Tier Lists and Why I Hate Them

By Sessa — Feb 25 2022 04:30 +11

If you ended up reading this article because of its clickbait-y title or the magic words “tier list”... you’ve fallen prey to one of the main reasons tier lists are still being made by content creators (and shame on me for taking advantage of it too)! However, this title is a perfect introduction to the use of tier lists in World of Warcraft, and how over the years they’ve become a staple of each new raid patch or Mythic+ season.

If you’ve spent any amount of time on any WoW-related social media, Discord channels, or Twitch streams, you’ve probably noticed that disliking tier lists is not an uncommon opinion in the community. This article is going to break down some of the main reasons you have been hearing complaints about them and propose potential solutions that may lead to less polarizing viewpoints in the future.

Where Did Tier Lists Even Come From?

Gaming Tier Lists date back as early as 2005 and were first introduced to rank characters in fighting games (Tekken, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat etc). Even the tier naming conventions of “S-Tier” being the top, is theorized to come from the Japanese roots of most fighting arcade-style games where Japanese school teachers would award a grade of “S” at the very top end of academic performance.

A Mortal Kombat tier list in all of its glory (in case this is your first day on the internet and you’ve never seen a tier list before)

Tier lists have since spread in popularity to most competitive games including team-based Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games such as League of Legends and DOTA, and class-based competitive shooters like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2.

While tier lists have also existed throughout the history of WoW to some extent (primarily for PvP), they rose to mainstream prominence in the Battle for Azeroth (BFA) expansion and have quickly become a staple in the release cycle of any new patch.

Why WoW Tier Lists are Bad

After learning where they come from, I hope you begin to see how translating a ranking system that (sort of) works in individual or team-based PvP style competitive content does not translate smoothly to large-scale cooperative content like a 20-man Mythic Raid. While the community as a whole collectively comes up with a better solution to tier lists, the fact stands that they exist today and likely will continue to in one form or another going forward. For now, my hope is that you read this article and become more critical when looking at the next round of tier lists coming out for 9.2.

Some of the most glaring problems with tier lists are:

Inconsistent ranking criteria leads to a lack of context
They represent an overly simplistic “take” on multiple variables
“Expert” opinions lack the knowledge of every spec to draw proper comparisons
They have widespread implications and influence on community perceptions

Let’s take a look at each of these points in a little more depth.

Lack of Context & Inconsistent Ranking Criteria

Probably one of the biggest obstacles most current tier lists have in being a useful source of information is that they lack overall context. Most ranking systems don’t take the time to explain WHAT each tier actually means and what the specs are being measured against. Based on the traditional use of tier lists in fighting games, each tier level is more or less a placeholder that simply shows the relative strength between different characters; in games that have win-lose statistics and other metrics, you can use a combination of numbers and expert opinions to create a loose ranking system.

However, in WoW, it’s a different story. Specs are not directly competing with each other, as there is often also a need for class diversity within a raid group to bring a diverse utility kit. In PvE style cooperative content, specs should be ranked against the encounters and bosses, not necessarily each other. We’ve all seen tier list rankings where every spec is ranked “A-Tier” or higher. While that could actually be a truthful representation of where things stand, it doesn’t actually give meaningful information to the reader.

One of the reasons this can happen is, when spec balance is close enough, there is no “one” clear winner since the relative power difference between them is not very pronounced. This can happen on occasion with healers and tanks. For example, the tank tier lists in Shadowlands have had all the specs ranked quite close together because all tanking specs have been able to comfortably do high levels of content. In this case, the tier list has failed its main purpose of showing any significant differentiation between multiple specs.

We’ve also seen tier lists where all but a handful of specs are lumped as a “middle of the pack” with almost no variation. While this might show the very top and bottom ends of performance, most people play specs that will fall somewhere in between. If you’re trying to decide between playing 2 specs that are both rated as “B-tier”, the tier list has failed again at showing you any pertinent information required for deciding between them. Additionally, this gives no context on their ranking system to explain that “B-tier” is still a good spec worth considering.

While we’ll get into some solutions later in the article, an extremely easy fix to the lack of context issue is shown in Icy Veins’ tier lists. Check out their most recent Mythic+ DPS ranking here. They explain exactly WHAT each tier means and include a breakdown of why they decided to place each spec where they did. This is a fantastic approach that not only offers a quick visualization but also allows readers to decide for themselves if the main consideration factors are important to them.

