Solo Leveling: What Are The Different Hunter Types?

This article is part of a directory: Winter 2024 Anime Season – Complete Guide

Table of contents

Highlights

The Solo Leveling anime introduces the Hunter ranking system, which classifies the magical population's potential and abilities.
There are six types of Hunters: Healers, Fighters, Mages, Assassins, Tankers, and Rangers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Sung Jinwoo, the protagonist, is revealed to be a Mage, but initially fought at a disadvantage due to his lack of knowledge about his true abilities. He eventually becomes a powerful Mage through his Necromancy skill.

The following contains spoilers for Solo Leveling, available on Crunchyroll. It also contains heavy spoilers for the Solo Leveling webcomic, available on Tapas.

The Solo Leveling anime has done quite a lot in the realm of worldbuilding to explain some of the phenomena that inform the meat and bones of the story. One of the aspects that is continuously hammered home is the Hunter ranking system, which quantifies and qualifies the overall potential and ability of the magically-enhanced population and gives a basic sense of what kinds of magical threats are within a particular Hunter's scope.

However, as much exploration has gone into explaining rankings, there have only been scattered references to the actual kinds of Hunters that exist, with Healers having a particularly high significance in the overall success of Hunter raids. So, what are Solo Leveling's six Hunter types, and what are their usual roles in a party?

Why is Everyone So Excited About Solo Leveling?

Solo Leveling is one of the most anticipated anime of the year. What is it that has anime fans so excited?

Hunters Can Be Either Combat or Non-Combat Specialists

Joo-Hee Heals Jin-Woo – Solo Leveling Episode 1

Hunters are initially split into two categories: combat types and non-combat types. As the names suggest, there are Hunters who do not take part in the actual battles against magic beasts. While the term "Hunter" is used to refer to humans who have awakened to magical abilities, there are plenty of people with magical abilities who have not obtained a Hunter's License through the Association, and are therefore not Hunters by occupation. There are six general categories of Hunter, each with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. This particular element of the Solo Leveling universe is another manifestation of the series' rooting in the mechanics found in video and tabletop games, as well as fantasy stories, with the six Hunter types effectively being akin to "Player Classes" found in RPGs. The overall ability of a Hunter is not dependent on their type, meaning that Hunters of all strength classes can exist at any rank, as seen with Jinwoo's friend Lee Joohee being a B-Rank Healer, while S-Rank Cha Hae-In is a Fighter.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of The Six Types

The six types are Healers, Fighters, Mages, Assassins, Tankers, and Rangers. Many of the Hunter types are quite self-explanatory, like Healers and Mages. Mages are generally long-range combatants who cast spells and are capable of summoning minions to fight for them. There are various kinds of magic, and Mages can specialize in Elemental, Curse, Summoning, or Barrier Magic. Healers on the other hand, primarily support Hunters, and cast spells to heal their allies from the wounds suffered in battle. They can also cast various buffs to assist the effectiveness of their party's combat; however, they're at a severe disadvantage in one-on-one combat. Fighters are damage-dealers that specialize in melee combat, with their choice of weapon ranging from axes and maces to swords, spears and even their bare fists. They boast high attack, as well as decent defensive ability and stamina.

Solo Leveling: Hunter Rankings, Explained

Here's a quick look at how the Hunter ranking system in Solo Leveling works.

Tankers borrow their name from the concept of a "tank" in video games, and are hence Hunters who boast heavy levels of defense at the expense of aspects like agility. Known tanks include Jinwoo's best friend Yoo Jinho, as well as the rotten Hunter Hwang Dongsuk (the Hunter who tries to kill Jinwoo and Jinho in episode 5). Assassins are perhaps the exact opposite of this, and can be seen as Fighters who specialize in close-quarters combat and stealth, while boasting incredible speed. Rangers specialize in long-range combat, and commonly possess magic related to archery. As long-range specialists, Rangers share Mages' disadvantage in close combat, but are capable of covering their allies' blind spots.

The Special Case That Is Sung Jinwoo

Over the course of the first five episodes of Solo Leveling, we come to understand more about the universe, as well as more about the strange circumstances that now inform Sung Jinwoo's life. When he goes on the fateful raid in the Double Dungeon incident, Jinwoo's only piece of equipment is a single cheap knife that breaks fairly quickly. After his survival, his Daily Task grants him more cheap weaponry that also breaks soon into his journey into the Hapjeong Instance Dungeon. He finds Kim Sangshik's expensive sword in his inventory and uses it rather clumsily against the pack of Steel-Fanged Lycans that appeared, indicating that Jinwoo has little to no experience wielding a sword. He was, however, very comfortable with a dagger in his hand, probably because such a weapon was all he could ever afford. Going by his comfort with a dagger, as well as his incredible stamina even before his leveling up, it would seem that Jinwoo is an Assassin type. During his battle against the King of the Swamp, Jinwoo's most effective attacks were inflicted through his bare hands, which makes him sound like more of a Fighter; however, what is yet to be revealed in the Solo Leveling anime is the fact that Jinwoo is neither.

Sung Jinwoo is technically a Mage, which explains why he struggled so intensely in the past because he was forced to adopt a fighting style unsuitable for his Hunter type, on top of being notoriously weak. Many games have a mechanic in which characters' base stats are dependent on their type or some kind of attribute, which then affects their effectiveness in varying combat situations. In line with the video game metaphor inherent to Solo Leveling, Jinwoo's first problem was fighting at a fundamental disadvantage, possibly because he didn't know himself to be a Mage in the first place. With the eventual development that Jinwoo is the reincarnation of the Shadow Monarch, Ashborn, Jinwoo's main combat ability eventually reveals itself: Necromancy. With the ability to revive his defeated enemies as shadows at his command, Jinwoo eventually amasses an army of shadows, some of whom are S-Rank in and of themselves, making him a very powerful Mage-type Hunter.