Class Tier List for Gold runs

Tier S - Human Vanguard lul
Tier 1 - Vanquisher
Tier 2 - Everything else

I'll never forget comments from my RL buddy watching me play a round of gold Outlaws with BW (before their buff) and a round of Kett with human Vanguard after. I had nothing but Talon I at the time as a sidearm. But even he noticed it and doesn't even play the game: "compared to previous one this class looks OP af dude, and why is your team constantly dying?". 

I've found the following classes very successful on Gold:

Human Soldier
Human Sentinel
Any Infiltrator
Any Asari
Any Vanguard
Any Krogan
Any Salarian (but such annoying voice acting!)

I've seen Turian Soldier and Havoc do really well.

To be honest, even 'powers' classes do fine on Gold, it's quite easy with halfway decent weapons and gear and equipment. And I don't mean sitting in the corner of Zero and sniping down the alley against Outlaws, which people seem to do a lot. Frankly you can do that with any class and a Vanquisher I

As of now the characters aren't as well-differentiated as they were in ME3. Some are uniquely effective (TSol, asari adept) but for the most part your success will be determined by the weapon you equip. Charger if you're new; Raptor if you've progressed to advanced packs; a few others once you get to a higher level (vanq, talon, equalizer, piranha, hurricane, and a few others).

Any tier list you have now will more than likely be irrelevant later today.

I remember "S tier" first from Gran Turismo (1), where it was the grade better than "A".

Definitely seems Japanese in origin, with one friend who lived over there saying it related to their school grading system, which had 秀 (Shu) as above A. Gaming companies carried it over I guess.

Also some games have tiers above S, like "SS", "SSS" and "SSSS", like weapons in Earth Defence Force and Armored Core, which are invariably rare and OP.

Who cares? Just play what is the most fun for you.

1. Insurgent
2. Asari Adept
3. Turbo charge kit
4. Non melee insurgent (sticky nade build)
5. Human Infiltrator

Its deadly on fullauto

I may or may not have been drinking when i typed that.

I usually pick a character and take it to level 20, so I haven´t tried all the characters by far, but in my experience..:

Angara Avenger is borderline OP. I 25-35k evrytim on gold, trivialises most objectives thanks to Stealth Grid, makes keeping your team alive easy, Armour enemies die super fast thanks to melee bonuses against armour and sticky nades, and racks up Support/Assist/Kills like your mom nails sailors at the weekend. Best class for points.

Asari duelists can facetank Hydras and Berserkers and almost everything once you learn their attack tells, you just iframe once they start an attack and refill your shields with charge. With a squad that primes, you set off explosions all the time with Charge/Lance and you can repay those motherfucking Observers with their bullshit using Backlash. Also, you have a sword. Oh, and you can fucking teleport. Absolutely ridiculous fun, totally chaotically awesome, my favourite class to play. Best class for action and fun.

The Human Kineticist is the class that is most difficult to master, but once you have a grip on keeping Ascended and using her zero-cooldown pull/throw effectively, it´s a total blast to play, you fuck up the battlefield. But yeah, super squishy, so requires a balanced, careful mastery of your shields and total mastery of the mechanics of the gameplay. Best class for feeling of mastery and satisfaction.

The Angara Insurgent has a skill called Shield Boost. This makes you borderline unkillable at rank 6, because with cooldown and duration upgrades it can stay up nearly 100% of the time, who could fuck up constantly refilling shields? You could, but ok. He also has trip mines which wreck shit like your fat ass wrecks sofas. And an assault turret to distract the enemy so they don´t even fucking attack you and your endlessly refilling shields anyway. Best class if you´re just totally shit at the game.

Stealth Grid?

Or Insurgent with Shield Boost?