Similar rules to my Superman-verse Strategy Guide. This strategy guide is about all the internal universe of any story with Zatanna as the primary protagonist. This includes the JLA Arcs "Search for Zatara" "The Search for Sindella" Zatanna's original stories as backup stories in Adventure Comics and Supergirl, Zatanna's 3 solo miniseries, and 2 one-shot specials. It includes the primary protagonist of all these, their main antagonist, and any character who at least half of their appearances are in one of these series which are treated as Zatanna's supporting cast.
Wall Tier:
This is the tier for the normal civilians of the human and supernatural world, characters who are a physical threat to Zatanna pre-physical training. This tier gets up to wall level from a variety of feats. Normal Merfolk, civilians in the supernatural world that appear in Zatanna Series 3, can withstand the pressure of the bottom of the ocean. The supernatural populace of San Francisco rallied to fight the Darkling Invasion in Series 1, with even weak demons being able to create large fires and their battle causing fissures in the ground and some of the demons having their heads ripped off. Zatanna herself even early on in her superhero career was unharmed by a super-breath from Supergirl that was meant to knock back a giant snowman monster vastly taller than either of them and was able to easily physically overpower John Constantine and throw him through a wall, Constantine being strong enough to contend with vampires that can throw cars around.
The Tier also gets up to supersonic speed. Merfolk and the Atlanteans in general were able to war with the Amazons of Themiscyra who are able to bullet-time and deflect bullets off their bracers.
This tier includes numerous normal human supporting characters that have been around Zatanna at one time or another including her stage manager during the Pre-Crisis Period Jeff Sloane who got pulled to his chagrin into her magical adventures, Kasim the caretaker of the Shadowcrest Estate, as well as Dale Thomas and Dale Colton, two different private detectives of the same first name but no relation. Zatanna has also had several boyfriends in her time, and this tier include both ones that were normal humans; Ron and Joshua. Zatanna has also had some completely normal humans as villains before including briefly a Pre-Crisis criminal organization called the Carstagg Syndicate that ran people over with cars, a group of barbarians from another dimension and a group of humans that hunt magic-users called the "Witch-Hunters."
Some of the humans here have powers. Mikey Dowling is Zatanna's Post-Crisis Stage Manager and Zatanna's friend who has a magical aura around her that negates any magic tried to be used against her and reverses it on the caster. The tier also includes human witches who, while weaker than Homo Magi, can combine their magic to create extremely potent magic effects with a small coven in Zatanna's first series creating a mystic boundary around her to protect from Xaos, suggesting they can create forcefields conventionally invulnerable to anyone in this tier. This tier includes the necromancer Benjamin Raymond sold his soul to the Demon Lord Mammon to gain immortality. He can create mystic potions which he did to create brainwashing potions to make women fall in love with him so he could send their souls to Mammon in Hell to renew their deal. Besides this, he could summon zombies to fight for him. This tier includes Backslash, a common criminal who came into possession of a magic sword that reversed time with every slash.
Outside the humans, there are also many supernatural creatures, particularly many hanging around San Francisco, a center for mystic energy and Zatanna's home city. Many of these creatures are invisible to non-magical entities and walk around with normal humans with them none the wiser. These species are assorted strange beings with beastial, feylike, or insectoid traits with many having flight and/or enhanced physical capabilities. The Merfolk are also an aquatic race who can speak to aquatic life and fairies who often display minor magical abilities. These are also special supernatural species. Zatanna has numerous times has had to fight armies of zombies or demons, even having to repel an invasion of Darkling Demons, a special race of Demons from the Darkling Dimension under the lead of Xaos. Demons in DC have numerous abilities including astral plane existence, possession, flight, can sense fear and despair, and are immortal.
There have also been a few special supernatural creatures Zatanna has run across including Gorgonus, a being who can turn anyone into stone if they make eye contact and Yuki-Onna a succubus demon who uses seduction to get close to men and then binds them rendering them unconscious and giving them control of their body and powers. It also includes Oscar Hempel or "Stringleshanks" a living puppet who due to Zatara's magic on him which turned him into a puppet and the strength for his desire for revenge gave him a resistance to magic as strong as Zatanna's own.
Finally there's one character in this tier whose species is unknown, that being Dr. Jana Bodie. Dr. Bodie is a therapist for the magical community, hero and villain alike. She hangs out in her own dimension resembling a Therapist's office she possibly maintains of her own accord where she councils both heroes and villains alike, her office acting as a safe space where there is no conflict between the two sides. She appears different to everyone who sees her. She is also incredibly good at understanding others.
So what strategies would be good here?
While this tier is very hax, it also has a large share of weaknesses. All the mages not just on this tier but in this series share some weaknesses. Most notably, their total lack of physical stats, with most of the mages here being physically human level. Pretty much all the mages regularly get beaten by ambush strategies or someone sneaking in and stealing their magic items.
This obviously wouldn't work on the supernatural creatures themselves and the demons being higher plane immortal entities in particular would be rather tricky. However, most of the supernatural creatures on this tier are not fighters in any particular respect and are clearly not used to fighting anyone on their tier with normal humans like Jeff being able to sometimes evade them. So long as the character has the ability to hit intangibles and doesn't rely solely on magic that wouldn't work on Oscar (or Mikey), the main threats of the supernatural creatures this tier are Gorgonus' petrification and being swarmed by numbers, both of which can be solved the same way as dealing with the magic-users of this tier; stealth.
Using a character who doesn't seem very intimidating and can stealth around would be strong in this tier, particularly if they have non-physical forms of offense that are not magical such as psychic power or spiritual energy. Most of this tier aren't fighters and are lower on stats than the maximum and don't have that much range so the ideal type of counter for this tier are an innocent or goofy looking character who is actually near the top of the tier through a non-physical type of long-range power, preferably one that can get away in a pinch.
