This is a tierlist mostly made of sympathie and who i am rooting for. Writing and generell Charcter Consistency is secondary. Therefore Ryan, carebear, and Blake, laidbackwolf are high rated because of personal bias. Russel is potentially the best written and most complex charcter among the cast (S-Tier). However The Combination of the most stubborn and somewhat least caring guy puts him into D Tier; 

Joel is also a very good MC with bunch of flaws. Physicalls and emotional week but knowledgable, brave/determent and wise for his age making him a reliable and useful Partymember.  He still suffer from the "Not-enough-talking about-my-feelings" Syndrom like many Protagonist. Similiar to Dave from Password he always pretend to be fine. Anyway Joel remains one of the very best MC in FVN i read so far.

I won't deny that I would prefer Joel without the beard or signs of it