Why each class is in its tier: 2019 update!

[Troacctid]

Yes, but there are also people who wouldn't play fighter because it's obviously weaker and more limited in its scope of abilities than many other classes whether the tier system existed or not.

The tier system was created to give DMs a rough idea of how well PCs of different classes could accomplish tasks (particularly relative to each other). T1 can handle pretty much any theoretical task and at high levels of optimization can do many of them with ease. Meanwhile, a T4 or 5 is likely to run into trouble outside a specific niche and sometimes even inside its own. Tiering can also serve as means to alert your players, if they're familiar with the tier system, how well they should optimize. If you say you're going to run a T1 game, for instance, they know they either need to break out High Op tricks for T2 and T3 classes or play a T1 class competently. OTOH, if you say you're going for a T4 balance point, they know that if they want to play a higher tier class they might have to make some choices that would normally be considered a little to very suboptimal.

Conventional wisdom seems to be you can play mostly fine within two tiers of whatever the stated balance point is. You can certainly play a class down more than that, but you really can't play up past a certain point.

Also, who doesn't like ranking things?

Ardent- It's odd to see the write-up not mention the ACF's found in Mind's eye. Probably not enough to boost it a tier, but it a source of a major powershift for the class, even if you get rid of the whole, "Just add powers to your mantle" one.

That's true. The free metapsionics are super busted once you hit that level.

Factotum- The only reason the Factotum is even arguably tier 3 is because of Arcane Dilettante. Brains over Brawns is probably the golden class feature of the class seeing as it is a bonus to a hard to get set of skills. If you'd remove Arcane Dilettante from the class, you'd end up with a worst rogue. And Arcane Dilettante doesn't scale particularly well. Factotum is dip for some builds or a class to enter Chameleon with.

I don't think factotum is a particularly good or even logical entry for chameleon. I mean, you only need the one class skill.