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Reason to USE ID's:

1-ID's are the fastest CSS selector.

2-ID's are the fastest Xpath Selector.

3-ID's are the fastest JQuery selector.

4-ID's make your front-end test-able.

Without ID's, functional, integration, regression, and even load testing are many orders of magnitude more difficult. If you are worldly enough to be offering best practice advice, I assume you or your organization tests at some point in your process?

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Points 2, 3 and 4 are irrelevant here. Do not use IDs in CSS. Use them in markup and JS and tests, sure, just not in CSS.

Point 1: The speed difference between a class and an ID is so, so slight that it's almost non-existent. The specificity difference between a class and an ID is massive.

blather all you want, but the consensus here is IDs, when properly used, enable speed and specificity. you don't get to tell us what's best practice.

Ah yes, the almighty consensus has spoken. Dare not disagree or we shall smite you.

If a given ID element is uniquely styled (a very common use case), it seems backwards to me to explicitly give it a class so that you can select it by class instead of by the ID that already exists.

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