Quote Originally Posted by Cosi View Post
Yeah, but people don't play a class. They play a build. So if you rank classes without considering PrCs, you get rankings that don't correspond to the playspace. How many 20th level Wizards (or Fighters, or pretty much any class other than Druid) do you think there are?
Yeah, but we're ranking classes, not Builds. There's really no good way to rank the classes based on their related Builds since any one class could have several Builds that are too different to compare to each other.

The information could be more accurate, but less useful due to being overly technical. Class ranking is, by its nature, a generalization and people referencing the list should be aware of its limitations.

What class rankings measures is the theoretical power of a class so as to inform the player/dm as to how to expect a class to perform on its own so they can plan and prepare whatever extra assistance it needs to succeed (or have a fair chance at succeeding).

It's not meant to say, "class x is y tier no matter how you use it in your build." It says, "a build with strong dependency on class x will typically reach tier y."