This is a list I’ve formulated after 100’s of legend games. This list is what I believe to be a tier list of current careers as of 1.08. This is NOT to say that a C list character can’t do Legend - they definitely can - It is just that the player will need relatively more skill than if they chose a stronger career.
Some general factors I considered in my decision making for this list:
Survivability
Elite killing potential
Special killing potential
Boss killing potential
Horde waveclear
I have also included what I believe are some of the stronger weapon options for each character although that obviously leaves a lot of room
for personal opinion.
S tier
Huntsman. Handgun or Bow / Halberd
Shade. Dual sword or Glaive / crossbow
Ironbreaker. Axe and shield or 2h hammer / pistols or grudge or cannon
Pyromancer. Mace / Beam or Bolt staff
A tier
Zealot. Rapier or flail edit: or axe/ brace of pistols
Foot Knight. Halberd / Handgun
Unchained. Mace / Conflagration
BH. Rapier or flail edit: or axe / repeater pistol or volley crossbow
Waystalker. Glaive / longbow or swiftbow
B tier
Slayer. Dual axes / 2h mace or pickaxe
Mercenary. Halberd / Handgun or Blunderbuss
C tier
Ranger Vet. 1 h hammer or 2h hammer or axe shield / grudge
I’m surprised you rate Handmaiden so low. Her clutch power is incredible and she’s quite versatile. Honestly - I think most of C-tier is more underrated than bad, save for Battle Wizard who is just an inferior Pyromancer currently.
I don’t think Shade works well with dual swords with how her ult has been changed in 1.08 (unless that was a bug they’ve fixed since then?)
The spread from best to worst isn’t significant enough to warrant four distinct tiers.
BH is S. WS is S. Huntsman is A (even with handgun exploit). Slayer is A. Merc is A. FK is A. Ranger Vet is A. WHC is A. Handmaiden is B in team comp but S in solo. BW is A.
(No handmaiden does not deserve higher than B. They’re not “clutches” when those situations would have been prevented by a more lethal class in the HM’s place and the fact that HM can run around the entire level naked and alone forever because of her solo speedrun cheese kit does not benefit the team at all 99.9% of the time. -Everything- HM can do, WS, Shade, and even Ranger Veteran do much, much better)
I’m not quite sure how are you ranking the factors for making the list. In my opinion survivability is the most important aspect. But survivability can be looked at from 2 perspectives. First is the survivability as a team and the second is survivability as a single player, split from the group. From my personal experience 1000h+ and thousands of cataclysm/legend runs in both games together, most wipes come from the group being split for one reason or the other and the individual players not being able to survive on their own long enough to deal with horde/boss/patrol/specials and then regroup. The group can be split by globadiers chaos sorcerers, patrols, bosses + hordes and so on. When it comes down to being alone your survival depends on your ability to dodge attacks while dealing with horde and being able to kill specials. Damage reduction also helps in this aspect to survive longer because with enough damage reduction you can outheal the damage you take. If you can neither dodge, outheal or just kill the enemy quick enough, you die.
Speaking about your list from this point of view:
Huntsman can try to kill the enemies quickly enough with his ultimate but, if you mess it up or there are too many enemies, you're dead. The bow is too slow to put away when sniping specials while fighting horde and handgun takes too long to reload.
Shade is indeed S tier with her infiltrate and increased dodge from talents.
Ironbreaker is overrated. When you're alone you have almost no chance of survival. You can only delay your death with your ultimate.
Pyromancer is also dead when left alone because beam is no longer the beast it was.
Zealot can solo for days because can just outheal all the damage and also becomes stronger the closer to death he is. Can also resist fatal damage.
Foot knight is average. Halberd is fast and has long reach. The mediocre damage reduction and no increased dodging distance makes clutching a bit hard but not impossible. Ultimate also helps.
Unchained has 50% damage reduction and is pretty good in the beta patch with the new possibility of using ultimate while overcharging.
Bounty Hunter can try to outkill the horde coming in a straight line just like huntsman. If rats gets close then is pretty much dead.
Same goes for Waystalker.
Slayer can solo all hordes because of increased dodge distance, damage reduction from talents and speed from ultimate but can have problems with specials. Dodging every special is possible but quite difficult.
Mercenary is quite similar to footknight in terms of survival but has higher cleave and ultimate panic button which really helps.
