I think the person who posted that graphic of the context Fox nailed it out of the park.
Tier 2 backlinks are great for linking to content, which then sets up the context of your target pages.
For the longest time, people think that linking is really just about sucking up some authority from different domains and then concentrating that link juice by linking to a target page.
This used to work like a charm back in the day but now, things are a little bit more complicated.
It's easy to figure out why Google has been investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and there's been no lead up in the seemingly rapid increase in complexity.
But one thing remains pretty straightforward, links are only valuable if they provide some sort of context, and I don't see this changing anytime soon.
In fact, I see it accelerating, as Google's overall system becomes even more intelligent.
So focus on the kind of contextual content that you would like to deliver hypercharged link juice to your target pages.
These are where you should point your tier 2 backlinks to.