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Hello fellow players,
I was wondering what's the current meta of classes and ancestries in the game, so I created a google form:
Here's a link to the results spreadsheet:
You can filter the results in the "Responses" tab and then view the relevant graphs in the "Graphs" tab.
This was also posted on the unofficial pathfinder 2e subreddit (reddit post)
Hello fellow players,
I was wondering what's the current meta of classes and ancestries in the game, so I created a google form:
Here's a link to the results spreadsheet:
You can filter the results in the "Responses" tab and then view the relevant graphs in the "Graphs" tab.
This was also posted on the unofficial pathfinder 2e subreddit (reddit post)
Interesting results!
If you have the time, it would be especially interesting to see some graphs of the enjoyment/power breakdowns by class.
Hello fellow players,
I was wondering what's the current meta of classes and ancestries in the game, so I created a google form:
Here's a link to the results spreadsheet:
You can filter the results in the "Responses" tab and then view the relevant graphs in the "Graphs" tab.
This was also posted on the unofficial pathfinder 2e subreddit (reddit post)
Interesting results!
If you have the time, it would be especially interesting to see some graphs of the enjoyment/power breakdowns by class.
You can view them easily by using the Google Spreadsheet filter feature. I have made the graphs specifically to support filtering - Just go to the Responses tab and filter by Class, and you'd get a graph of the enjoyment/power levels of that class.
I might consider doing some analysis myself but not soon. I published this hoping people would analyze/discuss the results on their own accord :)
I might consider doing some analysis myself but not soon. I published this hoping people would analyze/discuss the results on their own accord :)
Ah, worth making that clear from the start.
This is really cool data! My only recommendation is to actually specifically tell people it's *not* worth using these results for a class or ancestry breakdown. It's good data, there just needs to be more responses. An average of 8.7 responses per class (plus DM) is too low to get good results at that level.
From the timestamps, was the poll only open a few hours? Not sure where it was posted either.
The overall enjoyment and power graphs are cool. With the standard deviations for both being under 2, I'd be surprised if a wider poll showed a significant and concerning shift downwards. In that sense, glad to see even more info showing that Paizo did a great job on how 2E feels to play!
Ah, worth making that clear from the start.
Welp. I actually didn't expect to get enough responses to even make any significant statements - as you said, 9 responses per class aren't merely enough, and I can't say anything about ancestry+class combos.
If enough data will be gathered, I won't mind publishing results myself :)
My only recommendation is to actually specifically tell people it's *not* worth using these results for a class or ancestry breakdown.
I probably can't stop people from making those kind of mistakes, but you're right - I can certainly try.
From the timestamps, was the poll only open a few hours? Not sure where it was posted either.
Yup, I posted it on reddit first. I don't really hang around these forums a lot, so I didn't think about posting here straight away. But in total the poll was up for about 5-6 hours at the time of posting this, and has 120 responses so far.
If anyone has ideas on how to make the sample size greater, I'd be happy to hear them!
In that sense, glad to see even more info showing that Paizo did a great job on how 2E feels to play!
Except for the poor alchemist :( But generally, yeah!
Fair enough, and..... oh......OH! The poll is currently active! Sorry, I didn't notice that the timestamps were for today's date until just now. With the separate results spreadsheet already created and linked, I thought it was already over. That's the confusion. The poll is live, the results are not final. Honestly, don't even put more work into the Google Sheets version of those results until it's mostly over, or minimum put a note on that sheet that it is still live updating. Pretty sure Google Forms has a pre-built live results thing people could look at in the meantime.
Ok, then the answer is to just wait then. Looks like you've posted it in the right places at least.
EDIT: Oh, I see. The sheet is live querying the poll results. That's pretty neat that Google set up that integration! Still worth putting the note that the results aren't final yet at least.
