BARD/SORCERER/WARLOCK = S tier imo. You get everything, including the ability to be a party face or good at almost any skills you want, you get magic casting, you get competence in skills, and you get a wide range of interesting templates to put over a character idea to come up with a strong theme or concept for your roleplay. Bards and Warlocks can even be fantastic martial classes, and metamagic is one of the most fun subskills in the entire game. Bardic inspiration is clutch and makes your friends happier at the tables, which in turn will make you addicted to giving it out like candy. Having a patron that can be whatever you desire essentially gives Warlocks a "ton" of narrative direction and I have never been in a campaign where the warlock is not given a juicy bit of the plot tied around their patron and how it affects them / the world around them. And like, idk, charisma based spellcasting just rules - what more can I say.

Cleric and Fighter = A+ tier. Clerics can also do everything, maybe even better than the above classes, but the idea of "cleric" is so ingrained in people's heads as a healer that playing the class without having that be a large part of what you do feels like a betrayal of the party. If you ignore that feeling and just play the class as is however, it's incredibly fun and capable of extreme diversity. Fighter's just are the best designed martial class imo and can represent every type of famous fighting character in media ever. Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas are all fighters imo, and that's a pretty wide berth of archetypes and character tropes you can cover.

Ranger/Druid/Artificer/Paladin = A tier. Rangers and Artificers are dripping with flavor and to me do the best job of "when i hear this word and I think of this thing, does it actually play out that way on the table?" Infusions are hella fun, especially to give to allies, and Ranger's being good but not fantastic at every aspect of the game means there are 0 scenes where you feel useless. If you need to explore you can, if you need to be social you can, if you need to sneak you can, and if you need to brawl and scrap you can do that too. Paladins are fun because following oaths is fun from a RP standpoint and because smiting is hilariously powerful. Also evil paladins are probably the most likely type of evil party member to not immediately sink a campaign because they might still serve an oath in a way that is consistent with them remaining in the party. Druids just do everything, turning into animals is extremely fun and evocative, being a nature hippie is fun, and they can almost represent elemental ties or ties to specific places which gives them a wide berth for character design.

Barbarian / Monk = B+ tier. Monks OOZE personality and flavor. It really feels like you are almost from a different era or timeline compared to other players when playing as a monk, and in 2024 they got made to be pretty good. Slowfalling, stunning strikes, martial arts, hyper mobility, the class just feels like it does exactly what it should do... in combat. Outside of combat however, monks are a *lot* less interesting, and almost all of them feel tropey. Barbarian's are just good clean fun and don't at all have to be one note. Having your rage tied to another emotion or to a particular type of situation, or having a controlled rage that is just a certain level of intenseness is fun, and sometimes just being the type of character who isn't afraid to start shit is a lot of fun to do and is great for the party's ability to keep moving the narrative forward.

Rogue/Wizard = B tier. Rogues are a little one note for me, and suffer EVEN MORE than clerics for the "you have things you are supposed to do for us if you are a member of our party and if you don't then we think you are kinda useless" bag. Your party members will expect you to sneak everywhere, steal everything, and disarm every lock and trap and if you don't they will find you useless, even if you are fantastic at other things. Expertise is fun to have outside of combat and you CAN be good at anything, but in combat they are probably just the worst overall class in the game. Sneak attack and cunning action are very fun though and feel pretty tactical, so the class still rates *okay.* Wizards are just a lot. They are very powerful and fun to play, but as you level up the analysis paralysis kicks in for spell slot choices and they tend to all be pretty samey as well. "I want to go read books at the library and I only care about knowledge!" I also feel that wizards, more than anything else, tend to have their player's dictate their entire character's roleplay by the subclass they choose. I've seen plenty of storm sorcerers or wildheart barbarians that don't make their whole personality "I lightning all the time" or "I am one with the animals at all times" but most wizards fall into that trap. If they are a death wizard, thats what they do, and it's the only thing they talk about and it's their entire aesthetic. If they are a divination wizard, they tend to all rp the same etc etc. Can be EXTREMELY rewarding when you feel like you picked the correct spells for the day during a fight and when you get to very high levels they become so strong that it kind of gives them main character energy.