Here is the thing with the Espada rankings

Grim breaking the power escalation scale. Cause The moment Ichigo has controls of his powers.. He still needs to combine his Bankai with his Hollow Mask to be stronger then BASE Grim and he is roughly evenly matched with Released Grim.

So remember that point Base Grim is the Equivalent of Bankai using Ichigo

The fact that none of the captains outside of Soifon are no where near as pressured as Ichigo was is the problem. unless you accept that Ichigo is only roughly around the same level of the captains he isn't >> some of them.

Its almost impossible to tell if Ulq is stronger cause... The thing is He didn't needs Segunda Etapa to win... He was already kicking Ichigo's ass to the point that Ichigo's attempts at fighting back had become comical. and Ichigo'Bankai+Mask' was only roughly equal to Ulq's base form.

Really the problem with the Top 3 Espada and Yammy's 0 release is... It got rushed and the captains didn't get nearly as dominated as they should have based on Ulq and Grim's performances and the Vaizard's being the necessary reinforcements should have been key to overcoming them. Which again Soifon is really the only one that suffers that fate

I mean Starrk I think would have forced Shunsui into Bankai if other people would have stopped rushing in

Tier only gets a bad rep for well... the Perception that Toshiro is weak for a Captain, and thats more to due with Kubo's constant use of him as the punching bag.

and then Kubo does the boneheaded move of having Tier appear to need to be saved by WonderWeiss even though he already established Tier has the perfect counter to Toshiro's ice.