Fair enough, and..... oh......OH! The poll is currently active! Sorry, I didn't notice that the timestamps were for today's date until just now. With the separate results spreadsheet already created and linked, I thought it was already over. That's the confusion. The poll is live, the results are not final. Honestly, don't even put more work into the Google Sheets version of those results until it's mostly over, or minimum put a note on that sheet that it is still live updating. Pretty sure Google Forms has a pre-built live results thing people could look at in the meantime.
Ok, then the answer is to just wait then. Looks like you've posted it in the right places at least.
EDIT: Oh, I see. The sheet is live querying the poll results. That's pretty neat that Google set up that integration! Still worth putting the note that the results aren't final yet at least.
Lol, it wasn't completely trivial to set up the live updating results.
I honestly thought it was obvious the poll is still going. My bad!
Lol, it wasn't completely trivial to set up the live updating results.
I honestly thought it was obvious the poll is still going. My bad!
Also fair enough! And I love the change you made to link to the poll, lol. I know it feels like a lot, but it's perfect and keeps as many people as possible on the same page. Plus the easy link to the survey is great!
EDIT: Ok, just watched it update live in front of me, and that's just fantastic. Given that it wasn't trivial, I may need to pick your brain on how it was done!
Current average power level, by class.
Alchemist 3.285714286
Barbarian 7.625
Barbarian 7.777777778
Bard 7.777777778
Champion 7.5
Cleric 7.052631579
Druid 6.947368421
Fighter 8
Monk 7.3
Ranger 6.7
Rogue 7.095238095
Sorcerer 6.6
Wizard 5.842105263
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Would be possible to ask if people are using published adventures or a miniatures grid?
We tend to not use those, and I am sure it makes the evaluation of power levels of classes very different.
As you can imagine without a grid, the effectiveness of movement speed and range will not match a PFS game.
That sounds like a very hard difference to account for, since it will also heavily impact the effectiveness of area abilities, and position dependent things like reach, or reactions like Stand Still and AoO, depending on exactly how your group handles it (not the same even just between Theater of the Mind groups).
236 responses. Be cool to see it hit 250+. Be really cool to get it to 1000+, but 250 is a nice round number.
I'm not quite sure how to actually make a filter view that shows breakdowns by class. Its helpful to know that I can, I just don't know how to actually do that.
This is shaping up pretty well. Halflings and bards could use more data if anyone knows players that have played as those.
EDIT: Lol, right as I post someone responds with a halfling witch. Admittedly I'm not sure how helpful the playtest classes are for this poll.
EDIT: Lol, right as I post someone responds with a halfling witch. Admittedly I'm not sure how helpful the playtest classes are for this poll.
There's a swashbuckler in there too.
(And I won't hide that the witch is mine, but its the only class I've played since the core book playtest, but I feel useless and I'm not having fun).
EDIT: Lol, right as I post someone responds with a halfling witch. Admittedly I'm not sure how helpful the playtest classes are for this poll.There's a swashbuckler in there too.
(And I won't hide that the witch is mine, but its the only class I've played since the core book playtest, but I feel useless and I'm not having fun).
Fair enough. Hope you get to play another character soon! Maybe even talk to your GM about your current character getting an exit.
Fair enough. Hope you get to play another character soon! Maybe even talk to your GM about your current character getting an exit.
Oh, I'm not trying to play something else. I'm specifically doing it to see if the white-boarding matches actual play. We haven't even gotten through the first chapter of Plaugestone yet, so its too early to jump out.
I'm not quite sure how to actually make a filter view that shows breakdowns by class. Its helpful to know that I can, I just don't know how to actually do that.
Go to the Responses tab and select all of the columns of the responses table (or at least, the one you want to filter by. selecting all just makes it easy to filter by any criteria you want later)
Then, under the top bar of menus at the top, there's a bar that's mostly empty and includes a printer icon and an icon that sort of looks like a wine glass (or filter if you prefer ;) ). Click it and it'll open a drop down menu. Select "Create temporary filter" or something like that.