This leads me to my first counter
sans from Undertale.
sans is able to tank the heat of Hotland which can quickly evaporate a styrofoam cup and can easily avoid attacks from Frisk despite Frisk being able to move comparable to a dog's bark, putting him at similar stats to the higher physical tier characters here.
sans as a magical skeleton would quickly fit in with the supernatural community of Zatanna's world if he showed up. sans is definitely skilled and fast enough to dodge large groups of enemies from this tier if he had to, not even taking into account his spatial warping which he can use to teleport himself or others and can counter-attack with gaster blasters, technological lasers that could one-shot anyone here since they target the soul.
sans is also very good at stealth if only due to his normally unimposing stature and ability to creep up on opponents or teleport places. Combined with having stronger skill most of the characters here, being technically a monster assigned to guard against humans, he would likely be able to end most fights before they began.
That said, sans tends to read peoples' expressions to know how hard he should go on them, because he can see the amount of violence they have accrued in their face. If he looked at Gorgonus' face, he'd be turned to stone. For a counter that would definitely know not to do that, you could use
Kiki from Saint Seiya.
Kiki was able to lift the Pegasus and Dragon Clothes despite not being connected to them, Clothes feeling as though they weight 1,000,000 tons to those who aren't connected to them and was able to casually telekinetically lift numerous boulders. As such he has top tier power for the tier. His speed is more nebulous but he in general seems to be in the same league as the Bronze Saints who all reach the speed of sound and has reaction speed capable of blocking strikes from Thanatos crossing the macrocosmic structure the hyperdimension in seconds at most, meaning he would arguably have top tier speed and would definitely be able to react to everyone in the tier at once.
Kiki looks like a normal boy but he is actually a Psychic who has mastered the Sixth Sense in the service of the Gold Saint Aries Mu. The sixth sense grants access to many psychic abilities including telepathic sensing that can reach other dimensions or telekinetically attack people from other dimensions as Cancer Deathmask demonstrated when he sensed Shunrei's prayers for Shiryu and attacked her from the door to the Underworld. Kiki would be able to sense everyone, even Dr. Bodie and telekinetically attack them while nobody here, even the demons would have any way of sensing who or where he is.
Even if found out, Kiki is far from helpless with telekinetic power that could easily one-shot anyone here and with cosmo's ability to affect conceptual abilities themselves, can likely affect even demons true forms. The Sixth Sense even gives the user a sense of their opponents powers via sensing their type of cosmo and gives a danger sense, giving Kiki the ability to know how and when to react to various types of opponent attacks. He could use his telekinesis to remove magical items like Backslash's time sword and he would know to avoid Gorgonus's petrifying stare from Shiryu's fight with Perseus Algol as well as his own danger sense. He can also create a psychic forcefield similar to the witches which similarly blocked the power of a universal+ entity. This would allow him, even against an army, to protect himself.
The only way Kiki could really lose if he one if the better manipulators on this tier such as Dr. Bodie or Yuki-Onna manipulated his youthful impulsiveness. But for the best counter to the tier I would suggest
Rakshasa from Champions.
Rakshasa is not a physical powerhouse but as an early game boss should be above start of game Champions who can reduce piles of rubble to nothing and bullet-time, putting him as a physical high tier for this group.
Rakshasa is one of Doctor Destroyer's two generals. But while Gigaton is his muscle, a powerhouse for direct missions, Rakshasa is Destroyer's infiltrator prized for his stealth and cunning. Rakshaka's primarily ability is his famed illusions, illusions so strong he can show a large crowd of people different things if need be, showing everyone what they want to see. While some characters on this tier have some resistance to illusions, no one here has resistance to illusions as strong as Rakshasa's save characters immune to magic but those are ones Rakshasa could pretty easily manipulate the old fashioned way.
Rakshaka is mostly known for infiltration tactics, sneaking into bases guarded by the Champions and stealing magical items. This would be quite potent in this tier as the magic items used by Homo Magi are much stronger then the tier, and some of the tier's weapons are themselves quite powerful. Champions Bases are guarded with the highest level of security and to be able to infiltrate them suggests no on in the tier would be able to catch onto him.
Beyond Rakshaka's illusions he has other mental powers, including psychic mind control that would bypass magical resistance, complete body malleability such that he can make himself look like anyone else and seemingly even dimensional travel...somehow it's not clear. Combined with his extreme stats would make him a high level physical threat even if he wasn't ambushing people and stealing their items.
However, in combat Rakshasa's most useful ability is his power to summon the Brainworms. Brainworms are large mental plane worm-creatures that consume the information from people's minds making them completely forgot what they were doing and thinking. This power explicitly creates one per enemy so even if the tier tried to gang up on him, he could simply use this power to make them forget he was ever there. Plus, as a mental plane attack, this would even work on demons. The only question is whether he could kill demons directly but magic and psychic powers in the Champions verse do seem to affect ghosts, and even if he can't it would simply take longer via stealing magical items and brainwashing demons into fighting each other.
Rakshaka's only weakness, the thing that normally keeps him balanced, is just that he has very low stats for the verse he's in. In a tier where his stats are near the top end, he would be an absolutely unstoppable juggernaut, able to remain completely undetectable and unthinkable and quickly defeat any opponent in an ambush.
Building Tier:
Zatanna after physical training with the Justice League has reached a stronger physical state to the point that during the bronze age she survived a Canary Cry from a villain who stole Black Canary's power that "rendered the sky asunder." This is the tier for the criminals of the supernatural underworld Zatanna has come across that are hypothetically physical threats to her. In addition to scaling to Justice League Zatanna physically, but they all survived Zatanna blowing up Brother Night's base with them inside it and one of them can control dimensions as large as a mansion, so this tier is fairly consistently building level.
