Good list and excellent points you make when dealing with it.
Here’s a take I can make from a lot of PvP and what troops seem to get used a lot. I think the context of your listing maybe needs to be streamlined in a way where you reconsider your explanations of your tiers? I think from reading a post below, it prompted me to think of the word ‘progressive’. The list needs maybe to look at the progressive nature of the game and how things work in game modes.
In this regard, you’ve tried to cater for maybe all roundedness and encompassed all troops together. Your list maybe be better viewed if you maybe revisit the listing and identify troops as to their core abilities/type
Maybe;
Support
Healers, generators, half way houses (a bit of both) Divinia, Holy St Astra etc.
Tier A and B, Tier C could be for junk.
All-round effectiveness?
Utility troops do a bit for another, or themselves, can change events in battle. Let’s say Keeper of Souls or Emperor K, Magnus, maybe Umberwolf, yep it has quite a bit of utility, King Highforge maybe, always hits back two targets, not effected by stealth, stuns, summons, accelerates Slayer for Fireblade, gives Dwarves 50% start etc.
Overwhelming Performance
Think troops that can effectively win a battle on their own or can seamlessly ride in many a team
Glaycion is a prime example. YG is.
Situationally Effective
Like say Queen Mab (neutered by troops immune to mana burn or are submerged), Taloca (effective when storm running), maybe Macaw etc.
Maybe it’s more apt with the state of the game to identify the best overall and the better at specific things? New players will read that and see where those troops are best suited. It will help them choose which troops they want for which things.
You include several game modes in your assessment. That again makes things difficult, because a troop like say Captain Macaw generally won’t work in explore, it only works vs hero talents and a few troops and needs to submerge a none submerged troop, then recast to kill it. So it’s probably better in PvP where several hero classes can submerge troops. Yet, where is it in T3 PvP.
So maybe you could when describing your assessments, identify their viability in game modes.
So each troop maybe gets a 3-4 line description.
Say - Leviathan
Can reorder opponents and dispel status effects, has utility to submerge itself and deal damage to all troops. Generally a situationally effective troop – has some utility but is rarely seen in any game modes. No known effective teams some use with other dragons, has dual category as a Merfolk/Dragon but unable to be accelerated to a half start.
Things like that.
What made me do this was also looking at a couple of troops.
Wrath - disagree, if you are calling S tier a centrepiece, Wrath is a centrepiece of
Wrath
Doomed Glaive or Club
Obsidius
Mercy
That team is extremely viable at meta PvP. Another reason I also disagree, is I can substitute umpteen troops in that setup and revolve it around Wrath. The conversion of yellow to skulls, the enrage, the conversion of blue to brown and the burn all.
I can make the hero almost any class and it work. I can use Fireblade.
I can swap Obsidius for TPK, Qilin, ZG. I can drop Mercy for a TPK and so on, yet Wrath is still extremely effective. Obsidius works well because stuns will negate things like fireblades and webspinners/savage hunters etc, making Wrath’s lack of skull protection less of an issue. Wrath is an exceptional troop.
Divinia - is it really a centrepiece troop? Does it make any team effective in meta PvP performance? It doesn’t scale really.
I love Divinia, 6,500 PvP uses, but it has been neutered by the Divine nerf and the arrival of say Moon Rabbit and Leprechaun.
I used to run Bard Dawnbringer or Divine Protector, Ubastet, Divinia, Mercy a lot and had a lot of success, but despite all the great things Divinia can supply, it doesn’t have fast or swift or is empowered, and it needs Ishbaala for 40% starts. An empowered to accelerate it is not ideal, it has cleanse, but only on cast. It can give numerous positive effects, but they are random, so it actually is too limited to be something to reliably build a team round. The only team I can think of where I have seen it recently, is within a team with YG, but all it tends to do is maybe extend a battle or never cast. I get that it can random enrage/barrier/submerge/bless etc, but if those were guaranteed on a cast, then it’s a centrepiece imho.
Can you say that Divinia is more useful in teams than Queen Titania? QT is very common, yes it does not have the all roundedness of Divinia, but…
Similarly, Holy St Astra once it casts, can be more effective than Divinia at times.
So I think you are better off recategorizing your lists to reflect how the troops work.
An example, your assessment of B: - Niche is perhaps a little misleading. Is not Flamifier, YG, QT, TP a niche team for QT? You could probably argue nearly all troops could be niche, but it’s maybe a little subjective of an assessment. I don’t know what you could put, maybe ‘effective troops in a variety of environments’ - might be better? If you recategorized, you could pick several types and then describe troops.
A further example, Webspinner B - Bone Dragon C. You can very easily make a team with Webspinner and Bone Dragon and it could even become very effective at T3 pvp. We get lazy, there are awful pvp teams with little or no effort wreaking havoc, so experimenting is fraught, but if we persevere, maybe we can work a few things.
Let’s see, Webspinner, Doomed Axe, Bone Dragon, Grave Seer - that could work well if we wanted to. Even Gimlet, giving Webby an enrage. We could use Moon Rabbit there, or even Mercy, which helps vs Frostmage or entangled starts. We could pop EoE in instead of Doomed Axe, endless possibilities.
Sheggra - C - we could very easily make a skull team with Sheggra. Let me see…
Here’s one, Stonehammer, that much maligned dude, Sheggra, Doomed Blade, Mercy, Titan or Bard or Mech (think tree of knowledge). I mean an exceptional team, albeit slow, Glaycion, Stonehammer (yes that way round is best) Doomed Xbow, Mercy. I never lose vs anything that wants to skull hit. I can beat every meta team with it, but it’s not completely reliable because speed kills, but if I want a team vs most things, that will decimate.
The old Stonehammer/Glaycion/Crossbow/Grave Seer was also good as thief, but too much freeze could be its undoing.
Heck, let’s change colour, Champion of Gaard, Doomed Blade, Sheggra, any empowered you want to accelerate.
So, maybe if I may, you may be better sorting your listings by modes, with descriptions, rather than just popping them all in the tiers like thus, as it will surely help see things better and would be a really nice reference for players. 