My 2 cents:

I have to disagree with Stone Golem being in C tier. Toss is extremely powerful and can one shot most enemies early and late game if you can toss them against the boundaries of the map. Even if you can't, tossing or smashing an enemy against another enemy or object can do a lot of damage (plus, early on, smashing enemies against each other tends to be the main source of AoE damage). There's also pits you can throw enemies into for instant death against anything that can't fly (or is grounded). The lack of movement is annoying but there's ways around it through skills and equipment (if the stuff shows up). Plus they're extremely tanky, especially if you can buy the armored plating item for them. B is probably more accurate. (little side note, you can also toss explosive charges and boulders)

Spirit should probably be A tier. It's the only class that's an energy battery, which is handy when you have characters that burn through energy quickly (basically every psi class, especially pyrokineticist). It can restore its own energy too, or use its HP for an energy transfer if its out of energy. Plus it takes a beating unless it's against psy attacks. Its effectiveness as a unit does vary, since it does learn one random spell. I think the options are mind shield, cryo blast, and gravity spike; if there's more let me know, as those 3 are the only ones I remember. It can also drain energy from enemies (this usually ends up being a powerful attack vs low energy targets) and mind control (kinda whatever unless the target is a psi unit or spriggat). The only real issue with Spirits right now is if you get one, it's ALWAYS at level 1, which can be a headache if you're at mid game or later and don't have any exp items on hand (on average I get mine at mid game, so it's behind by about 8-12 levels).

Promoted shadowlings and greater (insert element here) spriggats are likely powerful enough to be put in a tier of their own. If anything is overpowered in this game, those are it. Great movement, can fly, and can completely disable or destroy the enemy team by themselves if they can hit or disable multiple targets (huge AoEs are available to them so it's usually easy to do so). Their only weakness is that they're squishy, but compared to what they can do? Being squishy is whatever.

As for everything else, it can really vary a lot. Traits can drastically change how effective a unit is. Like assassins with nimble can be untouchable (early on, with photokineticist support, or later with gear), muscular bowmen or axemen do ridiculous amounts of damage, and so on. The same thing can be said about negative traits, like lethargic psi units are pretty horrible, skinny swordsmen are just sad, and so on. It's probably worth mentioning before the tier list.

While Stone Golems have some pretty impactful skills such as Toss, it is difficult for the class to actually leverage these skills due to their pitiful base 3 movement. This means actually positioning them to take advantage of their powerful displacement skills can be difficult to accomplish. This is especially true when considering how reliant on surrounding terrain they are to be effective, which makes their displacement skills relatively situational. While Steam Engine can aid in mobility issues, it does not help that Stone Golems have relatively abysmal base energy; while their energy costs are extremely low as well, Stone Golems still can find themselves starved for energy due to the constant need to use Steam Engine to keep up and position themselves on the frontlines. Compared to something such as Kineticist, who's higher movement and much higher effective range allows them to better utilize their displacement skills to knock enemies into terrain to neutralize them, and it's apparent that Stone Golems are gated in their effectivenessby their low movement and energy to a pretty significant amount. Their bulk is furthermore nothing special compared to classes with access to medium and heavy armour, and their Cold and Light weaknesses make them worse options to tank hits from those elements, potentially limiting their capacity to position themselves on the frontlines further. I think a C tier placement for the class is fitting; it's not to say Stone Golem is an outright bad class, but rather simply mediocre compared to the stronger classes that can be found in the higher tiers.

I originally considered Spirits in A tier, but decided against it due to both how unreliable actually getting one is through the random event as well as the drain on morale should the player recruit one. I figured both of these are notable enough flaws with using the class to warrant a lower ranking, similar to how I think Assassin is brought down by its relatively high cost and salary.

I agree that the different Spriggat and Shadowling class variants are contenders for the most powerful classes in the game, though I don't think they're game-defining enough to warrant a separate tier all on their own.

Regarding traits, the tier list prioritizes reliability and consistency. It more so examines the average unit rather than the exception or the abysmal. It's true that traits have the potential to make a unit notably better or worse, just as how skills such as Motivate can make any unit incredible, but it is also true that more likely than not the player will have access to average units with more pedestrian traits. You are right to recognize the importance of traits, and they are worth valuing and taking advantage of, though the tier list itself focuses primarily on units functioning without the need for ideal traits.

Well I am happy to see that someone sees my A tiers as C tiers and other way round. I got Engineer to Architect lvl 30+ just because how easy it is to level them up and I wasn§t spamming skills, just had traps. It was 80% level every single round. And it will protect your other characters such as crossbowmen who can then hit hard from a far without much concern.

I think a lot of what you did is you getting accustomed to a specific playstyle, maybe? I personally tried to play Mentalist for extra accuracy for guaranteed freeze etc., but if they stand on their own, they just get destroyed by anything ranged, they need to go too far for mind control and its not even guaranteed. And when they are advanced class, they can control one with a guaranteed but still need to go too far and enemy units usually deal less damage than say your own crossbowman would.