After you did that you'll be able to filter results by specific criteria on the values of the columns using drop down menus you can open by clicking the title of each column. Whenever you filter results that way, you can go back to the "Graphs" tab to see graphs related to your filtered results.
Halflings and bards could use more data if anyone knows players that have played as those
As a gnome bard, I definitely agree with half of that sentence.
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I'm not gonna close the poll, but I've been following the results so far, and here's my take on the current (252 responses, 247 of which are core classes) state. I'm gonna round some numbers though:
Fighter - 8.2 Power, 8.9 Enjoyment. Clear winner in terms of power, and has been at the top for most of the poll. I'd be surprised if further results didn't keep the status quo.
Bard - 7.8 Power, 8.8 Enjoyment. Making up 5.3% (13/247) of the core-class characters, this is the least popular class that but also the most powerful caster by far. Could it be bard-players bias? Or is bard simply very effective? Don't know.
Barbarian - 7.6 Power, 8.9 Enjoyment. The most enjoyed martial.
Champion - 7.4 Power, 8.5 Enjoyment. If we call all classes mentioned so far the "top tier" classes, this would be the least powerful and least enjoyable of them.
So far I'd say fighter deserves it's own tier, but bard, barb and champ are all probably on the same tier in terms of power. I might be biased though, because my party has all 3 (me playing as the bard) and it does seem like we're the most valuable assets to the team.
In addition, martials getting the highest ranks is quite refreshing. Even though I usually play a caster, it always seemed logical to me that martials should generally have more combat prowess over casters due to how narrowly focused they are. And in any case, this is at the very least a good indicator that casters are no longer OP. But we all probably knew that already ;)
And now we have a streak of classes really close to each other in terms of power:
Monk - 7.1 Power, 8.7 Enjoyment
Cleric - 7.1 Power, 7.9 Enjoyment
Rogue - 7.0 Power, 8.6 Enjoyment
Ranger - 7.0 Power, 8.0 Enjoyment
Druid - 6.8 Power, 8.4 Enjoyment
What's interesting to me about this list is that these are all of the "niche" classes. While fighter, barb and champ are martials that focus on very "raw and basic" abilities (precision, damage and AC respectively), and bard... is special somehow (also increases precision with inspire courage I guess), these classes have more specific niches -
Monk is quick and has a bunch of cool combat maneuvers to use
Cleric is a healer with what's probably considered the weakest list
Rogue is a skill monkey
Ranger is, well, ranger. Good at ranged things, or attacking multiple times, etc
Druid has a niche based on it's subclass
So it seems like the power of these classes isn't as easily measured as the others. So that makes me wonder whether this result reflects a design problem or a perception problem. And yet they all managed to get very close to one another, so this is probably a good thing!
Sorcerer - 6.5 Power, 8.0 Enjoyment
Wizard - 5.6 Power, 6.3 Enjoyment
This one kinda hurts, mainly for the wizard. It seems like the extra slots the full casters get are not perceived as particularly powerful. There are multiple ways to explain this -
Maybe people were expecting casters to be as powerful as they were in previous editions, or at least are biased by that comparison.
Maybe the amount of encounters people run per day does not give the full casters the opportunity to show off their true power (most DMs would probably let the party rest after one of the caster is depleted, meaning amounts of spell slots don't matter too much).
Maybe the extra slots don't matter as much at low level play, where most players spend their time generally (especially considering this edition is new)
In any case, at least they don't have it the worst:
Alchemist - 3.6 Power, 5.7 Enjoyment.
Welp, I honestly wasn't following the online discussions about Alchemist much, because I honestly don't care much for this class, but this reflects the general vibe I got. People are very unsatisfied with Alchemist.
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There is a lot of Hyperbolic opinions on the wizard, so its number is skewed towards a more mediocre score. There are a lot of wizard PF1 players who are really unsatisfied with his current place, so they gave it a 1 in power, which is absolutely ridiculous.
