I made a tier list of heroes after 8 years of playing the game.
I always like seeing people do tier lists of heroes. Personally I would love it if TheChad (I think that's the guy that did the thematic progression series?) did a big tier list video on the COTRPodcast Youtube Channel.
I felt like getting a discussion going on the communities thoughts on modern hero rankings. Apologies if I shouldn't be posting this, but I didn't see anything against it in the rules/guidelines.
S Tier is the best heroes in the game. They're common components of "One Decks" (Decks that beat every quest), they're almost always good. They make too many other heroes obsolete. Top players actively avoid using them because of how overused and broken they are.
A Tier are key heroes of S tier decks. They also can show up in One Decks or they do their role so well that whenever you need role X you are always coming back to taking these heroes.
B Tier are key heroes in A tier decks. Decks that are still good, could beat many hard quests, but aren't meant to be super powerful decks. They're very good but in more niche roles.
C Tier are heroes that have a key purpose but that purpose is very rarely needed, or more commonly overshadowed. They might have been key heroes in progression at one point (That's the only reason Lore-findel is on that list) but the game has past them by. They might still be reached for in thematic decks and they can at least do "Something" valuable.
D Tier are the meme deck heroes. Yes they technically do "Something" but it's so finicky of gimmicky that you're really stretching to put this hero in a deck. There's almost no point in using these heroes of other better heroes except to say that you "Can".
F tier is the "Why do you even exists......" tier.
Looking forward to seeing the things people disagree with the most in this list.
Edit: I should say that this is for 1/2 player count. I forgot how different an experience 4 player games are and when you have to use so many heroes without overlap even the most corner case heroes can be useful. Since 90% of games are played 1/2 player I mainly considered my experience in that regard.