Solo Class Rankings (Solo GR clears in top 100 by class/era)

General Discussion
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Edit: I’ve now done a second set of numbers, for top 1000s: GR clears in top 1000 by class/era - Google Sheets

Comments on these numbers are in this post.

2nd Edit: And now a 3rd and final set of numbers, for top 10s: GR clears in top 10 by class/era - Google Sheets

And comments on these numbers are in this post.

3rd Edit: And here is a sort of overall evaluation that draws from all three of these leaderboard sets (10, 100, 1000): Final marks for solo class clears, aka “Solo Futility Score” - Google Sheets.

Comments on that are in this post.

Lately I’ve heard quite a few people talking about how their class is always at the bottom of the barrel, while that other class always gets all the love.

Well, I decided to take a look at the top 100 clears worldwide, for every era, 1-14, and see how many of those 100 clears went to each class.

I definitely don’t intend this to be a 100% authoritative look at “overall class value”, since “appearance in the top 100” is not the only thing to consider. We could also look at appearances in the group meta for pushing, or for speeds. Or, for that matter, at solo speeds, or broaden the look at the leaderboard to the top 1000, in which case certain builds + classes perform much better (for instance Wizard- mostly Firebird- which in the current era takes only 20% of the top 100, but 54% of the top 1000).

Still, this look at the top 100 is one significant element in that overall picture.

Spreadsheet here:

Some overall takeaways:

If you are a Witch Doctor, and complain that your class never gets any love… complain louder, because you are absolutely correct!

If you are a Barb, DH, Monk, or Necro, and complain that your class never gets any love… just be glad you aren’t a Witch Doctor!

If you are a Wizard or Crusader and complain that your class never gets any love… SHUT THE HELL UP!

Barbs have had a considerable decline since the early days… they made up about 32% of top 100 clears over the first 5 Eras, but only 2.1% of top 100 clears since then.

DH has the longest run of horrible performance… 5 consecutive Eras with zero clears in the top 100.

WD is the worst overall, by far… This class has amassed just 4.14% of clears in the top 100 over those 14 Eras. The next worst, Monk, is not even close to that bad: 10.29%.

WD is the worst overall, by far (part Deuce)… Every other class has amassed more top 100 clears in a single Era than WD has amassed, total, ever!

WD is the worst overall, by far (Turd time’s the charm)… In more than half of all Eras (8 out of 14), WD does not have a single clear in the top 100.

Wizard and Crusader have had a lot of time being very powerful… In 6 of the 14 Eras, one or the other of these classes has amassed more than 50% of the top 100 clears, including 97% of the top 100 for Wizard in Era 6.

One class rules supreme, more often than not… In 10 of the 14 eras, one class has over 50% of the clears in the top 100.

Time attack became a thing starting in Era 13… this was the first Era where the top 100 was all 150s.

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And they nerfed GoD for some reason. That is surprising. Your love of math pays off again, Rage.

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is that even a safe link? im not clicking that.

WD is the worst overall, by far… this class has amassed just 4.14% of clears in the top 100 over those 14 Eras.

i honestly feel like whoever is in charge of balancing just doesnt like the WD’s looks and culture.

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Nice math and thread Rage!

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Remember folks, when someone asks you what’s the best class to pick, this post ably demonstrates that the right answer is Mathematics class.

Seriously, have you never seen a Google Docs link before?
But, just to make you feel safe, here’s a picture for you…

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Please, ignore Briviti’ comments…

He/she edited the post after mine, just ignore it.

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ty, i dont want to get maleware.

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The witch doctor stats are the most glaring. Also the steady decline of barbarians since era 1. Necros got a bad rap in my opinion. Other than a couple bonespear seasons its one of worst deals. It looks like blizz has corrected the DH. They are trending straight up looking forward.

Wizards can zip it. Between archon, starpact and firebird they are the overall winner. Crusaders had a nice recent run too. Saders got stupid when the steed set got buffed to 400%.

Thats a great post Rage. Good reading on the stairmaster, lol.

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Thanks for running these numbers. I am a DH/WD main and my season generally ends early since I cannot play with the big kids. It is nice to see some actual proof about how bad especially the WD is.

Fun fact, roughly 50% of the population has maleware.

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i laughed irl

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It’s a little tough with Necros, since the string of 0’s at the beginning for them is just because the class didn’t exist.

If you assumed that they would have done just as well overall in the first 7 Eras, when they weren’t around, then they would probably have >300 of those 1400 spots, better than any other class except Wizards.

Or, if you assumed that they just did overall average for all classes in those 7 Eras (1400 clears / 105 “class eras” = 13.33 clears per “class era”), then they’d be around 262 slots, which is still better than everything but Wiz and Crusader.

The one really overwhelming season for them was actually due to Corpse Lance, right after the class was introduced.

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i mean how relevant is this data, really?

Necros dominated the meta for almost a decade with Rat runs, in such a way that one could argue they have been the most “loved” class by the dev’s for balancing.

so you can basically just use this data to assess that WD’s have been discriminated against and I myself have to ask why. What differentiates the WD from the other classes? I mean it’s just obvious at this point imo.

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Necros and barbs were/are popular for the wrong reasons. Z and Rats.

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I think this analysis misses an incredible important piece of data. If you do the exact same analysis but only looking at the top 4 player group clears, you will see that barbarians and monks are the two most over-represented classes where barbarians are #1.

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Barf.

Evidently you missed this very obvious part:

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No. I actually even quoted that part. See:

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Having read it and ignored it, or read it and not understood it, or read it and willfully misrepresented it… doesn’t make it any better!

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I did not ignore it. There are two ways to get on the leaderboard. One is solo that your analysis considers. The other is group play where due to the difference in difficulty results in the ability to get higher legendary gems levels.

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Good grief. Do you ever argue in a way that is not in bad faith?

Sure. So what?

This is like if I said “there is a delicious dairy product, called cheese- here are some of the most popular varieties…” and you responded, “this list of dairy products is missing some of the most popular dairy products worldwide, such as yogurt, kefir, ghee…”

Well, I’m not arguing that any of those other products don’t exist, or aren’t popular, or aren’t good. But the particular subject in question here is cheese.

Anyway, I’m going back to doing the sensible thing that I’ve done for several years now, which is to behave as though you don’t exist.

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Which really isn’t odd at all. Even if the difference between builds are infinitesimal the people that aim for top places will in general go with the choice that gives an edge, regardless of how small it is.

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