Gakuran Tier List: Best Fighting Styles for PvP

This tier list ranks Gakuran's confirmed fighting styles by their PvP performance in open-world brawls, based on community gameplay footage and player reports. Rankings reflect the current patch — the meta can shift when the developer pushes updates, so check back after major patches.

Tiers: S = dominant, A = strong and reliable, B = viable with the right player, C = situational or weak in most matchups.

S Tier

Hoop Demon S

The current top style in competitive play. Hoop Demon's moveset controls space aggressively and punishes opponents at multiple ranges. It dominates both 1v1s and gang fights. If you're investing Robux in a reroll, most experienced players will tell you to hold out for Hoop Demon. Its full official move list hasn't been documented from developer sources yet, but its PvP performance across gameplay clips is consistent and clear.

A Tier

Muay Thai A

Kicks and knees that control fight pace. Muay Thai players dictate spacing by pushing opponents toward walls and using dash cancels to mix up their approach. Strong in both structured 1v1s and chaotic multi-player brawls. Some tier lists rank it S alongside Hoop Demon — it's close.

Boxing A

Fast punch chains optimised for close range. Boxing thrives in tight spaces — hallways, the gym, indoor areas — where kick-based styles lose range advantage. Strong against players who over-rely on blocking. Slightly weaker against Muay Thai's mid-range kick pressure.

B Tier

Hakari B

Off-meta but genuinely viable. Hakari chains light attacks into one devastating finisher through its Momentum Rush perk. The catch: it requires clean setup execution that casual players don't put in. In the hands of a player who has practised the combo windows, Hakari can surprise A-tier style users. In the hands of everyone else, it underperforms. B tier reflects the average result, not the ceiling. See the full Hakari guide for the complete combo loop.

C Tier

Slugger C

Slugger's Unstable perk boosts your own damage output at the cost of taking extra damage yourself, and its Guard Pierce V is the strongest block-chip effect of any confirmed style. That trade can steamroll an inexperienced opponent, but skilled players punish the extra damage taken hard — which is why independent community tier lists (ProGameGuides, Beebom, Destructoid, and GamerUrge) all place it at the bottom of the ranking as of July 2026. If you can't consistently avoid getting hit, the tradeoff isn't worth it.

Unranked — Perks Confirmed, PvP Data Still Limited

Basic, Karate, and Wrestling now have confirmed perk breakdowns from gameplay footage — see the full Fighting Styles guide for their exact numbers. What's still missing is enough consistent competitive PvP footage to place them accurately on this ranked list, so they stay unranked here for now. Early impressions: Wrestling's 55% grapple-clash chance (the highest of any confirmed style) and hyperarmored takedown make it a plausible A-tier contender, but that's community chatter, not a verified ranking. Capoeira is unranked for the same reason, and community tier lists don't even agree with each other on it — some place it B tier for its low damage output, others A tier for its 25% dash-cooldown mobility, so we're not picking a side until that settles. Kure, added in the July 11, 2026 map update, is too new for a settled community consensus — some trackers already call it S-tier, others still won't rank it. See the full Kure guide for perks and the current tier debate.

Two even newer additions from the August 2026 v8.009 update are also unranked here for now: Striker, an Epic-tier style built around accelerating M1 rhythm and a feint crit, and Ali, a secret-tier style with a 0.075% roll rate that's too rare and too new for any competitive PvP data to have formed yet.

How Much Does Tier Actually Matter?

Less than you'd think at beginner level. The gap between S-tier Hoop Demon and A-tier Boxing is real, but it's far smaller than the gap between a player who has learned to weave and parry versus one who hasn't. Master the fundamentals first. Reroll for a better style once you're consistently winning fights with whatever style you started with.