Gasul has even bigger problem, it is not as good as psy healer and to hit stuff, it needs to go into range and it will die.

Kineticist too situational and outside of late game arenas, there is usually a better option.

Spriggats are great but I would put all of them in At tier. Fire Spriggat can't immobilize/stun/blind, fire damage is not as strong.

Lastly, Cavalier does everything the Swordsman is trying to do better in my opinion. It can hold the ground, is more durable, moves further, even has stun. The hardcore game I won was with having 3 cavaliers in the end battle. I think 200 salary and 1 unit of food drawback doesn't really justify putting them in the same tier in my opinion.

Originally posted by Krel Backstabba:

Well I am happy to see that someone sees my A tiers as C tiers and other way round. I got Engineer to Architect lvl 30+ just because how easy it is to level them up and I wasn§t spamming skills, just had traps. It was 80% level every single round. And it will protect your other characters such as crossbowmen who can then hit hard from a far without much concern.

I think a lot of what you did is you getting accustomed to a specific playstyle, maybe? I personally tried to play Mentalist for extra accuracy for guaranteed freeze etc., but if they stand on their own, they just get destroyed by anything ranged, they need to go too far for mind control and its not even guaranteed. And when they are advanced class, they can control one with a guaranteed but still need to go too far and enemy units usually deal less damage than say your own crossbowman would.

Gasul has even bigger problem, it is not as good as psy healer and to hit stuff, it needs to go into range and it will die.

Kineticist too situational and outside of late game arenas, there is usually a better option.

Spriggats are great but I would put all of them in At tier. Fire Spriggat can't immobilize/stun/blind, fire damage is not as strong.

Lastly, Cavalier does everything the Swordsman is trying to do better in my opinion. It can hold the ground, is more durable, moves further, even has stun. The hardcore game I won was with having 3 cavaliers in the end battle. I think 200 salary and 1 unit of food drawback doesn't really justify putting them in the same tier in my opinion.

Yeah, I've tried to make Gasuls into a good class but they just underwhelm. I even tried to make an optimal custom character Gasul; nope, still underwhelming. They usually have less energy and lower healing power than a Psi Healer. Also, unless they have nimble and an evasion boosting weapon, they're even less durable than normal Psi Healers (They're about as squishy as a shadowling Psi healer, which says a lot). They are pretty much pure healers with less options for healing (they don't have far shield, long shield, or big shield access) vs a Psi Healer, and their physical abilities are just not worth using due to how dangerous melee range is for them. Gasul is probably the worst class in the game right now.

Also, swordsman is inferior to cavalier in the early game, I agree there, but later on they do get access to more powerful attacks than any of the cavalier classes get. The way I see it, cavalier classes are tanky units with great movement, hold for area control and charge for stun and knockback, where swordsmen are more about using cut then double slash for high damage (and they get sprint for when you need it). It's probably better to compare cavaliers to spearmen to be honest, as they do share the same role for the most part.

I don't know, you just don't need that amount of damage on a single unit especially if "stun" is your alternative. I have never been in a situation when I would prefer swordsman over cavalier.

In the previous Craig's game, Liberated, there were big maps and extra movement wasn't as much of an advantage for say - collecting chests right after destroying them. Plus pierce dmg executes Spriggats, Slash doesn't have advantage against any particular enemy.

I'm surprised you rank the elemental psy fighters so highly. They're consistently my least used characters. I'm finding that bowmen can do nearly everything they can do better. (Though I have gotten significant use out of Decoy.)

Kineticist too situational and outside of late game arenas, there is usually a better option.

Really? My kineticist cleans house in every map. Every map is chock-full of objects to throw people into. Are you remembering you can push characters into each other for extra damage?

Originally posted by midnightdragoness:

Kineticist too situational and outside of late game arenas, there is usually a better option.

Really? My kineticist cleans house in every map. Every map is chock-full of objects to throw people into. Are you remembering you can push characters into each other for extra damage?

It has the lowest damage output. Throwing into water needs to be repeated to sustain control, pushing enemies into each other doesn't do as much damage, is split between units and also requires the right situation meaning you won't be able to use it always.

In contrast, throwing a ligh ball also damages 3x3 area and blinds it making them not a threat for the following turns.

Originally posted by Krel Backstabba:

Originally posted by midnightdragoness:

Really? My kineticist cleans house in every map. Every map is chock-full of objects to throw people into. Are you remembering you can push characters into each other for extra damage?

It has the lowest damage output. Throwing into water needs to be repeated to sustain control, pushing enemies into each other doesn't do as much damage, is split between units and also requires the right situation meaning you won't be able to use it always.

In contrast, throwing a ligh ball also damages 3x3 area and blinds it making them not a threat for the following turns.

Yeah, I see them as an early source of AoE damage (smashing enemies together can help a bit) and for pushing annoying enemies into the water. Later on, they're really only good at downing fliers or pushing enemies into water/pits. The damage they do for pushing enemies into objects doesn't really scale very well, and Kinetic Constriction is pretty mediocre. Probably best to reclass them at that point.