Speedwise the characters on this tier lack solid speed feats. It's possible they are hypersonic or higher, similar to other mid to high DC Street tiers, but conservatively they would be above the prior tier making them supersonic.
There are really four threats on this tier. Ember is a dragon yet to be "born" taking the temporary form of a human girl. She can fly and produce fire and heat, with her kiss being able to incinerate a normal human. However, she is in turn weak to water and cold which put out her fire abilities. It's also implied she is the strongest physically of the group.
Teddy is a psychopathic little boy who has a magic box that when he opens it summons a horde of insects that ravenously and at supernatural speed tear through anybody he sets them on.
More hax than either of them is Romalthi the Shaper. Romalthi the Shaper is a floating metahuman whose feet never touch the ground. Romalthi changes the shape on his mask to a shape and then when he touches an object it becomes the thing depicted on his mask, something he can use to turn normal humans into monsters to fight for him or turn enemies to weak things like slugs. His only weaknesses are that his mask shows the thing he's going to transmute objects into and he has to touch an object to transmute it.
However by far the most hax character in this group is Fuseli the Nightmare Imp. Fuseli is an imp who enters into the dreamers of people asleep and warp them into nightmare realities, large enough to contain entire mansions at least. He feeds on fear and can sense the insecurities and anxieties of others. Fuseli has the power to warp reality in his dream world and negate the magic of characters as strong as Zatanna herself so long as his concentration is maintained. Fuseli in the waking world is the weakest character here physically, but he's so hax it generally doesn't matter. Even in the waking world Fuseli is still a demon and therefore an astral plane entity.
In terms of fighting this tier, the biggest threat on the tier is without a doubt Fuseli himself, but he has a pretty obvious counter which is a character that just doesn't sleep or doesn't dream. In the waking world Fuseli is far less formidable, and while he requires the ability to hit the astral plane to hurt him (or some other weakness of demons such as supernatural cold or holy symbols), he lacks much in the way of formidable offenses. In the dream reality, the thing that distracts and disorients Fuseli more than anything are bells or other loud noises, which can be used to break his dream reality.
The other characters on that tier aren't that hax. Romalthi is the most hax, but all three of them have the same weakness...lack of range. Romalthi needs to physically touch his opponents to transmute them and while Ember and Teddy have slightly higher range, none of them go past a dozen meters or so.
In addition with so few characters in the tier, the tier really can't rely on overwhelming the defender with numbers which means just having attacks with a large area of effect or a decent degree of speed can allow the counter to fight everyone efficiently.
So an ideal counter would be one that doesn't sleep or has sound manipulation abilities, can hit astral plane entities or has one of the demons weaknesses, has long range and a high area of effect or a high degree of skill. That brings me to my first counter
Deed from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
Deed is a combat cyborg who doesn't need to sleep. Moreover, after the events of StrikerS Deed becomes a nun of the Church of the Saint Kings, meaning she would naturally have on her holy symbols that would allow her to negate the powers of Fuseli entirely.
However against het others, Deed could still use her old cyborg powers. Her unique combat ability is her twin blades, two energy sword and the accompanying skill to use them, these blades being strong enough to hurt S Class Wizards who scale above Chrono in A freezing a sea, giving her VASTLY more power than she needs to kill anyone in the tier with one hit.
As a cyborg, Deed would have an inherent resistance to being eaten through by insects and her blades give her a long enough range to to hit Romalthi before being touched. She also aerial capability, the ability to fly, which would allow her to reach Ember if she needed to. She also has the skill to fight even the elite team led by Hayate, which would allow her to pretty easily avoid the attacks from any of the metahumans on this tier.
However she might be too high in stats depending on how your interpret her. Also she one hypothetical weakness here. Ember has a longer range with her fire breath. While I definitely think Deed is skilled to get around that, especially if she leads her into an enclosed space, if you want an even stronger counter you could use
Zack Walter from Bastard!!
Zack Walter is one of the 12 generals of Kal Su, his elite troops, crafty in magic, fearless, and experienced in warfare. Zack is a general that focuses almost entirely on his martial prowess should easily scale far above MacPain who survived being launched through a skyscraper-sized building, can launch hundreds of blows per second and is similar in speed to Kai Harn, one of Arshes Nei's generals, who was able to avoid a supersonic attack at literally point blank range, putting him at similar stats, if not notably higher than the tier.
Zack Walter is known for his incredible martial arts skill, trained to the point that each of his legs has the strength of 50 elephants and he can punch hundreds of times per second. Through pure skill and stats he should easily be able to beat Brother Night's minions especially given his massive range advantage.
Zack's Blades are the sonic swords, two blades that can create sonic waves attacks. These waves can extend dozens of meters easily outranging everyone on the tier, and due to their frequency can allow him to hit even angels, who exist on the astral and spiritual planes meaning he should be able to hit Fuseli.
Beyond all that Zack has experience, years of experience as a general as well as experience with all of their powers. Teddy has a weaker form of Ba Sori's powers, any fire mage in Bastard!! would easily be able to replicate Ember's powers. Transmutation magic is common enough that Zack would recognize the threat of Romalthi.
Zack's only weakness is if Fuseli avoids fighting him and attacks him in his sleep and even then Zack is likely brave enough and if he has the focus to imagine using his sonic blades in his dream could likely beat him there too. But for the best counter to the tier, I would suggest
Sa'Relka from Dungeons and Dragons
Sa'Relka would scale to characters who can cast cone of cold, a power that drops the temperature in a local area calced as requiring building level magical power. She would also likely scale to casual arrow-timing and to reaction speeds fast enough to react to call Lightning making her easily able to react to anyone in this tier.
