Counter Side has a huge cast, so not everyone's going to be equally useful, and some characters end up with a rather unfortunate reputation of being weak as a result.
- Esterosa is frequently mocked due to her high costs, selfish buffs, and the phasing out of "Defender-like" Strikers. She received a buff in her cost, bring her down to 4 costs... but it also reduced her HP, ATK, and DEF by 10%. Fans question these decisions as some argue that even with her unnerfed stats, she would only be adequate. Ultimately Rescued from the Scrappy Heap with her rearm, which makes her an incredible tank between her improved durability and Immortality passive.
- Elizabeth Pendragon has a Dynamic Entry that can attack Air units, has a guaranteed Critical Hit on her Ultimate, and has a passive on her Special casting that halves her incoming damage. However, she's frequently sidelined by other "Assassins" like Ingrid or Soyoung because compared to their 2-costs, Elizabeth is 4. While Ingrid is designed to mess with the enemies backline, she's also capable of luring attacks away from the frontline, where Elizabeth dashes back after entry, sometimes leading her directly into the frontline of the enemy. Soyoung's entry also provides extra damage to Snipers, gives AOE buffs to nearby soldiers, and summons a Shieldman/Stronghold. Elizabeth has also drawn criticism from her low HIT stat, causing her to miss on her entry, almost completely negating any benefit she brings. This only applies to her base form, however; her Rearm is another story entirely.
- Eujin is a character that many people feel like bside has forgotten. Starting out as a decent SR Striker, her biggest weakness started day 1 when her kit focused on Evasion, a stat that ultimately had been RNG-prone and would eventually be mostly replaced with giving units "Perfect Evasion" buffs. Compared to other members of ALT Squad, she's the only one without a well-defined niche. note Even her rearm, which changes her class to Sniper and provides her with Fury over Cooldown, does little to make her stronger overall, despite the various improvements.
- Poor Lee Jisoo. Given to players for free during a bingo event, she was the first Awakened character to ever be given "Up" status (until Maestra Nequitia also received that "honor"). Her mismatched stats makes her one of the most bizarre Square Race, Round Class units thanks to her enormous HP line with low defenses and the Supporter class provides no benefits, as she cannot take advantage of Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors. Her niche in debuffing the enemy is useful but is only active while she's on the battlefield, which is made difficult by her frontliner kit making her more likely to take the brunt of the damage. She also has lower stats than other Awakened characters with the same Deployment Cost like Lee Sooyeon and Replacer Queen. She received a minor buff that gave her a better presence on the field and allowed for her to be a competent support attacker but wasn't enough to actively push her into a presence outside of niche builds. Her Alternium Reactor upgrade significantly helps her survivability by giving her passive HP regen, damage reduction for every enemy unit on the field, and even a Skill Haste debuff on enemy Strikers, Rangers, and Snipers while she's deployed, which may finally bring her to general Magikarp Power status instead.
- Despite being one of the main protagonists, Yoo Mina is unfortunately consigned to the lower tiers. Most of her problems come from her being a 4-cost DPS unit that doesn't do enough damage to be worth the cost compared to units like Xiao Lin, while also bringing nothing else to the table. It doesn't help that she's purely built as a Critical Hit Class without any boosts to her crit rate, leaving her effectiveness at the tender mercy of the RNG. Even her Rearm does little to help since it doesn't address any of the key issues of her kit, though it does at least have decent splash damage and allows her to put out some shockingly big damage numbers from time to time.
- Laura Beatrix is one of the few summoners whose pet (Pluto) lasts indefinitely until defeated, and her abilities to buff Pluto and debuff enemies and even instantly execute low-health Defenders and Strikers could make her a powerful support and off-tank unit in theory. The problem? Her and Pluto's actual stats are abysmal, gimping any potential usefulness she could have had as Pluto ends up sub-par as a tank while Laura herself only mildly annoys most enemies. Fortunately, her Rearm solves most of her issues and makes her a lot more potent.
- Best Mascot Irie has the dubious honor of being one of the few Rearms considered weaker than their base form. In addition to her lack of MDL making her unable to keep up with higher-rarity tanks, she also loses one of her base form's advantages due to having a deployment cost of 3 as opposed to regular Irie Alford's deployment cost of 2 (thus making base Irie more useful as a spammable meat shield). Additionally, one of her main sources of durability is generating a large barrier, which makes her fodder for the ever-dreaded Awakened Na Yubin. She became better regarded once Yubin fell off his meta throne, however given the amount of effort required to obtain her, the player has probably already obtained a better Defender since Irie still lacks a Max Damage Limit.
- Unlike other factions made up of low-rarity units, which bring at least one Boring, but Practical unit or Lethal Joke Character to the table, the Fennec Fox faction stands out for somehow not having a single good unit among them, not even as a Crutch Character for new players. The majority of their units are overspecialized for dealing with specific types of enemies, making them useless everywhere else due to their poor stats, and even when fighting the things they're supposed to be good against they tend to be underwhelming. Even their few generalist units are too weak to actually use (UGBL Rifleman, for instance, is outdamaged by the N-rarity Rifleman due to the long animation of his grenades). Even its best unit, Adamant Sniper, is seen as mostly a meme pick and very niche in most content.
- Edith Twins is likely one of the biggest jokes in the game. Her main gimmick is that she starts out completely dormant until she loses a certain amount of health, at which point she wakes up and starts dealing area-of-effect damage. However, she's a Tower and thus completely immobile, meaning all she does is fend off incoming enemies instead of applying pressure. Oh, and her awakening gimmick comes with an effect that drains her own health over time, meaning that even once she wakes up she'll probably get slaughtered in short order - not something you want to see on a 4-cost unit. Prydwen.gg gives her the following unflattering description:"Edith Twins is cute but useless. That's the best way to summarize her. She's a Tower, which already puts her at a huge disadvantage because employees in that role can't move and usually have a gimmick kit. And in her case, the gimmick is actually terrible. When you first deploy her, she sits there sleeping and being useless and only when her HP falls below a certain threshold she wakes up, transforms, and honestly still does nothing."