Overly Simplistic Take on Multiple Variables

There are SO many factors that contribute to whether a class is good or not in a PvE environment, and pure numerical output is only part of the story. When it comes to ranking DPS specs, I have yet to see a tier list that actually takes raid fight considerations into account rather than pure power. Additionally, most tier lists ranking tanks and healers have yet to consider overall raid composition or synergy.

Although it isn’t possible to thoroughly explore some of these factors in the context of a visual tier list, it does raise a few questions for me. For example, if a fight’s execution on Mythic difficulty is reliant on having at least 1 Blood Death Knight for Gorefiend's Grasp, does that give them A or S Tier ranking for the entire raid? Surely, Blood Death Knight should be ranked highly on the tier list due to how essential it is on that one fight — but what if Blood DK isn’t performing well overall that tier? Alternatively, what if the person reading the tier list only raids on Normal and Heroic difficulties, rendering the requirements of Mythic useless to them?

The same arguments can be used for Monks and Demon Hunters due to their Mystic Touch and Chaos Brand spells respectively. What if your raid composition only has 2 magic damage dealers? Does recruiting a Havoc Demon Hunter still rank as highly for your raid composition or are you better off with grabbing a different DPS class to fill in a specific utility void?

A spec being strong on one boss doesn’t necessarily mean the spec is good, or a weaker throughput spec could have utility that is essential throughout the entire raid instance. At the core of this issue, we should not be aiming to rank specs in a vacuum, but rather within the scope of the boss encounters and Mythic+ dungeons that they will be played in. Giving each spec a universal “raid” score that is meant to encompass every single encounter in a raid not only leads to inaccurate rankings but also frustrates experts who are attempting to distill very complicated variables into a single letter ranking.

Tier Lists Made By an Individual vs. a Group of Experts

Opinions are messy and can be coloured by any number of factors that don’t actually get brought up when making a simple tier list. When you’re not explicitly told what a creator is basing their recommendations on or what perspective they’re using, we have a tendency to assume that it lines up with our own. This is exasperated when tier lists are made by one person giving their opinion on numerous specs.

While it’s not completely impossible, it is extremely unlikely that any one person can accurately gauge the strength and weaknesses of numerous classes in the extremely limited raid testing windows that exist on PTR. We established in the previous section that specs need to be ranked in relation to the content they’re being played in; unfortunately, when only one individual’s opinion is being taken into account, they are basing a fair bit of their ranking on assumptions or previous experiences with the spec, not necessarily hands-on testing within the raid.

See above for an example of Ice Cream flavours ranked by me. All of them being at or near the top doesn’t really give any sort of helpful information. The context you’re missing here is that I’m also 5 months pregnant, so anything with the word “ice cream” is an automatic winner – knowing that immediately makes this tier list irrelevant as it is only catered towards my (very biased) opinion.

That’s fine, we have a solution to those biases: gather a group of experts who will all focus on ranking the spec they each know the best. However, ranking something means it needs to fit somewhere in relation to something else, so we actually end up in the same unfortunate situation again where all spec experts would need to educate themselves on every other competing spec. Friendly reminder: there are 24 total DPS specs, so this would be a gargantuan feat to actually rank their own spec accurately against the rest.

Implications on Community Perception

So far, we’ve been focusing on the struggles of creating a truly accurate tier list, but what are the ramifications of how we’re currently making them? This is probably where almost everyone playing WoW in group content can speak to some way that they’ve been affected by biases against their spec due to its negative rating on a tier list somewhere.

Whether players choose only “meta” classes for their PUG Mythic+ keys, or raid leaders impose mandatory class changes onto their unwilling raiders, the ways in which tier lists affect community perception are evident no matter where you look in WoW. The more troubling parts of this are that tier lists are often posted before the content itself even launches, or they are not updated when hotfixes are applied. This way, classes that are actually doing better than the tier list had originally implied continue to carry the same stigma throughout the patch despite evidence to the contrary.

Community perception also leads to a misunderstanding of how differing levels of play can skew results. One of the most recent examples of this is how Venthyr Boomkins were rated highly on Mythic+ tier lists in Season 2 of Shadowlands, which was reinforced by their popularity and huge DPS output in high keys. However, when excited players looking to emulate the meta brought Boomkins to either low or mid-range keys, their long ramp-up time and reliance on 3-minute long cooldowns led to underwhelming results. Meanwhile, specs like Survival Hunters were considered “bad” in high-end keys, resulting in players avoiding them in the mid-range keys they thrived in where they could outperform many other “meta” DPS specs.