Sa'Relka is a Thrikeen, an insectoid humanoid race. She is a Fighter/Earth Cleric as well. Thrikeen are known for the fact that they do not sleep and as a cleric her very presence would exude a holy aura that would hurt Fuseli to get near. Teddy's insects wouldn't hurt Sa'Relka as a fellow insectoid and might join her side.
Sa'Relka as a fighter would be highly skilled and like most Thri-keen via her four arms would use long polearm weapons and unpredictable motions that would be extremely difficult for the tier to deal with. If Ember tried to use fire Sa'Relka as a Cleric of the Earth domain can simply turn her skin like rock to tank it and can naturally heal herself with Cleric Magic. She can also hit flying enemies like Ember via her surprise poison spit, a feature of her species or through a few of her cleric spells.
Romalthi is the most interesting. Romalthi is good at sneaking up on opponents via their facial features but because of the inhuman and famously inscrutable expressions of the Thri-keen as well as Sa'Relka's enhanced senses, she would likely throw him completely off guard and keep him at bay via her holy magic and long polearm weapon. She would also know to keep him at bay via the low-level psionics common to the Thri-Keen and and could avoid any contact with a superleap if need be. Overall Sa'Relka is just very well suited to countering the metahumans of this tier.
Universal Tier:
This is the general tier for Homo Magi, including Zatanna prior to her finding the books of Zatara, as well as most characters that were on Zatanna's tier.
This tier is broadly universal, at least in magical power. Zatanna in Pre-Crisis could give herself the powers of Pre-Crisis Superman who withstood the Big Bang and is directly stated to be as strong as him. A robot scanning the Pre-Crisis League concluded Zatanna was the strongest threat, though Green Lantern was weakened at the time. The Warlock had complete control of his own dimension yet Zatanna was able to fight him evenly. Zatanna in her battle with Xorn fused with the entire universe, and she is stated directly in New 52 to be able to destroy the universe.
The tier's speed isn't much faster than the past one, with Zatanna's movement speed being comparable to hypersonic DC Street Tiers. However what's more notable is their reaction/attack speed. Zatanna in Pre-Crisis was able to react to Amazo when he had absorbed the powers of the Flash when other JLA members like Vixen and Vibe could not and could react to stimulus as she was pulled through dimensions. Xaos was also able to travel the conceptual distance between the Darkling realm of the demons and the main DC Reality. As such the speed here is literally infinite.
On DC Earth there lives a subspecies of humans called Homo Magi born with a natural talent for magic. After most left for Gemworld, there are not that many relative to the Earth's population but there are likely thousands still in hiding on Earth, with at least one magical village seen in Zatanna's series. Pretty much all Homo Magi have the same capacity Zatanna had before her upgrade, as such they have the same reality-warping ability, and also age much slower usually lives hundreds of years. The Homo Magi have shown various magical powers with some of the msot common being transmutation, telekinesis, levitation, magic sensing, clairvoyance, psychometry, and exorcisms. Some of the most powerful abilities that normal Homo Magi should possess including mind and memory manipulation, sealing elementals into jars, teleportation/bfr, gravity manipulation, and spacetime manipulation. They also all have a level of resistance to magic.
There are a few special Homo Magi seen in Zatanna's series including Kohl the Ancient One, a particularly old and wise Homo Magi and the High Lord, the leader of the Homo Magi on Earth who possesses the Optic Gem granting sight of all planes of the cosmos. Finally there's Zatanna mother Sindella. Sindella was a special Homo Magi born with a special gem inside her mind, the Medulla Jewel, an extremely powerful magic-source, which could provide power to an entire village of Homo Magi. This could be used to massively amplify Sindella's magic power by hundreds or thousands of times, but has the drawback that usage of all its power drains the lifeforce of the user until she dies. The land of the Homo Magi is hidden by magic and guarded by a serpent the size of Manhattan Island. This snake is far weaker in stats than the tier but is considered in this tier due to its immunity to magic as strong as Sindella's.
This tier includes several magical metahumans Zatanna ran into over her adventures. This includes the Druid, the ruler of a subatomic world Zatanna went to in search of her father initially. The Druid has size manipulation, strong enough to enter and exit a subatomic world. He can bfr people to elsewhere in his subatomic world, can see things in his crystal ball and transmute matter directly into energy. However his most dangerous power and the one used against Zatanna's father Zatara was his ability to drain and absorb all magic, though if he tries to absorb fake magic like stage magic, it actually weakens him because....Silver Age.
Zatanna's second series introduces Misty Kilgore, Zatanna's apprentice. Misty is actually the princess of the Sheeda, the metahumans who inhabit the Earth 1 billion years in the future. She showed several magic abilities similar to the Homo Magi as well the power to create matter from nothing like a taxi, turn herself invisible with only Zatanna being able to sense her, and being able to turn non-solid material solid and tangible. She also has a magic die she can use to track people.
It also introduces Gwydion one of the seven treasures given to humanity by the New Gods, the ultimate shapeshifter. Gwydion is an elemental being that can change into anything from fire capable of immolating powerful spellcasters, a star, the foam of water, and the text of a book. Its true form is eventually revealed in that last one as being a living language as words are the ultimate shapeshifter, able to represent anything.
Zatanna's third series also integrates a character from Klarion's mythos, the magic thief Uriah. Uriah is a trickster thief that steals magical items. He can run casually between dimensions, creating leashing spells to bind people, and can create monsters including a town destroying monster that can absorb essences. At his peak, he stole Zatanna's Book of Maps including coordinates and directions to every dimension.
