All Star Tower Defense Tier List: Best Units Ranked

In All Star Tower Defense, the best endgame units are not the ones with the highest headline damage — they are the long-range, single-target boss killers whose damage scales with upgrades rather than with placement count. Those units stay in S-tier across Infinite, Raid and Hard mode because their damage-per-placement stays high even when the map only gives you three or four slots. Ranked by damage per hit, range in studs and total cash to max, the endgame loadout that survives the longest is one long-range boss killer, one AoE wave-clearer, one damage-amp support and one economy unit.

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Quick comparison: the six roles that decide a tier list

ASTD rebalances and adds units almost every update, and the summon pools change with it. Rather than rank names that go stale in a month, the table below ranks the stat profiles — damage per hit, range, cooldown, cash to max and placement cap — that every current S-tier unit shares. Numbers are illustrative profiles of the kind you will see in the in-game unit info panel, so you can run the same math on whatever is in your inventory right now.

What actually separates S-tier from A-tier

Four numbers do almost all the work, and three of them are easy to read off the unit’s info panel:

• Damage per hit ÷ cooldown = raw DPS. A unit with a huge hit and a six-second cooldown can lose to a smaller, faster attacker on sustained output, especially against fast enemies that walk past a slow firing cycle.
• Range in studs. Range decides how much of the lane a single placement covers. On a map where the path snakes back on itself, a 70-stud unit can cover two or three passes of the same lane, effectively tripling its damage without a second placement.
• Cash to max. This is the stat most players ignore. The final two upgrade levels typically account for roughly a third of the total spend, so a unit that looks cheap at level 1 can be the most expensive thing in your loadout.
• Placement cap. Low caps reward high per-placement output; high caps reward cheap, stackable units. A 3-placement boss killer and a 6-placement spam unit are not competing on the same axis.

Two hidden modifiers matter just as much in endgame modes: true or armour-piercing damage (which ignores the damage reduction that late-wave and raid bosses carry) and ability uptime — the fraction of a fight a unit’s active ability is actually online. A unit with a 40% uptime damage buff is, in practice, a different unit from the same unit at 80% uptime.

The worked math: cash per point of DPS

Here is the calculation that reshuffles most tier lists. Take the boss killer from the table: 1,400 damage per hit on a 3.2-second cooldown is 437 DPS per placement. With its cap of three, that is 1,312 team DPS for 185,000 cash — about 141 cash per point of DPS.

Now run the support unit. On its own it deals nothing, which is why it gets skipped. But a 35% team-wide damage amp applied to that same 1,312 DPS adds 459 DPS, and it costs about 120,000 cash to max. That is roughly 261 cash per point of DPS if the support is your only attacker — but only about 90 cash per added DPS once a second and third attacker are already placed and also receiving the amp. Add an AoE unit clearing eight enemies at once at 267 DPS each, and the effective damage on screen climbs past 3,000 while the support’s cost per added DPS drops below 80.

The practical rule that falls out of this: buy your damage first, then your amp, then a second amp before a third damage dealer. Supports get cheaper in value terms the more damage you already own, which is exactly the opposite of how most players sequence their upgrades.

S-tier picks by role

S-tier #1: long-range boss killer — best overall

This is the unit that decides whether you clear a raid or stall at the boss. It wants the longest range in your inventory (60–75 studs), the highest damage per hit, and ideally a true-damage component so late-wave armour does not blunt it. Its trade-off is cost and speed: a 3.2-second cooldown means it will leak fast, low-health enemies, so it needs an AoE partner or a slow in front of it. Suits players pushing Infinite past wave 40 or farming raid bosses on a fixed route.

S-tier #2: AoE wave-clearer — best for story and mid Infinite

Roughly 450–550 damage per hit with a 20–30 stud splash on a sub-two-second cooldown is the profile to look for. Raw single-target DPS looks mediocre on paper; multiply it by the six to ten enemies standing in the splash radius and it is the highest-throughput unit on the map for 35 waves. Its trade-off is that it falls off hard against single bosses, where there is nothing to splash onto.

