D&D (2024) 2024 Class Rankings (from nat1gaming.com) for ppl who believe that stuff.

[ECMO3]

Agree with this.

Kinda funny people barely playing 5E claiming fireball is broken. It was a B tier sowll in 3.5 abd it's worse now. One of tge better danage dealing spells but it's not a caster strength (damage).

IME Fireball is situationally awesome. Fireball is probably the best 3rd level spell when you have large numbers of enemies clumped together, with relatively low hps, who are immune to Frightenend and Charmed and not resistant to fire and there are no allies in the AOE. In that situation it can't be beat. In most other situations there are better spells.

It's more about teamwork. Caster sers up a foe via hold spell. Still have to kill it fast before the target saves.

There are two ways to play this IME. One is to do like you said, the other is just to take his actions away while you deal with other enemies.

This creates a conundrum. I cast Hold Person on 3 out of 5 Orogs. Do you attack the two that are still fighting or do you attack the Paralyzed ones who take critical damage with every melee hit?

 

[ECMO3]

The list is very superficial. It seems to ignore the fact that the barbarian is one of the best classes at taking physical damage. Amazingly so.

Taking damage is not as valuable as taking attacks and a lot of classes are better than the Barbarian at this because they are more difficult to damage.

The other thing that gets ignored is a class’ ability to utilize the full range of action economy. Bonus and reactions. Rogues, monks, fighters can do a lot of meaningful stuff that really adds up to an interesting and substantial turn. Again often ignored by this kind of list.

I agree, and would add Warlocks to that list.

 

[TheSword]

Taking damage is not as valuable as taking attacks and a lot of classes are better than the Barbarian at this because they are more difficult to damage.



I agree, and would add Warlocks to that list.

I think you mean more difficult to hit. Though as monster Attack bonuses increase faster than AC it gets to a point where being able to half the damage of every attack is a huge boon.

 

[Zardnaar]

IME Fireball is situationally awesome. Fireball is probably the best 3rd level spell when you have large numbers of enemies clumped together, with relatively low hps, who are immune to Frightenend and Charmed and not resistant to fire and there are no allies in the AOE. In that situation it can't be beat. In most other situations there are better spells.



There are two ways to play this IME. One is to do like you said, the other is just to take his actions away while you deal with other enemies.

This creates a conundrum. I cast Hold Person on 3 out of 5 Orogs. Do you attack the two that are still fighting or do you attack the Paralyzed ones who take critical damage with every melee hit?

Action surge on paralyzed ones always nice.

 

[Ashrym]

What exactly are they ranking (combat power, fun, all three phases) and how are they addressing levels (the best classes at level 5 are usually not the best at level 15). Is it a 1-20 ranking or are they focused on a specific tier?

ya know, I did link the site so that people could go look. ;-)

They basically assigned tier values to individual traits and features, totaled those, and then stack ranked based on those values. For example, bards got an S-Tier value at 17th level for their 9th level spell access while warlocks were given A-Tier value at 17th level for their more limited 9th level spell access.

Because they were applying abilities from all tiers of play this would be a tier 4 ranking but they did seem to have a level modifier applied that weighted lower level abilities over higher levels. I didn't bother taking a close look.

What I can say is if you are looking across levels 1-20 and making each level of equal importance, the most fun classes to play in my opinion are (in order):

Glamor Bard
Fey Warlock
Fey Wanderer Ranger
Valor Bard
Arcane Trickster
Eldritch Knight

It is more difficult to say if you are rating on combat power. The big problem for me is if you are optimizing for combat across all 20 levels a single class character will not do as well as an optimized multiclass.

If you are looking at all three phases of the game, I think Arcane Trickster or Great Old One Warlock have this locked up.

I find thief rogues, battle master fighters, and any bard I've ever played to be a lot of fun; but I can have fun with any class and subclass. ;-)

 

[Zardnaar]

ya know, I did link the site so that people could go look. ;-)

They basically assigned tier values to individual traits and features, totaled those, and then stack ranked based on those values. For example, bards got an S-Tier value at 17th level for their 9th level spell access while warlocks were given A-Tier value at 17th level for their more limited 9th level spell access.