Ranger Veteran has difficulty surviving as well. The ultimate with increased duration can really help to survive while killing everything in sight but when it runs out and if the horde and everything is still alive then you're pretty much dead.
Witch hunter captain can solo for days. The increased dodge distance, headshot damage, ultimate panic button makes soloing quite trivial.
Handsmaiden can take double increased dodge distance. With spear the dodge distance is just enormous. And the 3sec invisibility from ultimate helps a lot. This is probably the easiest class to clutch with.
Battle wizard is also not a bad choice for clutching. The ultimate helps escape tough situations and the increased cast speed lets you cast full conflag circles while kitting horde. You can't take damage though because it resets the ability so it's quite difficult but manageable.
I know some people will say that if you took the so called meta classes like Pyromancer, Bounty Hunter, Waywatcher, Ironbreaker, then you will never have any need to solo clutch because you can just kill everything in sight and I partially agree with that but sometimes things just go wrong. Globadier throws over a hill or a patrol spawns on top of your head. The game is full of bugs so things sometimes go sour and you have no other choice but to clutch. You also can’t expect to have perfect teammates. Most Pyromancers and Waywatchers just constantly waste their ultimate on hordes or random ambient rats in the distance and have it on cooldown when chaos sorcerer casts a vortex, while Ironbreakers use their cannons to steal teammates temp. health away by racking up their own kill count for those green circles, or just shoot everybody in the back with pistols.
Honestly, this list feels more like tiers for getting the most green circles.
Weapons I listed definitely take w grain of salt, axe w BH is money I just didn’t add it.
Surprised at all the HM love. Outside of clutching solo runs she is 100% a nerfed shade w an ultimate that is meh in a team that positions well and deals with specials promptly. Her strength is unlimited stamina for pushing dodging blocking and holding a position. At that point why not play IB w cannon and be able to solo hordes while having much better ulti and error-proof career build. Just because you can solo a chaos pat when everyone is dead by using ult invis into glaive heavies doesn’t mean you Should be higher tier. This list Isn’t assuming every run turns into a solo run. I just dont think HM brings much to the table that another class can’t do better (as much as I love her new cackle).
I think something undervalued is that Handmaiden’s survivability sort of makes her insurance - she is kind of unnecessary in a group that is playing perfectly (but so is every other tank), but people don’t always play perfectly, and handmaiden is unparalleled in her ability to make up for others’ mistakes. You lose that if you switch to Shade or WS for increased lethality, and even Ironbreaker can’t live through as many different situations as Handmaiden.
Except her extreme lack of lethality makes problems for the team more likely. Shade can do exactly what HM does perfectly fine and RV can do it much better, both without being a detriment to the team. Being able to run around solo forever just isn’t useful if you can’t instagib the enemies that caused the issue in the first place while you’re doing it. It just makes the problem worse and prolongs the inevitable, especially if the only reason the player playing HM can manage it is by virtue of her dumb solo speed kit. Everyone clutched just fine in V1 w/o the need for cheese kit to do it.
Always being the last one alive doesn’t make HM good, especially when the only reason she’s the last one alive is basically always because she’s not terribly helpful and dragging mobs off into weird places then going invis for three seconds gets teammates killed. Also, as far as the idea of an insurance policy goes, it’s not a very useful insurance policy when it drags half the level to rez someone, creating situations where recovery is impossible.
Long story short: why would anyone want a class that maybe might occasionally be able to save a run when they could instead bring a class with which the run wouldn’t have needed saving in the first place?
It kinda just sounds like you think tanks are useless. None of them are as powerful as their non-tank counterparts, but that’s the point. There isn’t such a big gap in power that you’re going to have so many more games where the run didn’t need to be saved.
That’s not true at all. IB puts out mad DPS. Zealot puts out mad DPS. All of Kruber’s classes are pretty close to each other as far as balance goes. Outside of solo, HM is terribly underwhelming no matter how well she’s played. Her kit is outright detrimental to a team that isn’t already dead and it’s not even the best at making the team not-dead.
HM isn’t a tank, it’s a selfish DPS that’s bad at DPSing compared to every single other class in the game. As far as lethality goes, she’s basically a watered down huntsman if huntsman couldn’t wreck bosses/CW and had no reliable means of sustaining ranged DPS indefinitely.
Well… Probably because it’s really hard to fail on legend with any team composition if you have at least 2 competent players. Unless a patrol spawns on top you or something and you need to clutch. Didn’t I explain this already?