However this tier also includes even stronger, some real heavy hitters major antagonists from Zatanna's history. First of these was Allura, strongest enemy of her father Zatara, and Zatanna's first major antagonist, the one who started her journey into magic as she tried to find her missing father. Allura is the "queen of the dark elementals" and has a non-solid form that can travel to "every mystic plane." She can use illusions and possess people. More cruelly, she has a death curse that instantly kills someone if conditions are met. She cursed Zatanna to die if she saw or heard from Zatara, even by second-hand message, which is what caused Zatara to disappear as he tried to avoid killing his own daughter. In Zatanna's first special Allura demonstrated the power to create a domain, a pocket dimension, where backwards-speaking magic didn't work (suggesting she can control how her pocket dimension works) as well as creating bindings of nothingness that drain heat and lifeforce from the person bound by them.
This tier includes Xaos, the villain of Zatanna's first series. Xaos is a powerful demon and ruler of the Darkling dimension who can sense magic across dimensions and travel across the dimensional boundary. As he did he showed ecokinesis, and control over nature, causing nature to go haywire and chaotic from his arrival and tearing holes in reality itself as he began to merge Earth and the Darkling dimension. Xaos was an extremely powerful demon to the point that Zatanna had to merge with the universe itself to battle it, and even then could only win by sealing Xaos in the core of the Earth rather than destroy it.
This tier includes Nimue Ravensong, the villain of Zatanna's second one-shot special. Nimue is a sorceress and seductress who charms men and then parasitically feeds off them, causing Zatanna to get involved when she did so on Constantine. Nimue had life-draining siphons which she used to steal some of Zatanna's power and even outside that has voodoo and transmutation, able to turn men into frogs.
However, Nimue's superior was the villain of Zatanna's third series, Brother Night, leader of the San Francisco Underground. Brother Night is a crafty and manipulative mystic criminal who can read people supernaturally well, passively mind-hax people in the same prison as him into being cultists willing to kill them for him, and has supernatural stealth. He also showed energy manipulation, telekinesis, and portal creation even between dimensions. He showed transmutation turning humans into pigs and skeletons, necromancy, and soul manipulation strong enough to bring a soul from a conceptual underworld in another dimension to his side.
So what are the weaknesses of this tier? Well, the big one is fairly direct, that being anti-magic. Almost everyone in this tier uses magic for their powers with the sole exceptions being the giant snake that guards the Homo Magi village, Xaos, and potentially Gwyddion. Without their magic, the rest of the tier are basically normal humans. This also adds another kind of weakness; passive power. Characters with energy auras, radiation, intense heat etc. will with their passive present hurt or kill most of the magic users before they can use their magic to protect them. The magic users also seem to be weak to powers that disrupt their speaking or concertation with one of the most generally strong tactics against them be sound manipulation with extremely loud sounds disrupting their words and their concentration. Magic-stealing would be especially potent as one can use the magic of the homo-magi against Gwydion or Xaos?
Against the other three, anyone with the stats of the tier that doesn't rely on magic can pretty easily deal with the snake. Gwydion might be a little tricky given the range of things it can transform into, but can be stopped pretty easily be sealing techniques or just overpowering it. The only real threat is Xaos though Xaos can and was stopped by sealing.
So who would be a good counter to the tier?
Michael Morningstar would be a good counter.
Michael has the power of energy draining being able to drain both biological energy and mystical energy to amplify himself. Even at the state he attained in the series, he was able to overpower Ultimate Humunogosaur, an alien reaching into the country level of stats meaning he would be able to pretty cleanly beat the giant snake. It's implied he could drain even the energy of a Celestialsapien, an alien species with the same power level as the Homo Magi, meaning he should pretty cleanly have the ability to drain their magic and energy.
Michael's form of dual absorption would be very potent against the tier due to their human bodies being very limited in stamina and effectively shutting down Sindella's ability to use the Medulla Jewel by making it doubly taxing on her stamina. He also has generally better skill than most of the Homo Magi having fought Ben and Kevin multiple times.
The biggest threat to Michael would definitely be early in but the threats of the tier are not very coordinated and by the time anyone notices him, he would likely have absorbed the magic of several magicians making him an exponential threat over time. The only real threat would be running into Gwyddion or Xaos early on, though most of Gwyddion's forms are not threatening to Michael, and it being highly statistically unlikely for him to run into either first. For an even better counter however you could use
Lord Beerus from Dragon Ball Super.
Beerus at the very start of Dragon Ball Super clashing with Goku threatened to destroy the entire Dragon Ball Macrocosm while holding back with his full power being comparable to a Goku likely billions or more times greater in power. Beerus is also likely not infinitely slower than Granolah who is faster than Instant Transmission, which would give him infinite speed.
Beerus has a technique known as Hakai an ability which can erase things on a planetary scale and can erase even souls, or beings who can resist metafictional erasure. If wanted, from orbit he could simply erase the Earth and with most of the fighters of this tier as nobody in this tier can resist that level of existence erasure.
This itself would be out of character but in-character Beerus would be a major threat if he ran across people in this tier who wanted to fight. He has a limited form of Ultra Instinct, warning him of danger and would tell him to take the fight seriously and his passive ki aura would both create an immense shockwave and rush of air that would make it difficult for most of the Homo Magi to cast spells and crush nearby ones from the pressure, as well as create thundestorms and tornados from just his anger, wind bursts from his breath, and explosions at will. While his offensive hax isn't super broken for this tier, the problem is that he can do this all semi-passively and instantly while most of the tier requires a moment of concentration to perform it meaning and given Beerus area of effect and scope the numbers gap doesn't really change it. This is especially true given the sheer power gap, one in which even the Medulla Jewel is probably not strong enough to overcome, or at the very least isn't strong enough to give Sindella a clear power advantage over Beerus.
