D&D 5E The New Tiers Ranked

[guachi]

The Rogue is a standout in the exploration or social pillar in Heroic tier simply because you get your Expertise at level 1 and you have lots of skills. And at level 1 you get a resourceless +1d6 in combat.

It's just that the farther away from level 1 you get the less beneficial the Rogue's resourceless abilities are.

I'd vote Rogue as most powerful and versatile class at level 1. It just doesn't last very long.

 

[Zardnaar]

The Rogue is a standout in the exploration or social pillar in Heroic tier simply because you get your Expertise at level 1 and you have lots of skills. And at level 1 you get a resourceless +1d6 in combat.

It's just that the farther away from level 1 you get the less beneficial the Rogue's resourceless abilities are.

I'd vote Rogue as most powerful and versatile class at level 1. It just doesn't last very long.

It's not that much of a bonus martial two handed weapons come to mind. It's also inferior to Monks and a nature cleric using pole arm master and staff plus Shillagh.

 

[FrogReaver]

The Rogue is a standout in the exploration or social pillar in Heroic tier simply because you get your Expertise at level 1 and you have lots of skills. And at level 1 you get a resourceless +1d6 in combat.

It's just that the farther away from level 1 you get the less beneficial the Rogue's resourceless abilities are.

I'd vote Rogue as most powerful and versatile class at level 1. It just doesn't last very long.

Expertise at tier 1 is a +2 bump to a skill. Is it really that great? The same for the skill bonuses. They are just +2 bonuses. I'm not sure I'm convinced that 4 +2 bonuses to skills really makes for a notable enough ability in either the social or exploration tiers.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's not that much of a bonus martial two handed weapons come to mind. It's also inferior to Monks and a nature cleric using pole arm master and staff plus Shillagh.

A rogue can dual wield essentially getting 3d6+mod. He's one of the higher damage dealers in tier 1 (at least till feats are considered). Up that to 4d6+mod. And given how the rogue does damage he rarely flat out misses and does pretty solid damage on all of his hits.

Monks do comparable damage to the rogue, but more? I'm not seeing it.

Anything using polearm master does good tier 1 damage. But in your specific example, the rogue still is doing more than the nature cleric polearm master cleric.

 

[Zardnaar]

Expertise at tier 1 is a +2 bump to a skill. Is it really that great? The same for the skill bonuses. They are just +2 bonuses. I'm not sure I'm convinced that 4 +2 bonuses to skills really makes for a notable enough ability in either the social or exploration tiers.

Cleric spamming guidance is better at everything lol. It's why I put Rogues tier 3. They're decent at everything excel at nothing. They might peak level 3 relative to everything else.

Earlier tempest cleric discussion they are a bit more MAD while light and nature can focus on wisdom. Rolled stats can negate that though so the tiers are a bit situational as good dice roll, specific campaign, DM, party composition can definitely change the tiers. It's a guideline that under most circumstances i think will be decent. If I am wrong I hope its marginal. In the OP I also said I do not count nova damage and its fairly obvious what classes are better in situations where that's the norm. I also said that if you have multiple spellcasters you might be facing nova situations every combat. Traditional cleric and wizards not a big deal but if the rogue us replaced by a bard and fighter is replaced by hexblade or if you have a 5 or 6 person party then going nova will be more noticeable. Even then you can use my guide to figure out the better spellcasters options.

I'll tweak it tomorrow as in my head some of the classes are decent at social and exploration but I have not made it explicit in my descriptions. All the classes have a basic level of combat ability the only ones really meh at it are low level spellcasters.

 

[Zardnaar]

Added new tier and updated my OP going more in depth in my reasoning into rating the other pillars and put a bit more effort into talking up the out of combat options for the classes level 11-16.

The next tier up won't really see a drastic change in ranking (1 or 2 maybe) so I'll rate the capstone abilities. Further plans are to add in the non PHB archetypes, and expand the 1st 2 tiers. Basically if a class is good in two pillars it gets rated well.

 

[Markh3rd]

I'm curious to see your take on Purple Dragon Knight. Looking forward to the final tier also. Thanks for the article.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm curious to see your take on Purple Dragon Knight. Looking forward to the final tier also. Thanks for the article.

From memory it's kinda meh. Final tier may be in the next day or two then I'll look at SCAG and Xanathars.

 

[stuffnsuch]

then I'll look at SCAG and Xanathars.

This was linked to via reddit and I think it's a thoroughly interesting read, can't wait to read what you think about SCAG/XAN'S

 

[Yaarel]

So how do I rate the classes? Basically I am looking at the 3 pillars of 5E- Social, combat and exploration with a slight emphasis on combat (say 40% vs 30% for the other 2). Very few if any classes are good at all 3, most are good at two, some are only good at one.

Actually, I would find the rating more useful if you ranked classes into tiers FOR EACH PILLAR.

So, who is the top tier for Combat? Who is the top tier for Social? Who is the top tier for Exploration?

And so on down.