Because they were applying abilities from all tiers of play this would be a tier 4 ranking but they did seem to have a level modifier applied that weighted lower level abilities over higher levels. I didn't bother taking a close look.



I find thief rogues, battle master fighters, and any bard I've ever played to be a lot of fun; but I can have fun with any class and subclass. ;-)

It's an interesting list but I don't think it's a good one or that relevant vs how people actually play.

I weight heavily towards 1-10 with 1-7 being even more important.

ECOM3 has better idea imho myself I would be looking at glamor bard, 2 of the sorcerers, trickery cleric maybe light, Eldritch knight, vengeance paladin, Fey warlock.

 

[ECMO3]

I think you mean more difficult to hit. Though as monster Attack bonuses increase faster than AC it gets to a point where being able to half the damage of every attack is a huge boon.

No I mean taking attacks, AC is part of that but so is damage resistance and so is temporary hit points other defenses.

As far as single class characters go, a Bladesinger with spells specifically selected for defense and using lots of high level slots for false life is the most durable single class build I have come across. I will last much longer than a Barbarian. Not a little longer, much longer.

Most Fighters or Paladins with maximum AC and defensive duelist will do better than a Barbarian as well.

At high level I really think Barbarian is eve very competitive when you considered casters and highly armored creatures.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is not true. 2024 gave all non-magic classes a bunch of buffs.

Personally, I do not generally like the buffs given to Fighters and Monks in specific in 2024. I prefer the weaker 2014 versions and am non a fan of the non-magic buffs they gave them. I would rather have a greater imbalance and greater "divide" for those classes to be more aligned with my version of what I think they should be.

It is not a big, I just won't play those classes any more (as my main class).

Right. I'm well aware that you like casters being superior to non-casters and want the game to be about that.

I don't really have much interest in discussing that. I find that that attitude is decidedly not open to other people with different opinions also enjoying the game. "Casters should be just better than non-casters" is not exactly welcoming for people who like non-casters.

Edit: Also, you...basically didn't read the conversation I was participating in.

Someone said that it was the NON-caster fans who would riot from non-casters getting buffed. I responded that the only form of that that I've ever personally seen was people getting annoyed due to non-magical characters getting buffs that are magic and thus making the character magical.

I didn't breathe a single word about whether characters in 5.5e did or did not get non-magical buffs. Nothing said in that post mentions this to any degree. You are fighting a position I not only didn't take, but which I wasn't even remotely alluding to.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I find thief rogues, battle master fighters, and any bard I've ever played to be a lot of fun; but I can have fun with any class and subclass. ;-)

If people can have fun regardless of what they have chosen to play, does that not then imply that designing classes for "fun value" is pointless?

Because that seems to be the necessary implication here. If it's genuinely not possible for WotC to produce a class or subclass you couldn't enjoy playing, that implies that for at least a subset of players, they'll have fun no matter what. Hence, questing around for "fun" design is not a useful guide, since it...doesn't actually pick out any designs over and above any other designs. Or at the very least, it's way, way too loose to actually use as a standard.

(I've made an argument not quite identical to this, but very similar, in many other places. This is just a more...pointed thing, since it implies "designing for fun" literally doesn't do anything.)

 

[Zardnaar]

Right. I'm well aware that you like casters being superior to non-casters and want the game to be about that.

I don't really have much interest in discussing that. I find that that attitude is decidedly not open to other people with different opinions also enjoying the game. "Casters should be just better than non-casters" is not exactly welcoming for people who like non-casters.

Edit: Also, you...basically didn't read the conversation I was participating in.

Someone said that it was the NON-caster fans who would riot from non-casters getting buffed. I responded that the only form of that that I've ever personally seen was people getting annoyed due to non-magical characters getting buffs that are magic and thus making the character magical.

I didn't breathe a single word about whether characters in 5.5e did or did not get non-magical buffs. Nothing said in that post mentions this to any degree. You are fighting a position I not only didn't take, but which I wasn't even remotely alluding to.

Most efficient way of killing stuff is teamwork. It's not so much casters vs non caster but casters supporting the martial types. That can ve via buffing (bless, haste) or control magic (hold spells, blindness) setting up the kill.

Casters can control stuff fine that generally doesn't kill stuff faster though.

Espicially at levels people play at.