Defensively Beerus can also create 11 clones of himself from his ki and through that as well as a divine level of skill honed over billions of years of combat capable of learning the basics of Ultra-Instinct that allowed him to easily beat numerous other deities with similar experience Beerus will be able to anticipate every attack and hypothetically attack first by paralyzing them with his glare, dodge ones that can be dodged and reflect ones that can be reflected via his attack reflection. What helps is that Beerus would have an unconventional defense in the form of stealth. While Beerus would look very strange in most universes, in DC and especially the magic side, he would be seen as much more plausible and his god ki can't be sensed by none gods which nobody here is. This means nobody in the tier would register the threat level of Beerus before he recognizes their threat.
If Beerus ran afoul of Gwyddion or Xaos, Xaos might have enough raw power to threaten Beerus, Beerus can simply seal either of them as he did to the Old Kai. The only threats are that Beerus doesn't himself have any anti-magic abilities meaning any random could take him out if he misses one, which is unlikely but possible, and the fact that he doesn't have conceptual plane attacks meaning if Gwyddion takes his original form of pure language, the two would stalemate each other with neither being able to hurt the other. For the best counter to the tier, I would suggest
The Hulk from Marvel Comics.
The Savage Hulk has shown the power to obliterate an entire universe and scales to other characters with universal+ feats like Thor and Hyperion. The Hulk can get much stronger, at least hundreds of times stronger. Hulk like this tier has very finite speed though one that amps up with his rage, but reaction speed capable of reacting to Divine Entities with infinite speed.
The Hulk has essentially a perfect powerset for dealing with this tier. Because in Marvel Comics Gamma Radiation comes from the One Below All, the Devil Analogy, The Hulk has an inherent resistance to magical effects and even moreso has shown explict resistance to all the powers of this tier. While Homo Magi can brainwash people or wipe their memories in order to avoid detection but the Hulk's raging mind is functionally impossible for most Marvel psychics to beat having resisted the lines of Mentallo, Cable, Xemnu, and the Leader. Homo Magi typically beat opponents by transmuting them however a ray that can de-evolve entities and Gray Gargoyle's ability to turn things to stone were both completely negated by the Hulk. Even the Sonic Vortex which completely rearranges molecules on a subatomic level did nothing to the Hulk. Strong Homo Magi will sometimes try to BFR enemies in spacetime but the Hulk has resisted this very power when he was sent into the Negative Zone, literally punched through the time barrier and a time storm to return to his prior point, and tanked the power of the spatial warper Vector. Allura can try to bind enemies with nothingness, drain their lifeforce, and possess enemies but the Hulk has evolved to break similar mystical binds, resisted life drain, and Zzax was able to possess the Hulk.
The Hulk at higher levels of rage passively produces gamma radiation which, given that most of the tier is filled with characters with completely normal human bodies, would absolutely incinerate most of enemies on this tier. Hulk can also perform the thunderclap, a clap of such force that it creates a huge booming noise and shockwave wall which would not only take out any homo magi in the way, but would disrupt the speaking and concentration of mages nearby.
Gwyddion can enter its conceptual state but while this would slow the Hulk temporarily, Hulk has an adaptive factor that allowed him to develop the ability to see and fight ghosts. Given the conceptual nature of his powers, it's very likely he could do the same to affect concepts like Gwyddion. The only beings who might pose any kind of threat are Sindella via the Medulla Jewel and Xaos. However, while these have a power above Hulk normally, Hulk has an immense regen factor that allowed him to reesemble himself after being cut to pieces, a seemingly unending stamina, as well as the ability to return to life from the Green Door if he ever dies, while Xaos and especailly Sindella have no such stamina. Xaos might take a while but Hulk gets stronger as he fights and he eventually would adapt enough power to defeat her in an almost identical situation to his adapting to and defeating Umar, the ruler of the Dark Dimension.
Multiversal Tier:
The great magician Zatara created four legendary books, impossible to find, the Libri Zatarae, one of each element. During the final issue of Zatanna's second series she speaks to the spirit of her father who tells her the book of water is a kind heart, the book of earth is a graceful body, the book of air is a keen mind, and the book of fire is a strong spirit. His greatest spell as a magician and gift to the world was Zatanna herself. After after realizing she was her father's greatest spell, that his spirit lived on in her, Zatanna regained her confidence in herself reaching a new level of power. This tier contains the two strongest enemies of Zatanna and Zatanna herself after reaching her ultimate level of power.
Characters on this tier have infinite magical power which can be used to give themselves infinite stats, with Zatanna and Zor collapsing reality around them during their fight, and Post-Books of Zatara Zatanna having enough magical power to contend with some of the strongest magical entities in DC Comics such as the Upside-Down Man and Pralaya, both of whom can easily physically destroy the multiverse. This level of magic is consistent with Magicians having similar unbounded potential such as the Magicians aiding the Spectre in his battle against the Anti-Monitor in Crisis on Infinite Earths or briefly containing the Great Evil Beast. Zatanna's powers and DC Cosmology are rooted in Hermeticism, a mystical tradition that holds that the internal self and the outer self are linked and so through manipulation of the self one can manipulate the whole world. As above, so below, and to conquer the world one must first conquer oneself. As such there's no real stat limit here, though I will only be including characters with conceptually infinite power, as there are no metaconceptual entities on this tier.
There are three characters on this tier. One of them is Mammon, the Demon Lord of Greed. Like all Demon Lords he is a conceptual entity in the Godsphere ruling over his own Hell, its own conceptual universe. He has shown some general demon type abilities like possession, even of a casino full of people at once, making demonic deals like gifting immortality for sacrifices, conjuring gold or flames or undead minions. As a powerful demon he should also have extremely potent soul manipulation with Demon Lords regularly manipulating the souls within their Hell as a power source, suggesting he'd have universal+ soul manipulation.
