are the class built to weaken the enemy rather than to buff your own numbers directly. Their kits lean on control effects and debuffs — reducing enemy damage output, locking enemies down, or applying Arts Susceptibility that makes the rest of the squad's Arts damage land harder. All current Supporters fight with an Arts Unit, dealing Arts damage while they work, and Will and Intellect are their defining attributes.

Ardelia is rated the best support operator in the current roster thanks to unusually versatile, stable healing on top of her Supporter kit. Gilberta brings rare crowd control paired with one of the strongest Arts Susceptibility debuffs in the game, making enemies noticeably easier for the rest of the team to burn down. Antal and Xaihi complete the current Supporter lineup.

Supporters overlap with Defenders on the sustain checklist since some, like Ardelia, can heal — but their real strength is making every other class in the squad hit harder, not just keeping the team alive.

An Endfield squad holds four operators — one that you directly control at any moment, with the other three fighting alongside and available to swap into. You are never required to run all six classes in one squad, but a squad built from a single class falls apart fast: pure damage dealers run out of Skill Points, and a team with no sustain gets overwhelmed in longer fights.

A dependable four-operator squad typically covers:

• One main damage dealer — a Guard, Caster, or Striker as your primary source of damage
• One setup or sub-damage piece — usually a second Guard or Caster that applies the statuses your Striker or main damage dealer benefits from
• One Vanguard or Skill-Point source — so your damage dealers can actually afford to use their skills every rotation
• One sustain piece — a Defender, or a Supporter with healing, to keep the run from ending on a bad pull

This is a guideline, not a hard rule — some elemental teams stack two Casters instead of a Vanguard if their reactions already generate enough SP, and some Striker-heavy teams run two setup units to keep both finishers fed. But skipping sustain entirely, or running a squad with zero Skill Point recovery, is the most common way a new team underperforms its operator quality.

You do not choose a class in a vacuum — you choose it based on what you already own for free. The protagonist Endministrator is a free Physical Guard armed with a sword, and because Guards are self-sufficient damage dealers that generate and consume their own setup, building the Endministrator first gives you a main damage dealer that stays relevant long after the early game rather than one you outgrow in a week.

Once your main damage dealer is functional, the single highest-value class to build next is Vanguard, not another damage dealer. A team that cannot afford to cast its skills loses far more damage than a team missing one extra attacker, and Akekuri in particular is a cheap, fast-cycling Vanguard that most guides treat as a near-mandatory build for anyone running a Heat-element team.

• Step 1: Build your free starting Guard (the Endministrator) as your main damage dealer.
• Step 2: Build a Vanguard next so your team's skills stop sitting on cooldown — Akekuri if you are leaning Heat, or whichever Vanguard you pulled.
• Step 3: Add a Defender for sustain before you chase a second damage dealer; Snowshine is free through pre-registration and covers this slot at no gacha cost.
• Step 4: Only after those three roles are covered should you invest in a Striker or a second Caster — they pay off far better once your team already has setup and Skill Points to feed them.

This order matters because Strikers and secondary damage dealers are payoff classes: they look weak in isolation and strong once the rest of the squad is built, so building one first tends to waste resources on an operator whose kit is not yet supported.