S-tier #3: damage-amp support — best value upgrade

Zero personal damage, 30–40% team damage amplification inside an aura, two placement slots. As the math above shows, this is the cheapest DPS you will ever buy once you already have two attackers down. The trade-off is that it is dead weight in the first ten waves and does nothing at all if you have only one attacker placed.

S-tier #4: economy unit — best first purchase

Generates in-match cash on a fixed tick (typically every 6–10 seconds) and pays for itself within the first eight to ten waves. It is not an S-tier fighter, but it is S-tier for durability in the sense that matters here: a loadout with an economy unit reaches the expensive final upgrade levels several waves earlier than one without, which is the single biggest swing in endgame performance. Trade-off: it occupies a slot that could hold damage.

Decision matrix: match the pick to your situation

Building an endgame loadout in five steps

1. Place the economy unit on wave one. Reason: every wave you delay is cash you never recover, and the tick rate means earlier placement pays back exponentially rather than linearly.
2. Add AoE before the first boss. Reason: waves 1–20 are density problems, not health problems, and splash converts one placement into eight kills per cycle.
3. Hold your boss killer until the mid-game cash spike. Reason: its upgrade path is back-loaded, so a half-upgraded boss killer underperforms a fully upgraded AoE unit at the same spend.
4. Drop the amp support once two attackers are down. Reason: the amp’s value scales with the damage already on the map, so it is wasted as a first or second placement.
5. Re-check range overlap after every placement. Reason: two units covering the same 20 studs of lane waste one of them; a staggered coverage line is worth more than a higher-tier unit in the wrong spot.

Durability: what keeps an S-tier pick relevant

Durability in ASTD is not a health bar — it is how long a unit stays worth its slot. Three things break that: a patch that raises boss damage reduction (which retires non-piercing units), a meta shift toward faster enemies (which retires long-cooldown units), and a change to placement caps (which retires expensive single-target units on cramped maps). Units with high range and a true-damage component survive all three, which is why they anchor most endgame tier lists across patches. Check the official patch notes after each update before you spend cash maxing anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the ASTD tier list the same for every mode?

No. Story and Hard mode reward AoE throughput because enemy density is the problem, while raids and Infinite past wave 40 reward single-target damage with armour penetration because boss health is the problem. A unit can be S-tier in one and A-tier in the other, which is why the table above splits by role rather than giving one flat ranking.

What is the best unit for a new player?

An economy unit, almost without exception. It generates in-match cash on a fixed tick and pays for itself within the first eight to ten waves, which lets you afford the expensive final upgrade levels several waves earlier. Damage units feel better immediately, but they cannot be upgraded fast enough without the cash engine behind them.

Do I need Robux exclusives to reach S-tier?

Not for the core roles. The long-range boss killer, AoE clear, support and economy profiles all exist in free-to-play summon pools; exclusives mostly add convenience or a unique ability, not a different tier. Robux changes how quickly you assemble a loadout, not the maths behind which roles you need.

How much cash does maxing an S-tier unit cost?

Budget roughly 150,000–200,000 in-match cash for a full damage unit and around 90,000–120,000 for a support or economy unit. In most upgrade paths the final two levels alone account for about a third of the total, so plan the last upgrades around a boss wave rather than spending them the moment they become affordable.

Is damage or range more important?

Damage decides whether you kill the boss; range decides how many times you get to hit it. On a snaking lane, a 70-stud unit can cover two or three passes of the same path, which is effectively a 2–3× damage multiplier that no upgrade level can match. Prioritise damage first, then buy range by choosing placements rather than by swapping units.

How often does the ASTD tier list change?

Expect meaningful movement every major update — usually a rebalance to damage reduction, cooldowns or placement caps rather than a wholesale rewrite. If your S-tier pick suddenly feels weak, check the official patch notes for a boss damage-reduction change first; that is the single most common cause of a unit dropping a tier.