You could say you had a miserable time playing the wizard from level 1 to 20 (I don't know how you managed that awesome feat in such little time) but you cannot say "in good faith" that it has 1!! for power. At least 4, at least 1 more than the alchemist xD
A couple other things I notice about the data:
Generally ancestry appears to have no correlation to Power, each ancestry staying in the 6-7 range, which is really really cool. I personally agree that this system has been fantastically built to allow for a much wider array of ancestries to work for almost any class, compared to 1E. Sure there might be ones where there is better optimization, but you won't make a straight-up horrible build the vast majority of the time.
The only exception being the human heritage of half-orc, with an average power of 7.76. I theorize this has less to do with that being the true average, and more the fact that the half-orc data we have is skewed more to players who played the more powerful classes of Champion, Fighter, and Barbarian. Of course, that would need more data from people who have played half-orcs from other classes to confirm. Hell, I have a build challenge now, lol. Maybe a half-orc cleric of Shelyn who celebrates love and beauty where they grew up being bullied and shamed for how they look.
Though the non-core ancestries didn't get enough responses that I'd want to say much about them yet.
Another poll similar to this would probably be pretty cool in a year to include more builds from the APG ancestries and classes.
Similar to how the half-orc results skewed towards more powerful classes, I'd be curious to run a kind of weighted average analysis on the other ancestries to see if power ends up evening out too when taking that into account.
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There is a lot of Hyperbolic opinions on the wizard, so its number is skewed towards a more mediocre score. There are a lot of wizard PF1 players who are really unsatisfied with his current place, so they gave it a 1 in power, which is absolutely ridiculous.
You could say you had a miserable time playing the wizard from level 1 to 20 (I don't know how you managed that awesome feat in such little time) but you cannot say "in good faith" that it has 1!! for power. At least 4, at least 1 more than the alchemist xD
If you filter out the 1s and 2s, you get:
Power: 7.12
Fun: 6.2
Which puts it at the "power" rating of the "niche" classes, but WAY lower than all of them in enjoyment (a full point and a half below the cleric and only a half point above the alchemist). Including the 2s (there are no 3s and I figured the 4 was in good faith) those values drop to 6.66 and 5.88 respectively.
Power: 7.12
A lot better than 5.6, which is what I'm arguing against, you can have a power 17 class, and still can put 1 on fun... (The wizard is indeed boring from levels 2-7, for me at least reading the feats)
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There is a lot of Hyperbolic opinions on the wizard, so its number is skewed towards a more mediocre score. There are a lot of wizard PF1 players who are really unsatisfied with his current place, so they gave it a 1 in power, which is absolutely ridiculous.
You could say you had a miserable time playing the wizard from level 1 to 20 (I don't know how you managed that awesome feat in such little time) but you cannot say "in good faith" that it has 1!! for power. At least 4, at least 1 more than the alchemist xDIf you filter out the 1s and 2s, you get:
Power: 7.12
Fun: 6.2Which puts it at the "power" rating of the "niche" classes, but WAY lower than all of them in enjoyment (a full point and a half below the cleric and only a half point above the alchemist). Including the 2s (there are no 3s and I figured the 4 was in good faith) those values drop to 6.66 and 5.88 respectively.
To that end, while I can't quantitatively measure for bad faith, I could at least measure for outliers and see how the charts change.
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Maybe the extra slots don't matter as much at low level play, where most players spend their time generally (especially considering this edition is new)
This is my guess. At low level, you need to burn a slot just to match fighter damage. The rest of the day you are way behind.
i.e. Burning hands does 2d6 (half on miss), with low HP, AC, ect...
Fighters do 1d6+3/4 (+second attack).
Really I would say level 1 wizards have less power than an alchemist. But they improve at higher level (alchemist don't), as your top spells will outpace fighter damage.
i.e. Cone of cold is 12d6 (42), plus large utility from lower slots.