However even he would be nothing compared to the strongest of Zatanna's enemies, Zor, the main villain of Zatanna's second series. Zor was part of a secret order of angels known as the Seven Unknown Men who sought to keep the metafictional threads of reality vibrant. Zor rebelled against them wanting to rid the continuity of all things childish. Three times Zor fought the Spectre, the strongest superhero of DC Earth to a standstill, the Spectre being the Wrath of God capable of affecting whole godsphere realms such as when he froze all of Hell. Zor like all the Secret Order of Angels exists outside the main DC narrative in-universe, and as such is resistant to most forms of metafictional hax or hax in general. In his battle with Zatanna, he brought hte entire universe down on a metafictional level. With his angelic control of reality, Zor can reality-warp to do things like growing to cosmic sizes, destroy reality on a metafictional space, shoot fireballs, teleport between dimensions, possessing people, strike people down with death, and broadly speaking anything else he can believe he can do. Through his time-sewing machine he can also patch up holes in reality and create plot warping clothing for people that decide their character arcs.
However Zor was subdued and returned to the Time Tailors by the one and only, the Mistress of Magic, the Princess of Presdigitation, our starring role here tonight folks, Zatanna Zatara! Zatanna is the Justice League's Official Magician and has some of the most broken magic in the verse, able to manipulate the metafictional panels of the comic she was in during her fight with Zor, pulling down the entire metafictional reality in their struggle. She controls spacetime and all planes of reality up to the metafictional, can give herself the powers of others or nullify their powers, control the magic of others, transfer the trauma she would feel from an attack to others, seal enemies as she sealed Allura in a bottle, create an army of illusory duplicates and basically anything else she wants to. Her powers are based on the Principle of Hermeticism and can do whatever she believes she can. With her magic Zatanna hsa shown many many other abilities as well. Outside of her spells, Zatanna can detect magic on an inter-dimensional scale, is trained in Martian Judo, and is a world class stage magician even without her magical powers. She also has access to a large variety of magical objects such as a Crystal Ball, her enchanted Manor Shadowcrest, a staff that can amplify her power etc. She also hypothetically inherited the Medulla Jewel to amplify her power if need be. She also, and this is a common misconception but has been shown numerous times that she can cast spells purely through concetration with no verbal component.
So if that's not a weakness of hers, what are the tier's weaknesses? Well Zatanna requires belief in her self in order to cast her spell though after her character development is too high for most situations to really affect her. The bigger one is that even though Zatanna is an incredibly powerful magician, she relies on a limited human body. She has a very finite human stamina she relies on, and moreover, the biggest weakness Zatanna consistently shows is stealth strategies. Even Zatanna's third series where she has unlocked her ultimate power, she struggled against the Witch Hunters, Fuseli, Oscar, and Uriah all because they used stealth. Unlike the other big name DC Magic-users like Dr. Fate whose helms sees all of time and space or Raven the empath who senses all nearby emotions, Zatanna lacks passive sensory abilities. Her only anti-stealth power normally is her magic detection. While she can cast spells to see far away things or get her crystal ball to see the future, she passively has basically normal human senses.
Mammon and Zor don't rely on fragile human bodies being a demon lord and a metafictional time angel but both have physical and psychological weaknesses. Psychologically both are arrogant villains, the former obsessed with wealth and the latter his own sense of grandeur. Mammon as a demon is weak to holy symbols and to supernatural cold while Zor is weak to ectobane, an obscure anti-magical wood. So in other to fight them what would be helpful would be psychological manipulation, the ability to quickly figure out weaknesses, and the ability to quickly summon or create those weaknesses.
So broadly speaking the best counter would be a stealthy infiltrator-type character whose a clever manipulator, especially one at this stat level to be able to actually fight, to quickly create the physical weaknesses of Mammon or Zor, and who is not magical so Zatanna can't sense them as strange.
The first counter I would suggest is
Absimiliard (or any of the Antediluvians) from World of Darkness
The Antediluvians are a group of ancient vampires from before the Biblical Flood, each the founder of one of the Vampire Clans. As Vampires get more powerful in World of Darkness with age, the Antediluvians have incalculable power such that one, Lasombra, was capable of fusing with a conceptual void in the Umbra and threatening to fuse with the mortal reality, an entire multiverse, to blot out sunlight from existence, and Absimiliard himself was able to battle a Talon of the Wyrm, one of the Triat, the three conventional god tiers of the verse. He was able to easily beat a Master Mage who can manipulate the concepts of time and space for the entire multiverse.
In there we see the first reason Absimiliard would be powerful here, the Antediluvians have the ability to resist magic on the level of high ranking mages which would include all of Zatanna's magical abilities such as spacetime manipulation, plot manipulation, and Hermetic Reality-Warping.
The Antediluvians are able to perform the Vampire Disciplines to a 10th Dot Level, the highest level reserved in the modern specifically and only for the Antediluvians. Absimiliard in particular is the founder of the Nosferatu Clan. The Nosferatu are a clan of vampires who are known for their horrid monstrous appearance (as punishment for Absimilard's leading role in the slaughter of the vampire generation before them) and so are masters at the Vampire Discipline of Obfuscate, of concealing ones presence. Their founder being so good at the skill that he can at will remove all traces and memories of his existence from reality, meaning so long as he continually wills it, it would be impossible for the tier to remember him and he would constantly be in stealth even while fighting them.
Absimiliard would also have access to numerous other 10th Dot powers giving similarly broken abilities and as an absolutely ancient being in the political and violence based minefield of Vampire politics would have a level of manipulative intelligence and combat skill far above anyone in this tier.
