Community Tiering for all 3.5 Base Classes

[eggynack]

really, why?

Why not? It doesn't matter at all whether a class' abilities are pulled from some strong monster or not. It doesn't matter whether those abilities have the surface level appearance of goodness. All that matters is what the abilities actually do, and, when you get those abilities. So, for example, flight. Flight is generally a pretty strong ability. It's taken from dragons, and when dragons do it they do pretty well with it. When you get flight at level 19 though, many many levels after you're expected to have it, and in a form that isn't even all that great, it's not even really having a measurable impact on the power level of a class. Similarly, a breath weapon. Breath weapons can be pretty strong, but the damage progression associated with the dragon shaman in particular means you're often going to prefer just stabbing your opponents in the face. Or you would, if you had any particular ability to do that. Ignore how dragony these abilities look. Consider the class features in a vacuum. Would you rather have the stuff this class is offering than the stuff classes of higher tiers are offering?

Anyways, I also don't have much opinion on any of these. Except dread necro, which seems like a clear 3. Honestly, the fact that beguilers are getting the same rank as before in this thread is starting to diminish my interest in the whole thing. I mean, what's even the point if there's gonna be this flood of 3's largely premised on the old tier system, ones that don't even significantly engage with the argument on that topic taking place. I feel like healer is gonna come around, and I'm going to be like, "This class is probably a tier three, tier four at worst," and I'm going to put together a really convincing argument about that, and it'll all be rendered pointless by a bunch of people calling it a five because they haven't thought overmuch about that tiering since it showed up in the original thread. Same kinda thing happened with the adept, actually. I was on the winning side of that one, but I wasn't necessarily winning the argument. Tier momentum simply accounts for a lot of the number this thread arrives at.