Balatro has well over 100 Jokers to find, unlock, and collect. Each Joker is a unique blend of mechanics and interactions that help mould your run into something truly unique every time you boot the game. Whilst rarity doesn’t necessarily translate to power directly, rarer Jokers do tend to have more complex mechanics.
With that in mind, the exceedingly rare Legendary Jokers are some of the strangest Jokers going, with effects that can drastically change the course of a run. Unlocking Legendary Jokers is not the easiest of tasks, but we have a full guide here to help you out. In this guide, however, we will be ranking every Legendary Joker in Balatro.
More Balatro content:
Deck Unlock Guide | Planet Card Guide | Tarot Card Guide | Spectral Card Guide | Legendary Joker Guide | Modifier Guide | Blank Voucher Guide
Yorick
Yorick is one of the most powerful multiplicative Mult Jokers in the entire game. Granting a flat x5 Mult to every hand is ludicrously powerful for a card that requires no scaling. Unfortunately, Yorick has one massive downside – it does nothing until you discard 23 times.
While this might seem like a minor inconvenience at first glance, in reality, Yorick becomes almost unplayable. At almost every stage in Balatro’s progression arc, Yorick is a potentially game-ending tax. When every Joker slot is valuable to break through each Ante, having a slot dedicated to a Joker that does nothing for 5+ rounds is devastating.
Sadly, Yorick’s activation is so slow that you will likely sell Yorick instead of going through the effort of grinding it out. You can get plenty of other Jokers who scale beyond Yorick, who do something every step of the way. Easily the worst Legendary Joker.
Triboulet
I want to preface this by saying the gap in power between 5th and 4th is canyon-esque. A veritable gulf that should not be underestimated. Where Yorick is straight up a bad card, Triboulet is genuinely fantastic – it just has some major flaws.
Triboulet grants x2 Mult for every King and Queen played – basically granting Polychrome+ to these cards…only it stacks with Polychrome. Triboulet is the gift that keeps on giving IF you have the means to support it when you get it. Sadly, Legendary Jokers don’t often enter a run early, so it’s difficult to plan around them.
This is where Triboulet falls. If you had a bunch of Polychrome Kings and Queens, hods of Steel Kings and Queens, Baron, Shoot The Moon, Mime, and Sock & Buskin, Ante 8 becomes a distant memory. You aren’t going to have that though – heck, you are more likely to be running Abandoned Deck which has zero face cards to begin with.
Triboulet is powerful, it’s just inconsistent.
Chicot
Chicot is one of those Jokers that has a really powerful effect that you kind of forget. You no longer suffer the effects of any Boss Blind, which means you aren’t going to get blind-sided by a run-ending nerf to your deck at the worst possible moment. There are many ways to negate Boss Blinds, but Chicot is the most reliable and permanent.
There are downsides of course. Firstly, Chicot still takes up a valuable Joker slot and provides no actual benefit to your scoring. This makes Chicot worthless during the Small and Big Blind. Secondly, Chicot could be blocking a space that could be occupied by a Joker that helps you directly beat a Boss Blind without having to remove its ability.
Unlike the previous 2, Chicot is a Legendary that I am always happy to see and use. However, Chicot will rarely survive a full run.
Canio
Canio is our first and only scaling Legendary Joker, and it’s an incredibly powerful one at that. Canio grants x1 Mult every time you destroy a card. New players might be put off by this, but trust me, thin decks are your end goal in most deck builders. Because of this, Canio grows in power just by playing the game normally.
Cracking Arcana Packs for Hanged Man or Spectral Packs for Immolate will become even more beneficial as every card popped is a permanent boost to your score. Heck, a single Immolate will make Canio as powerful as Yorick with far fewer steps to get there.
The only downside to Canio is timing. The effect of Canio does not take into consideration any destroyed cards before Canio’s acquisition. If you get Canio too late into a run, you might not have enough cards to destroy to get the most out of it.
Perkeo
Perkeo takes the top spot for our favourite Legendary Joker because it just does work every time you get it. It simply duplicates a consumable and makes it Negative. That’s it. This lets you do so many things, and the more you experiment, the better it becomes. Infinite Tarot, Planet, and Spectral Cards allow you to refine your deck in a way you never thought possible.
Cards like Fortune Teller and Constellation become endlessly scaleable. Planet Cards can be duplicated infinitely to enhance your Hand quality. Certain Vouchers scale off of Consumables. The list goes on and on. Perkeo doesn’t directly impact your scoring, but it does help you create the perfect deck throughout a run.
As with all Legendary Jokers, Perkeo can come too late to make a difference. Despite that, Perkeo’s effect is way too good to not put at number one.
That’s all we have on Balatro for now. Be sure to check out our other content for more tips, tricks, and guides.