If Tier Lists are bad, why do we use them?

Okay, so with all the negatives of tier lists being so evident, why are innumerable websites and content creators continuously making them? Obviously, while tier lists are imperfect, there has to be a reason they’re being used. This brings us to our next point: Tier lists are easy “clickbait”.

People LOVE Clicking on Tier Lists

I’m not saying the community’s obsession with tier lists is founded on maximizing ad revenue and hype before a new tier — but it’s definitely a contributing factor. You can see it in YouTube views, forum topics made about controversial tier lists, or heated Discord conversations debating the placement of each spec in a certain tier. It generates discussions and excitement for a new tier as everyone debates the truth behind a specific tier list.

Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with this, and the attention that tier lists generate indicate the community’s interest in this type of content. That being said, tier lists getting a lot of engagement also increases the amount of responsibility content creators have in ensuring their accuracy and not using them to sensationalize community perception.

Time Savers for Most Players

The time-saving quality of tier lists is the real problem that they are aiming to solve. Most players don’t have the time to keep up with the changes between tiers to determine what class or spec they want to play in a coming raid. This way, tier lists are seen as an efficient way to quickly gain information on where things stand (though, as we discussed earlier, it doesn’t mean the information they are getting is accurate). In order to understand where class balance truly stands, we rely on the collective knowledge of the entire community to come up with a consensus.

There are many people who only want to play meta classes that give them results and are not emotionally tied to one character or class; in those cases, tier lists are an invaluable resource that offers a quick snapshot of what specs are predicted to be strongest. Alternatively, for returning players trying to decide what class to pick up after an extended break, tier lists can be extremely beneficial to point them towards a stronger class that reinforces feelings of fun and success while they’re trying to catch up to their friends. When picking a class to main, using tier lists is efficient. However, this is also contingent upon a tier list’s accuracy and whether or not it takes the type of content you’re doing into careful consideration

Proposed Solutions

So far, I’ve done a lot of complaining and not a lot of solving the problem. In a perfect world, I would love to see specs compared directly to the content they’re being used in. I’ve devised 2 different potential solutions that address some of the major problems discussed above.

Keep in mind that these are not real bosses, nor are the spec rankings relevant to any current content.

Solution 1: Boss Rankings Instead of Overall Rankings

Rather than scrapping the concept of spec hierarchy altogether, why not rank them per boss and explain the key considerations used to generate the results? This would solve some of the context and variable problems we have in the current system while still showing the more universally “stand-out specs” at a glance. By not showing all the “average” specs for each fight, it would help reduce unnecessary negative community perceptions.

Solution 2: Separating Utility and Performance

My personal preference would be to give every spec a utility rank and a damage profile rank for each boss. Tanks would have an additional damage intake pattern rank and healers would also get a rank based on the group damage taken profile. This would take encounter design into deeper consideration when assigning ranks, and would ensure that outlier performance on one or two fights does not bias the spec’s overall rank. It also brings additional benefit to players who are just looking to see where their spec will shine in the upcoming raid.

By continuing to use the same S to F tier ranking convention, it helps people contextualize how specs stack up against each other. To determine a standardized grading system, each class guide-writer would receive the same rubric or matrix for each category, minimizing the potential for bias yet still giving readers the important overall context.

Conclusion

Both of my proposed solutions still maintain some of the existing problems of tier lists and are only solving part of the problem. We would love to hear your thoughts on our Twitter or in our Discord to see how YOU would fix tier lists (maybe with enough good ideas you might see a follow-up article with mock-ups of the best ones)!

Regardless of your stance on tier lists, the answer to them isn’t just to have content creators and guides stop making them. All that will achieve is driving traffic to less reputable sources when searching for them. The key will be to find a way to make tier lists more accurate, informative, and overall useful for the community, rather than just acting as clickbait or fodder to drive engagement numbers.

About the Author

Sessa currently mains a Protection Paladin and is a moderator for the Hammer of Wrath Paladin Class Discord. She also writes Mythic+ Dungeon guides for TankNotes and likes to unwind by finding new ways to frustrate her group with “experiments” when running keys.