Fighter 12 would do 3d8+8 (21.5)
The linear martial and quadradic caster are still a thing in pf2. Not nearly as pronounced and the balance point seems closer to level 11 than level 5. But I could see plenty of people getting fed up with playing a wizard before they got enough slots to keep up.
To that end, while I can't quantitatively measure for bad faith, I could at least measure for outliers and see how the charts change.
Oh definitely. That's just what I meant, that the outliers are most certainly the folks that have a bone to pick and aren't really answering based on anything other than "WIZARDS WERE GIMPED, WAAHH"
Decided to filter out by enjoyment (so wizards, but ignoring the 1 and 2 enjoyment ratings) and got a power score of 7.16 and an enjoyment of 6.08.
Power up slightly, enjoyment down slightly. Interesting. Though probably within the margin of error on 25 results.
Hmm.... well that's a pickle.
See, the thing about outliers is that they need to actually be, well, outliers, lol. The trouble is that enough people have voted for 1s and 2s, that Excel doesn't think they're outliers. There's just a really crazy high variance.
Picture with box and whiskers graph.
I could certainly try one or two other outlier detection algorithms I'm aware of besides the default one that Excel has, but I'm not positive that would change much. Past that, I worry about getting too much into straight-up data manipulation. They aren't outliers until more people vote in the poll with different opinions. Until then, it's just data. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
EDIT: Fun fact: The Alchemist also displays this maximum variance of enjoyment, though with a tighter agreement on the lower power.
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There is a lot of Hyperbolic opinions on the wizard, so its number is skewed towards a more mediocre score...If you filter out the 1s and 2s, you get:
Power: 7.12
Fun: 6.2Which puts it at the "power" rating of the "niche" classes...
My only PF2 character is a wizard, and I'd agree on the power level as matching the niche classes. They definitely are not weaker in my opinion.
I'd recommend ignoring ratings of 1 or 2 in power results on the survey. None of the classes are remotely near that low.
Given how many people said that wizards are at a 1, I'd really like to hear from one of them. As much as I disagree with them, with our current response totals it's clear that there are enough of them to effect the outcome of the poll.
EDIT: Oh, and remember how I said a couple of my posts ago that ancestry appeared to have no relationship to enjoyment? Well, given how popular gnome wizards are, wizards have dragged down the score for gnomes since that post. Guess I'll try to do the deeper analysis I was mentioning for power on enjoyment too. Not entirely certain we have enough responses for that math to work out, but we'll see what happens.
If you want to remove results 1 and 2 from a class and want to compare them with the others, it is minimal to remove them from the others as well.
If the sample were larger, it would be better to remove the 5% of highest and lowest grades. but manipulating a group and still wanting to compare with others is wrong.
Here's the entire list of 1s and 2s for power:
WizardWizard
Wizard
Wizard
Wizard
Wizard
Witch
Witch
Druid
Alchemist
Alchemist
Alchemist
Alchemist
Alchemist
Alchemist
Alchemist
The druid's enjoyment rating was a 6 and one alchemist had a 7 and other hand a 4 (the rest--including all of the wizards--were under 4).
Doing the average values on the alchemist, ignoring 1s and 2s, you get 4.9 for power 6.9 for enjoyment. Still a full point below the unmodified wizard in terms of power!
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Are we removing the 10s for power for being on the opposite end of the extreme? While I personally agree that the 1s are ridiculous, I'm not sure about straight-up data manipulation to get results we like better.
Unless I hear differently from people who have a background in something like UX or more generally understanding how to handle results like these in polls, the only two ways I see the results being different are either waiting for a bunch more results from people with different opinions, or measuring responses entirely differently. Perhaps a thumbs-up-thumbs-down system like Youtube, Netflix, or Rotten Tomatoes. That system certainly has its merits that fixes problem results like this. It's the entire reason those companies use those systems of measurements. I could pretty easily take Rotten Tomatoes' method of conversion and see what the results look like that way.
