ParanoydStyle
Peace Among Worlds
First off, I don't mean tiers in the 5th Edition sense of "break points where your proficiency bonus increases by one whole point".
I just got into Fifth Edition and I really want to know what the relative power of the classes is; they can't be as perfectly balanced as they seem on a casual surface skim, can they?
Between 2000 and I dunno, 2010?, various internets forums (Giant In The Playground and dozens of others) basically ranked all of the D&D 3.5 classes into a list of tiers, like characters in a fighting videogame. So (and now I'm speaking from a very leaky memory) Cleric/Druid/Wizard were Tier 1, Sorcerer/Necromancer were Tier 2, Monks were Tier 4, Rogues were Tier 5, and so on. There was even a playtesting tool they used for it called the "same game test".
(I learned most of what I know about charop in D&D from a tiny, nasty, brilliant little message board called the Gaming Den, where if you're not already familiar with it, you should probably never go because they are mean...they have loads of interesting ideas, they're just seemingly incapable of sharing them without vicious ad-hominem attacks and they vehemently hate almost literally every RPG ever made. I find them entertaining and occasionally informative anyway, and I digress...)
Now, I know that asking 5E players for a rough consensus on this kind of thing is going to get me a VERY ROUGH consensus at best, but what are generally considered the best and worst classes in 5th, and how would you rank them from best to worst? If one build of a class (idk say the Way of Shadow monk) is markedly better or worse than another build of the same class (idk, say the Way of the Four Elements monk), list them separately. You don't have to organize the list into tiers if you don't want to. Everyone's list will be understood to be their own opinion with the consensus being formed (if any) once lots of opinions are on the table.
I just got into Fifth Edition and I really want to know what the relative power of the classes is; they can't be as perfectly balanced as they seem on a casual surface skim, can they?
Between 2000 and I dunno, 2010?, various internets forums (Giant In The Playground and dozens of others) basically ranked all of the D&D 3.5 classes into a list of tiers, like characters in a fighting videogame. So (and now I'm speaking from a very leaky memory) Cleric/Druid/Wizard were Tier 1, Sorcerer/Necromancer were Tier 2, Monks were Tier 4, Rogues were Tier 5, and so on. There was even a playtesting tool they used for it called the "same game test".
(I learned most of what I know about charop in D&D from a tiny, nasty, brilliant little message board called the Gaming Den, where if you're not already familiar with it, you should probably never go because they are mean...they have loads of interesting ideas, they're just seemingly incapable of sharing them without vicious ad-hominem attacks and they vehemently hate almost literally every RPG ever made. I find them entertaining and occasionally informative anyway, and I digress...)
Now, I know that asking 5E players for a rough consensus on this kind of thing is going to get me a VERY ROUGH consensus at best, but what are generally considered the best and worst classes in 5th, and how would you rank them from best to worst? If one build of a class (idk say the Way of Shadow monk) is markedly better or worse than another build of the same class (idk, say the Way of the Four Elements monk), list them separately. You don't have to organize the list into tiers if you don't want to. Everyone's list will be understood to be their own opinion with the consensus being formed (if any) once lots of opinions are on the table.