I’m not trying to prove anything empirically, and this is not a peer-reviewed article hoping to be published in an academic journal.
Is mail the lamest tier? There are three classes in the mail tier. One of them, Hunter, is insanely popular. The other two are hated - Evokers are hated by the players; Shaman by the Devs. They’re low population classes and I don’t see that turning around unless something dramatic happens.
Mail also happens to be consistently some of the ugliest, and least developed looking items in the game. In fact, the only time I ever felt sorry for another armor class was the Maldraxxus Leather Set which might have looked OK on Forsaken, but if you were a Nelf Rogue…what the hell?
And to make matters worse, look at the other tiers?
- Leather - 4 classes
- Plate - Paladins are one of the most popular classes, and warriors aren’t far off from the Top 3, You had a lot of options to alt on and use all the cool gear you got.
- Cloth - Admittedly, cloth isn’t for everyone, but if you like Cloth classes, there’s not a dramatic difference between them, and the sets can look pretty sick.
I’ve been a shaman since I changed mains going into Wrath, and I don’t even know exactly what the benefit of mail is. We’re not tanky - we have no tanks, most of us are squish, Shaman and Hunters are known for falling over when trained, and there’s a lot of kilts. What is the advantage of a kilt made of metal?
At any rate, this is supposed to be a “Are we the baddies?” post, except for an armor type, and mostly based on looks and alt-playability.
tl;dr - Is there an uglier tier of armor than Mail? Is there an armor tier that looks MORE like a junk drawer of classes? Have I wasted X years playing a garbage tier of transmog collecting?
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I am the worst, I tell ya.
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Yup, the only thing worse than mail is stuff born of mail 
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To be fair there are a lot of terrible looking cloth and plate sets. so to generalize theres just bad sets in every catagory.
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I think there should be a mail set that is letters and packages. Just to troll hunters shamans and, well evokers are already trolled hard as it is.
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I would say yes 100%.
Cloth may have a lot of robes, however Warlock and Mages have great mogs.
Plate’s probably top tier with Paladin, Death Knight, and Warrior.
Four classes uses leather, there’s a lot of variety for leather users.
Mail. Where do I start? The designs of mail gears are bad, all the way back to Classic. I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s really hard to get good mail mog these days.
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Mail Armor should be made of letters and packages.
Dang it, I was too late! 
Evokers are hated by some players.
That aside, yes. Mail absolutely sucks.
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Mail has some really nice bits of armour imo.
Its all about what style you like tbh.
I would rank them as leather, mail, cloth and lastly plate myself.
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yes. low-level armor of any type. plate looks like it’s normal clothes with some chainmail, leather looks too heavy, and cloth has big bulky gloves for some reason.
personally, i really like mail armor… when it looks appropriate for the class.
which yeah, the obvious difference between shaman-kilts and hunter stuff is pretty jarring when you get a new armor piece and go ‘oh. this is for the other guys.’
Aesthetically, I like how mail looks, specifically for a lot of kilts. Non kilts, and the good stuff gets a lot more rare.
Functionally, its funny how mail wearing classes usually have the worst survivability.
End the thread here; nothing is left to be said.
Mail is so bad, that they made an entire new mail class and chose not to have to design 80% of their armor (or subject us to seeing it).
Joking aside, yea mail mog is abysmal.
The chest piece from expeditions is fire though.
Yeah, what a deep thought.
The problem is the question is asking about the relativity of the armor tiers.
Say what now? I’d like to see this.
Mail is the inpass between plate and leather. For wearers that need a bit more protection but need to still be nimble. How hard is that? lol, Why are we worried about the relativity of fantasy gear that has been in place for years?
I think mail sets have been killing it this xpac, they continue in this direction and mail going to be ‘#1’
Why are forum-goes hellbent on fighting to the point that they have to intentionally misread the OP?
The stuff from the recent patch (in the Dream) has been good, I’ll give you that.
really? most people i know are pretty neutral toward them tbh
OP i read the self provided TLDR and answered the question
My answer was that no, because all gear has almost the same amount of ugly sets.
All mail gear is garbage looking.