Community Tiering for all 3.5 Base Classes

[eggynack]

One more time: variants will be considered at the end, I will not reopen nominations for classes just because you think they've been mis-tiered no matter how much you protest, and this is not the thread to discuss classes which have already been tiered unless you're using that tier to inform later classes.

Not only have they been mistiered, but, as I've pointed out, you are fundamentally part of the reason they've been mistiered. Where were you in what was supposed to be high level community discussion of the beguiler? You gave a vote on essentially no basis, and then utterly failed to defend your position (because you never really tried). You did marginally more for the dread necromancer, but you only ever responded on matters directly relating to their command of minions, never to my direct response to you that they could do a ton of other things, never to the many other posts on that topic. People, you included, who haven't actually done much talking about the classes, have had this outsized impact on the tier listing. I'm trying to change that, by, y'know, having those conversations.

- It's unreasonable to expect people, the vast majority of whom don't intend to change their votes, to re-vote every time the beguiler lobby is sad that the beguiler isn't T2, or any other class's lobby calls for a re-vote.

- It's unreasonable to expect me to call said re-vote every time that happens.

As has been pointed out, unless the count was mistaken, the number of people that've currently been convinced out of folks who originally voted is enough that you don't have to call a revote. The original vote, when altered based on the voter's current opinions, seems to support shifting the tier.

- If I did call a re-vote every time someone was upset by the location of a class, I would be calling so many re-votes that we'd never actually reach the end of the list, let alone hear the case for the tens of variants being nominated.

It's not about me being upset, or anyone else being upset. It's about your listing being wrong here by any reasonable metric. If I were the only person supporting the beguiler's retiering (and now that of the dread necromancer, though we're not yet at the point where that would be truly justified, because that post-vote discussion hasn't done much yet), or even if everyone who voted them tier two were clamoring for it, that'd mean nothing. It would tell us what we already know, that people who thought they were tier two still think that, and that they think that loudly. But, at this point, people who originally voted the class tier three, and new people who didn't vote originally (though they're arguably less important, as they less fully fit the thread parameters and aren't a strict swing), are saying they support this tiering, and as far as I can tell no one has done the opposite.

That, I'd suspect, isn't going to happen too often. Hell, I started arguing hoping to change some minds on this, but I wasn't necessarily expecting to succeed. Most arguments fail to convince people on the opposing side, in my experience, but you try because of moments like this, where people are turned by the force of long-form discussion.

- The actual tier of the beguiler isn't going to change. If you wanted to vote T2, you should have voted T2 when you had the opportunity rather than lobbying for special favours. Allowing people to push me around just by being rude at me or questioning my motives is actually less conducive to creating a tier list which the playground tends to agree on.

I don't question your motives, and the vast majority of the support for beguilers has had nothing to do with you. What I do think is that there's a fundamental problem with what has been going on with this thread, and that you, to some extent, are part of that problem. But I've only mentioned that maybe three or four times, and I don't think anyone else has (which makes for a ridiculously small amount directed at you given this thread's length). Most of the support is coming from what it so rarely comes from. People having high level argument with a solid side and getting convinced. That is what we're doing.

You say that pushing you around or questioning your motives isn't conducive to changing your mind. Well, that goes both ways. Acting like we're a bunch of whining crybabies who are seeking this with no valid claim beyond our own feelings on the matter is not especially conducive to getting us to stop arguing for it. It's all very condescending to a position you haven't even really considered.

- I think that several classes are in the wrong tier, but I'm not complaining because this thread operates on the majority opinion, not the opinion of whoever shouts at me loudly enough.

It currently operates on neither. After all, even if you constrain the question of what group you're taking the majority of to those who voted early, it would seem that the beguiler still wins out at this point. And, hey, if you think several classes are in the wrong tier, you don't need to complain. You just need to argue it. No one is stopping you besides yourself.

- This is a relatively high-procedure thread, which is the only thing making it at all easy to follow. Breaking that procedure is just going to make it impossible to follow what's actually going on.

Not really. I'm not saying you should keep constant close track of the entire thread and all of its numbers, but that, when a ton of new and old people are giving a vote counter to the current listed tier or changing their vote respectively, it might be worth reconsidering that number. For example, unless I'm mistaken, not much has changed in this way on the dread necromancer. So, don't consider altering that tier or holding a revote now. Consider it later, after I've convinced some folk that I'm right. If I can't do that, what's even the point of considering the tier a second time? It should be pretty visible when this happens. It was this time. And, I gotta say, one person who'd be well worth convincing on this point, if not the point of retiering on this thread itself, is you. After all, you still haven't responded to a single point of mine on either the beguiler or dread necromancer. Maybe you should join this discussion, instead of fighting against it. If not for the accuracy of this thread, then for the accuracy of your own opinions.

For those in the proverbial back: this thread's procedure is not changing. If you don't like it, that's certainly your prerogative, but I don't intend to respond to any more complaints on the issue.

For you, my position on this has not changed. If you don't like the continued discussion of these classes, that's certainly your prerogative, but as long as people are willing to discuss these classes, then I will discuss the classes with them. Because what I care about in this thread is accurate tiering, even if it doesn't fit a cleanly laid out procedure. That is what this thread should be seeking, if it isn't seeking that already.

Edit:

A lot of people are getting discouraged because the tier isn't "accurate".

The point of this work isn't to really make it accurate to the real game (though that is a hoped for consequence). The idea more is to give an average forum consensus. If most people are wrong, then the average will be off. But it's still accurate to the consensus being measured.

It's not useful to what you're hoping for. That doesn't mean it isn't useful at all.

But the current tier isn't even reflective of that desire. The actual result has been that if you take this kind of sample of the playground, then while those people will support tier three with limited discussion within a week, further discussion will lead that average forum group's consensus to be tier two. What we have now isn't even apparently accurate to the consensus being measured.

So this is it, huh. Thread isn't halfway done and it's stalled out. Too hung up on one class to get anything productive done. Might as well give up on making a tier list at all.

That's a ridiculous claim. Apart from direct responses to Jormengand, and posts that exist in that general chain of conversation, it looks like just about every post since the new classes started getting discussed were about those new classes. I'd certainly like more dread necromancer talk, but it hasn't really been happening. We've been mostly talking about experts, with some duskblade mixed in, and a bit of the other non-druid classes too. We're never going to talk about every class equally. Wouldn't be much point to that.