- Estaque is easily considered the weakest of the three Old Administration armored units. It's based on the Starcraft Siege Tank in that it's a long-ranged attacker with splash damage, and it also targets the rearmost opponent in its range, making it in theory decent for sniping fragile backrow units. Unfortunately, it also inherited the Siege Tank's need to anchor itself before firing (and unlike the Siege Tank, it doesn't have the option to simply fire on the move), thus severely cutting into its damage output when first deployed, and its DPS already wasn't great for its cost due to its slow fire rate. It received a buff that causes it to anchor much faster, but its other problems remain.
- Titan used to be a decent cornerstone unit of Mech builds, but time and Power Creep were not kind to the venerable war machine. In earlier versions, Titan's role as a high-cost bruiser with massive durability and area damage (especially since he predated the Max Damage Limit mechanic) gave him a significant niche, but he's since been pushed out of relevance by a number of newer additions: Overflow and Horizon outclass him as a tanky Mech due to being Defenders and having MDL, and Awakened Employees compete with him for the spot of high-cost key unit while almost universally giving you more bang for your buck. Evolved One was the final nail in the coffin for Titan, as she does everything he can, but better: she's bulkier thanks to better stats and MDL, does more damage, and ramps up faster by consuming your own Mechs. Like many other outclassed units, it took a Rearm for Titan to come back into relevance.
- Gambler was well-received as an NPC in her debut event, and Korean players were fairly hyped for the announcement that she would be Promoted to Playable. Fans were also not amused when she turned out to be a dumpster-tier unit, as the dev team took her name a bit too literally and made her Special Skill dependent on the Random Number God, with only a one-in-three chance to actually do anything other than mildly irritate enemies. Her ultimate is the only way she actually does anything a majority of the time and is nowhere near good enough to justify using her over a better debuffer.
- Replacer Knight is a case of a Square Race, Round Class whose design did not do her viability any favors. Uniquely, she's a Defender with Forward Deployment, meaning that she could theoretically be great at breaking through enemy Snipers by dropping directly on the enemy's backline. However, having the usual Defender stats means she also doesn't have the damage to actually assassinate targets, which isn't good considering her high cost of 4. On the other hand, if played as an actual frontline tank like your usual Defender, she also falls short because she bizarrely lacks a Max Damage Limit, unlike every other SSR Defender in the game. As a result, Replacer Knight just ends up being a Master of None: she tries to do multiple things, but sucks at all of them.
- Jaina Kropel was the first Fury user released in the Korean server, and to say the mechanic got off to a rough start would be an understatement. Fury units charge their skills by performing normal attacks instead of having a convntional cooldown, and Jaina's attack animation happens to be so slow that she'll rarely use her Special more than once per battle. She has decent survivability for a Sniper, but not enough to offset her inability to actually do anything. Her Alternium Reactor upgrade presumably makes her more viable, but that requires a Pure Possibility (a very limited resource best used on Awakened Mina's and Awakened Hilde's Alternium Reactor upgrades first).
- Shena was fairly well-received as an antagonist, but as a playable character she ended up leaving much to be desired. Being squishy, melee-ranged, and reliant on scoring crits to work makes it very hard to get value from her before she inevitably gets taken out, even factoring in her low cost. The only time she sees any sort of play is in Elysium Philharmonic teams thanks to their faction-specific buffs, and even then she's merely considered decent and only used because they don't have a better alternative.
- Despite her backstory of being an experienced soldier with good hindsight, Kim Chowon has one of the most unfortunate flaws in the game. On paper, having a fairly cheap Sniper unit was pretty good for Operator skills, and her kit has decent cooldowns with an emphasis on cooldown manipulation, making her able to spam her Special and Ultimate relatively fast. The problem? Her statline is one of the worst in the game, barely resembling the Jack of All Stats she's meant to portray. Her range is also an issue as her range fits more in line with Rangers, meaning any sort of splash damage or multi-hitting attacks will deal significant damage due to her paper defensive stats. The most damning thing about her stats was the fact she had lower than normal HIT. That's right, HIT. A stat that can only be fixed by gear, which is already in need of covering her other problems. The kicker at the end is that not long after, her niche of low-cost Sniper got replaced by Lycoris, who does her job and more for the same costs and with fewer downsides.
- As of July 2023, the formerly-dominant Evolved One was left out in the dust. While she was one of the Awakened units to be buffed that month (getting hefty boosts to HP and DEF), the problem is that the other buffs in the patch mean that she now struggles to kill other Awakened units even with her ultimate, and her inability to be healed means she falls short compared to Awakened tanks. Add on the fact that Awakened Jake, one of her biggest counters, was also one of the buffed units, and her viability plummeted to the point that she's now considered one of the worst Awakened units in the game alongside Lee Jisoo.
- While regular Enterprise is often considered one of the best ships in the game, Enterprise: Carrier Type fell all the way on the other end of the spectrum and is infamous for being one of the worst SSR ships. Its passive buffs only affect Soldiers, a relatively underused unit type in both PvP and PvE, and its active skills are quite underwhelming compared to its regular version's powerful debuffs and knockback. Even in Soldier teams, you'll often be throwing in a handful of Counters as well due to the relative lack of strong Soldier units, so Carrier Type not providing benefits to those units is a huge blow to its viability.
