I liked the idea of Tiers of play in theory, but my game just went to the 2nd tier and I didn't really like the way 5E handled it. I've felt the game gets more and more complicated as the players go up and it becomes less and less fun. Feels more and more video-gamey, and becomes more and more of an exercise in Min/Maxing (for two of my players at least).
For example I have one player who picked the Polearm Master Feat instead of a Attribute bump at 6th level. So now he gets 2 attacks (for 5th level fighter) an occasional 3rd attack (Action Surge once per shor rest) and the Polearm Master feat allows one more bonus attack with the butt of the weapon (1d4). So he's making 4 attacks some rounds. That's just ridiculous.
Unless I'm misreading something it's in the 2014 Players handbook which is where I drew the line in the sand about which rules counted so It's legal by my own rules. We'll see how it plays out, maybe he'll need all those attacks as we meander through Tier 2 play but it really makes the PC into a super-hero and I don't like it.
I've always felt D&D combat was a bit like rock-em sock-em robots with both opponents standing still and punching each other. By turning shields into an AC boost and dodging being mostly in the fantasy of Hit Points there really isn't much tactics to the fighting. Even the tactics found in the Battlemaster Martial Archetype are pretty bland (trip and do extra damage, or scare and do extra damage, and oh my god if the enemy misses you the Repoist gives you a bonus attack making that possibly 7 in one round (i'm not giving a bonus ontop of the bonus for that one).
5E seems overly complicated and gets worse and worse for DMs as you progress. The game promotes the Min/Maxing I've always disliked. I'll continue going (Storm King's Thunder now) and see if it grows on me over time, and see how the players feel about it, but now I'm dreaming of RuneQuest 2 which we thought was complicated at the time but which is actually a pretty clean system.
