That's fair enough. But someone found it non-obvious enough enough to ask, and it was them I posted to answer.
As to which particular class is in the lead with any specific set of assumptions? I'm not even going to try to get into that debate. Too many unspoken assumptions and too many people with something to prove. Even the base starting assumptions of the OP are likely to be discarded in the scrum.
If class X begins far enough below class Y, then even assumptions that favour X over Y may not be enough to bring them to parity. X getting better relative to Y does not require X to exceed Y.
In the Fighter and Paladin case, you can probably draw a graph of how a very short adventuring day will favour Fighters, then as the day extends Paladin rises more steeply than Fighter, but then falls off more steeply as well, with the longer day going back to favouring fighters. Adding in short rests will raise the fighter line, but the Paladin line will remain the same.
Of course each line will be different depending on level, feats, ability distribution, opponent type and statistics, etc. By changing assumptions the position and shape of lines can be adjusted to prove almost anything.
Hence why I don't get into the debates on which class does more than which other class: - its too easy for people to push their own personal opinions simply by picking assumptions to favour their agenda.
I'm sure it is. I'm presuming that the OP specifically disallowed using feats like PM, SS and CE for comparisons in this thread for a good reason. Possibly they thought that they skewed examples.
