Originally Posted by
Togo
I disagree with your assessment.
He may well be, but the wizard is not a Tier 1 character because he has invisibility, fireball, fly and teleport. He's a Tier 1 character because he can replace other character's roles in the party and can break the game in a number of ways.
I also don't agree that you've optimised those characters to the same extent, but that's a side point.
hm... You're still confusing terms here. A low-op game is a game where characters are not optimised. This could be because people don't know how to optimise, as you are assuming, or it could be because optimisation options are either discouraged or simply unavailable. You seem to be equating low-op with ignorance, which suggests you don't really understand these styles of play.
You might equally well argue that the reason why the Tier system is so popular amongst high-op players is that keeping a game balanced is hard and requires understanding how the rules fit together. For those who can do it, there is a range of styles of play. For those who can't, high-op is really the only option, and Tiers represent an inescapable fact that dominate the game. I think both arguements are flawed, but each arguement is a mirror of the other. If you don't like one, you need to reconsider both.