However Absimiliard can't really take advantage of Mammon's weakness and he could be beaten by his own vampiric weaknesses to fire and sunlight, though due to his combat skill and stealth it's unlikely that Zatanna and Zor would be able to him first. The bigger problem is against Zor specifically it could very well take a long time as Absimilard has no way to time travel freely and so he would have to wait for Zor to enter into the same timeframe that Absimilard exists. Zor could maybe even win if he accidentally appears at an earlier point of Absimiliard's life before he gained such power though the early life of the Antedeluvians. is deliberately unclear and it's unknown if he was ever weak enough for Zor to kill.
For an even better counter, you could use
Amun from Egyptian Mythology
Amun is one of the Ogdoad, the eight primordial deities existing before time. Amun would definitely have enough raw power to defeat them as he would be equal in power to his brother Ogdoad Heh, who is the embodiment of conceptual infinity.
Amun is the embodiment of the invisible hidden things, of the unknown and of the winds. With his conceptual invisibility it would be extraordinarily different for anyone in this to figure out what they are fighting or even that they are in a fight before Amun defeats them. The only way to detect Amun would be with the ability to see conceptually invisible or metafictional things, and while Zatanna has fought off something Pralaya even then Pralaya she could not perceive her true form. Even if Zatanna and Zor CAN see Amun, they would still need to adjust their perspective to the metafictional to see him, something that's very much not the norm for them.
As God of the Winds, Amun can stealth the breath from Zatanna's lungs, something that while it wouldn't completely keep from casting, would certainly distract and disorient. Amun was worshipped as the Holy Enforcer of Ma'at, of the Metaphysical Balance and Order of being, and so his very presence would be anathema to Mammon. Similarly Amun as the god representing hidden and unknown things, would definitely have knowledge of Ectobane and could use it against Zor.
The only way the tier could win is if Zor and Zatanna were able to quickly figure out who they were fighting out who they were fighting and team up, which is extremely improbable given Zor's evil arrogant personality as well as how fast Amun could kill either of them, and even then it would be difficult. Zatanna's magic that can affect even Pralaya should be able with its fullest extent to one-shot Amun, and either could hypothetically effect the metafictional the fight happens in, which would allow them to affect him, but he has enough power similarly to hurt either of them, especially Zatanna's given her relatively fragile human body, and is truly god tier in intelligence compared to them. That said it is a hypothetical threat. For the absolute best counter I would suggest
Okina Matara from Touhou Project
Okina created and maintained a mirror reflection of the multiverse, including conceptually infinite realms like Makai of the Demon Realm, and can travel it is in finite time, putting her equal in stats to Zatanna and Zor during their climactic fight.
Okina like all gods in Touhou are formless primordial entities predating all concepts and creating conceptual forms for themselves. Even most metafictional abilities in DC don't transcend all concepts, meaning even Zor would have no ability to affect Okina's true self. At best only Zatanna's full power which effected Pralaya would be able to affect Okina, but that's assuming she'd ever realize where to affect.
Okina is the secret hidden god, acting from the shadows, excelling in stealth tactics, and interacting with things from her own hidden dimension apart from all things. As such the entire verse would have no idea what's happening or how to fight back or any easy way to find out. While Zatanna has been able to sense magic in other dimensions, she's never been shown to sense magic an infinite distance away like in another infinite conceptual realm. Even if they somehow found Okina's location, Okina is known for her control over doorways and ability to travel anywhere, and with no ability to detect where she has gone, Okina can endlessly go wherever she wishes and attack from there while the tier would have no ability to follow.
Okina is perfectly structured to take advantage of all the weaknesses of the verse. As a Goddess she has an inherent holy power that would be anathema to Mammon, especially if she brought him within her realm which pulsates with her power. Okina has the ability to control all phenomena of life, as she bestowed her two minions Satono and Mai with the abilities to control mental energy and life energy respectively, which would be perfectly suited to disrupting Zatanna's concentration and instantly tiring out her human body respectively meaning not only can Okina disrupt Zatanna's magic directly, she can also, as is her normal MO, sending Satono and Mai to weaken and test Zatanna without Zatanna being able to counterattack Okina herself. Her control over the phenomena of life is very broad allowing her to cause oil leaks across Gensokyo or control the seasons which means she almost certainly could produce ectobane if she wanted, not that she would necessarily need to as both Mammon and Zor are godsphere entities. Godsphere entities rely on belief in them for their power meaning BFR-ing them to a dimension with no believers like Okina's realm, or simply using her conceptual manipulation and onomakinesis to change their name and identity, would completely depower them.
Even in the extremely unlikely scenario that Okina allowed Zatanna, Zor, and Mammon in an area where their powers would be of some function, Okina would still win pretty easily. While Zatanna's magic might technically be able to harm her, Okina is a Sage of Gensokyo, one of the most mentally capable fighters in Touhou, meaning her skill level should be superhuman at least given this is series with numerous species that live thousands of years and engage constantly in danmaku battles. Similarly in raw intelligence Okina should be relative to Yukari who even her Shikigami, basically a pet, is capable of calculating the width of the Sanzu River, a spiritual river ever-changing based on the actions of mortals. Okina should also be relative in intelligence to the brain of the Moon Eirin Yagokoro who could create potions removed the concept of death from people. Okina is cosmically more intelligent and dramatically more skilled then all the characters here and in a direct fight of similar stats, would easily win, especially as she is very prone to using her manipulative wit to defeat similarly powerful magic-wielders similar to Zatanna herself. And given the intelligence gap she can likely pull Zatanna's own stunt on her, being similarly confident in herself and able to manipulate Zatanna's weaknesses to defeat her.
And that's how to be OP in the Zatanna-verse.