Point is, we don't know what the experiences were of those people who voted that way without hearing from them. While I personally agree with Themetricsystem that a good chunk of those are likely to be bad faith, we can't simply eliminate them all without hearing from a few of them in more detail.
Yeah don't try to manipulate the data to push some agenda. Only thing we can do is do the poll in good faith and hope we get a few hundred more results so it evens out. 500 would be nice, but might not be easy to achieve. This PF2 subforum is not that higlhy populated imo.
If there's still some data point you don't agree on, then perhaps you're in the minority.
I'm a forever GM, so I can't contribute to the poll, unfortunately.
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Sounds like a lot of "I'm not a literal God anymore - UNPLAYABLE!" responses are tainting your data.
I wouldn't say "a lot" but I will definitely say that there's some. That's why I filtered out the 1s and 2s, but left the 4+s to see where the numbers lined up.
Are we removing the 10s for power for being on the opposite end of the extreme? While I personally agree that the 1s are ridiculous, I'm not sure about straight-up data manipulation to get results we like better.
Oh sure. But that's why the filters exist. To see if there is some tainted responses and to examine the numbers with that assumption. The assumption of "UNPLAYABLE wizard" causes the numbers to fall in line with every other casting class.
Unfortunately for the wizard, the highest power rating submitted was an 8.
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It's reasonable to want to filter out outliers before taking the data seriously. But as VestofHolding, ChibiNyan, and others have noted, simply removing 1s and 2s seems like a questionable way of doing this. (For an extreme example, if the Wizard results were 10 1s, 10 2s, and 1 10, it would yield the result that the consensus power level of the Wizard is 10, which is clearly not reasonable.)
A better approach, as Hbitte noted, would be to eliminate the top and bottom percentile results, and focus on the interval that remains. A simple way to do this is to look at the lower, median, and upper quartiles of the power results for each class:
Alchemist: 2,3,5
Barbarian: 7,8,8
Bard: 7,8,8
Champion: 7,7,8
Cleric: 6,7,8
Druid: 6,7,8
Fighter: 8,8,9
Monk: 6,7,8
Ranger: 6,7,8
Rogue: 6,7,8
Sorcerer: 5,6,8
Wizard: 4,6,7
On this way of looking at things, we get a natural division into four tiers:
Tier 1: The three median 8 classes: Barbarian, Bard, Fighter. (Though the Fighter has a slightly higher upper and lower quartile than the other two.)
Tier 2: The six median 7 classes: Champion, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Ranger, Rogue. (Though the Champion has a slightly higher lower quartile than the others.)
Tier 3: The two median 6 classes: Sorcerer, Wizard. (Though the Wizard has a slightly lower bottom and upper quartile than the Sorcerer.)
Tier 4: The one median 3 class: Alchemist.
A couple things that stand out:
But once we rule out the outliers, the gap between the Wizard and the Rogue is about the same as the gap between the Rogue and the Fighter -- a noticeable gap, but not an extraordinarily large one.
But the gap here is much larger. To put it in perspective, the gap between the Alchemist and the next lowest ranked class (the Wizard) is larger than the gap between the Wizard and the top ranked class (the Fighter).
It's reasonable to want to filter out outliers before taking the data seriously. But as VestofHolding, ChibiNyan, and others have noted, simply removing 1s and 2s seems like a questionable way of doing this. (For an extreme example, if the Wizard results were 10 1s, 10 2s, and 1 10, it would yield the result that the consensus power level of the Wizard is 10, which is clearly not reasonable.)
A better approach, as Hbitte noted, would be to eliminate the top and bottom percentile results, and focus on the interval that remains. A simple way to do this is to look at the lower, median, and upper quartiles of the power results for each class:
Alchemist: 2,3,5
Barbarian: 7,8,8
Bard: 7,8,8
Champion: 7,7,8
Cleric: 6,7,8
Druid: 6,7,8
Fighter: 8,8,9
Monk: 6,7,8
Ranger: 6,7,8
Rogue: 6,7,8
Sorcerer: 5,6,8
Wizard: 4,6,7 ...
