Neighbors Suburban Warfare Tier List — Best Neighbors Ranked

A Neighbors Suburban Warfare tier list is less settled than most, because the game left Early Access on 29 September 2026 and the balance patches are still landing weekly. The clearest picture comes from community play: Kim and Mary-Jean sit at the top because each one solves a problem no other neighbor can, Doreen and Gramps form the second block, and the rest are situational. Everything below is compiled from those community sources and marked where it rests on a single report.

How This Neighbors Suburban Warfare Tier List Is Built

Two sources feed this ranking. The first is a widely viewed community full-game guide recorded during Early Access that explicitly ranks the whole roster against team need. The second is the TierMaker community template for the game, a user-made ranking board with eight neighbor images that was last modified on 4 April 2025. TierMaker itself notes there are not yet enough user submissions to publish a community average, so this is not a vote count.

Source	What it provides	Limitation
Community full-game guide	Ability-by-ability ranking against team need	Recorded before later balance patches
TierMaker template	A neutral eight-neighbor ranking board	No community average published yet
Steam patch notes	Post-launch balance changes	Covers only changes the developer lists

That mix is why the rankings below are described as tier positions rather than a scoreboard, and why they carry a confirm caveat.

The Current Tier List

The community guide frames the top of the list as mandatory picks rather than strong ones, which is unusual for a party brawler and reflects how much of the game is structure-focused.

Tier	Neighbor	Why
Mandatory / S	Kim	Only neighbor who can repair structures, plus top damage and fastest time-to-kill
S	Mary-Jean	Only ranged root, short-cooldown wall hack, fastest lockpicking income
A	Doreen	Tankiest neighbor and the highest melee damage over time
A	Gramps	The dedicated healer, strongest when the team can stay alive
B	Chad	The counter to Doreen and a mid-tier all-rounder
B	P.A.	Backdoor specialist with a periodic free kill and jackhammer deletion
B	Louie	Melee bruiser whose ultimate briefly scrambles enemy controls
F	Kevin	Low health, low slingshot damage, high mobility that matters little on small maps

Because the guiding source is one walkthrough from Early Access, the ordering should be read as directional, to confirm. The characters page gives the full kit notes behind each placement, and the guide explains how those roles fit a match plan.

Why Kim and Mary-Jean Top the List

Kim's case is structural. She is the only neighbor who can repair a damaged structure, which means a team without her loses rooms it cannot get back, and the same guide rates her damage and time-to-kill at the top of the roster. That combination is why she is described as a mandatory pick rather than a strong one.

Mary-Jean's case is control plus economy. She owns the only ranged root, so she can pin a target in place, and the guide describes her ability set as a free wall hack on a short cooldown that is active for a long time. Her lockpicking lets her open doors and windows for the same money as breaking them but faster, which is why she is also the guide's best money farmer of the set.

Teammates matter here: both picks are enablers, so their value depends on the team using the space they create. A team that ignores a root or a repaired wall wastes the pick.

Team Composition Rules

A good neighbor composition answers four questions at once, and the community guide's implicit structure is a useful checklist.

• Who repairs structures if the enemy breaks in? In practice, that is Kim.
• Who controls a fight rather than just dealing damage? Mary-Jean's root and wall hack.
• Who holds a doorway when the enemy pushes? Doreen, or Gramps sustaining her.
• Who punishes a turtled team? P.A. and a backdoor pressure pick.

Duplicate limits complicate that. The guide reports that a patch restricted stacking, at least for Doreen, so a plan built on three copies of one neighbor is no longer safe to assume, to confirm.

Patch History and Caveats

Balance is moving fast enough that any tier list has a shelf life. The launch-window patch that followed 1.0 changed several neighbors that appear above.

Patch date	Neighbor change	Effect on tiering
1 Oct 2026	P.A. cannon cooldown decreased	Small buff to backdoor P.A.
1 Oct 2026	Mary-Jean bunny slipper maximum damage reduced	Slight nerf to a top-tier pick
1 Oct 2026	Gramps healing slightly reduced	Pulls the healer down within A
1 Oct 2026	Gwen PomPom Impulse damage increased	Buff to the newest neighbor

Two caveats are worth keeping in mind. First, the guide that anchors this tier list predates the 1.0 rework of Destruction mode, so mode-specific strengths may have shifted. Second, TierMaker has not yet produced a community average for the game, which means there is no voting data to cross-check against. Until both change, treat the list as a practical starting point and confirm it against current patch notes on the release date page.

What would move this list:

• A balance patch that touches Kim's repair role or damage.
• Enough TierMaker submissions to publish a community average.
• The Destruction rework changing which neighbors are strongest in the flagship mode.
• A new neighbor joining the roster after Gwen.