Quote Originally Posted by stoutstien View Post
I think it's important because (hopefully) the vast majority of players aren't ranking classes that want to play based on a pile of mechanics, such as ranking full casters solely based on that similarly. That's why ranking all the classes in popularity across the board is mostly a pointless metric. It doesn't matter if only 5% want to ever play a bard like PC as long as that same 5% feels like there are enough options to do just that.
I cited the popularity metrics because the assertion being made was that a significant number of players are being "turned off" from playing Cleric due to their design. That doesn't appear to be the case from the numbers. This isn't to say that clerics are in any way perfect, but I would expect mechanical barriers to their adoption to be reflected in usage, much as they were with Crawford's comments on the Druid and its complexity.