I'd like to see this done for how enjoyable the classes were too.
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It seems in pretty bad faith to offer up a poll and then promptly discard data points we don't like, especially when the poll itself doesn't offer a ton of instruction. If we're going to assume certain answers are automatically invalid by default, they shouldn't be options in the first place.
I don't think it would be entirely unreasonable for someone to open that poll and rate classes relatively, for instance. Someone who believes that Bards are the strongest class in the game and Alchemists are bad might rank a Bard as a 9 or 10 and an Alchemist as 1 or 2 based on their relatively performance, even if in an absolute sense Bards aren't broken gods and Alchemists aren't useless.
And for all the talk about poisoning the well, Porridge's more measured analysis showing Bards and Fighters on top and Alchemists on the bottom, followed by full (4 slot) casters is reasonably consistent with a lot of the discourse surrounding PF2 online.
Whether or not we think those opinions are right is another thing entirely, but I don't think it's helpful to just assume everyone voting the way we don't like is being a vindictive troll.
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I don't think it's helpful to just assume everyone voting the way we don't like is being a vindictive troll.
The people voting are those discussing in every thread about each class. Of course, there is some bad blood from the more "extreme opinions" who need this to reassure their opinion... is the nature of our society.
Funny thing, I have defended the wizard and the spellcasters of PF2 in every thread, but I think the result that it got is fair... Wizard under the Druid/Cleric, and all of the martial classes.
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I like what you did, Porridge! I am curious why the median was chosen over the mean. That changes a couple of the results, such as the Alchemist being rounded up to 4.
I can cover enjoyment, as Donovan asked, and I'll use the same method. I'll also include the mean besides each.
Alchemist: 3, 5.5, 8 (5.50)
Barbarian: 8, 9, 10 (8.90)
Bard: 8, 9, 9 (8.77)
Champion: 8, 8, 9 (8.46)
Cleric: 7, 8, 9 (7.92)
Druid: 8, 8, 9 (8.35)
Fighter: 8, 9, 10 (8.93)
Monk: 8, 8.5, 10 (8.56)
Ranger: 7, 8, 9.25 (8.00)
Rogue: 8, 9, 9 (8.60)
Sorcerer: 6.25, 8, 9.75 (7.50)
Wizard: 3, 8, 8 (6.22)
Splitting them up as Porridge did:
Tier 1: The 9s and the 8.5: Barbarian, Bard, Fighter, Rogue, and Monk
Tier 2: The 8s: Champion, Cleric, Druid, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard (The Sorcerer and Wizard are lower in this group with their lower averages. I could see an argument for Wizard being in Tier 3.)
Tier 3: The Alchemist at a 5.5.
That is a pretty noticeable gap between the alchemist and everyone else, though the Sorcerer and Wizard averages do bridge the gap a bit.
Otherwise, the enjoyment is pretty consistent across the board! I really don't see the separation between tiers 1 and 2 in both of these as being particularly fair, so honestly props to Paizo for creating core classes that people generally agree are pretty high and grouped in both enjoyment and power!
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It seems in pretty bad faith to offer up a poll and then promptly discard data points we don't like, especially when the poll itself doesn't offer a ton of instruction. If we're going to assume certain answers are automatically invalid by default, they shouldn't be options in the first place.
I'd like to pause for a moment here and note that this hasn't happened. The people doing things to weed out 1s from the data are not the person who did the poll in the first place, and accusations of someone 'offering up a poll and then discarding data points' are thus unwarranted.
Transcendental presented only the data including the low ratings, not any of the versions without them.
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It seems in pretty bad faith to offer up a poll and then promptly discard data points we don't like, especially when the poll itself doesn't offer a ton of instruction. If we're going to assume certain answers are automatically invalid by default, they shouldn't be options in the first place.
