Effectively a four-way tie at this point is quite surprising.
I'm pretty sure Storm or Shadow will win, but that was always the case.
What I object to is the notion that only good ideas make it into publication. As if
Xanathar's or
Tasha's were a gold-standard or something.
Actually, Tasha's generally has pretty well-received stuff as I understood it? I always thought people just liked to complain about the book because "noooo how dare you break tradition!!!"
Minor confession, I’ve been voting for Sea as an experiment after noticing that the inoffensive mid tier sub classes tend to stay at 20 for a long time while people vote the ‘star’ options up and down. So I started voting up sea early to get it high to see if it would last to the end -I’m suprised its done so well!
but as it may not be there when I wake up in the morning I’ll share my confession now…
Likewise, I've been specifically
avoiding targeting subclasses I actually dislike, and instead targeting only those that are doing well (in the top 3.) That's bee a bit muddy this time around, because sometimes we've had four or even five different options all tied for first. Because, in my experience, people rapidly vote down widely-disliked things no matter what, so there's no profit
to my preferences to voting those down faster (and, indeed, often a detriment, if my preference is merely tolerated...which it usually is.)
So, I let others downvote the objectionable things, and instead focused on what I expected to be the primary threats, the things actually inclined to
last as opposed to the things I truly have antipathy for. It didn't help that much in the end, likely because downvotes are worth so much more than upvotes. Of course, it also didn't help that
for whatever frustrating reason THIS time being bog-standard ordinary is somehow a sin, while in every previous thread it's been a cardinal virtue bordering on automatic win.