That's not what's happening. The entire reason that the profession of data analyst exists is because data is messy and taking ALL of it and looking at things like "average" doesn't give you the whole picture. Or the right picture.
In order to analyse the data and get meaningful results some data points need to be discarded. The only problem is figuring how how to decide which data points to discard on such a small data set (and that these methods have been chosen in advance prior to looking at the results!).
And note that pretty much no matter how one discards data points (or doesn't) the Wizard is looking pretty weak. That's telling in and of itself: even if we claim "that there are people out there claiming that 'wizard is no longer planet moving masters of magic! 1 star!' lets discard their opinion!" the wizard still has a lower power score than a lot of other classes.
(The Sorcerer and Wizard are lower in this group with their lower averages. I could see an argument for Wizard being in Tier 3.)
Considering that the mean there has a data point at "3" and then just barely squeaks its next data point in at "8"...
(The Sorcerer and Wizard are lower in this group with their lower averages. I could see an argument for Wizard being in Tier 3.)Considering that the mean there has a data point at "3" and then just barely squeaks its next data point in at "8"...
Oh yeah, for sure. I admittedly did the tier section of my post rather quickly, lol.
Like I briefly mentioned in that post, the tiers 1 and 2 seem super statistically close anyway, so most of it looks awesome to me, and I'm happy with that.
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The data analysis going on in this thread is really fascinating. :D
I think it's important to remember, though, what the data is actually saying, either way. Wizards getting a low score in this poll does not say "wizards are weak". It says "wizards are perceived to be weak".
That could be because they actually are weak, or it could be for other reasons - such as most people aren't playing wizards to their strengths, or the wizard writeup does a bad job in guiding people on how to play powerful wizards, or people's expectations of wizards is out of line with reality.
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The data analysis going on in this thread is really fascinating. :D
I think it's important to remember, though, what the data is actually saying, either way. Wizards getting a low score in this poll does not say "wizards are weak". It says "wizards are perceived to be weak".
That could be because they actually are weak, or it could be for other reasons - such as most people aren't playing wizards to their strengths, or the wizard writeup does a bad job in guiding people on how to play powerful wizards, or people's expectations of wizards is out of line with reality.
I love how we can find every reason for wizards not being fun or powerful, except that wizards arn't fun or powerful.
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I love how we can find every reason for wizards not being fun or powerful, except that wizards arn't fun or powerful.The data analysis going on in this thread is really fascinating. :D
I think it's important to remember, though, what the data is actually saying, either way. Wizards getting a low score in this poll does not say "wizards are weak". It says "wizards are perceived to be weak".
That could be because they actually are weak, or it could be for other reasons - such as most people aren't playing wizards to their strengths, or the wizard writeup does a bad job in guiding people on how to play powerful wizards, or people's expectations of wizards is out of line with reality.
I mean, I did list it as the very first possible reason.
I don't really have a dog in the fight, anyway - I haven't had any wizard players yet. I just think it's important to remember the power of perception.
For example, I just asked my party for their ratings, and the warpriest in my party rated his class' power at 9. He's a not-very-optimized, Strength-focused warpriest who uses his casting mostly for self-buffs and took barbarian multiclass just to get base, non-upgraded Rage.
A fair assessment of his relative power is definitely not "almost best in the game".
But he feels powerful, because his build tends to deliver the occasional 6d12+20 crit that spectacularly ends a boss in one hit.
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For example, I just asked my party for their ratings, and the warpriest in my party rated his class' power at 9. He's a not-very-optimized, Strength-focused warpriest who uses his casting mostly for self-buffs and took barbarian multiclass just to get base, non-upgraded Rage.A fair assessment of his relative power is definitely not "almost best in the game".
But he feels powerful, because his build tends to deliver the occasional 6d12+20 crit that spectacularly ends a boss in one hit.
According to my players the strongest of our group is indeed the wizard, because of Grease+Shocking Grasp (True Strike). But also, at the helm is my best player. (I do not agree btw, I think the Druid is better)