Phrexus says:
"Let me start with this: I’ve been playtesting next since the encounter with 18 rats, to Vault of the Dracolich and beyond, all the way to Dead in Thay. It has not been an enjoyable journey. I’ve really tried, I swear, to make an awesome Rogue, and when that didn’t pan out I tried Fighter. Nada. Meanwhile in our Dead in Thay run that’s likely about to finish (we’re up against a Lich who has Time Stop and Meteor Shower), the two teams have been carried exclusively by Warrior Cleric and a slightly altered pre-gen Wizard. The rest of the crew are just there to mop up whatever the two ‘Walking Apocolypse’ classes leave crippled.
Then I read this blogpost, and I see that the problem wasn’t just noticed, but met with a throwing up of hands and ‘Eh, it’s always been like that (except in the edition that must not be named), whataya gonna do?’
Everything I’ve seen in the playtests feels like 5e was made solely from happy memories of when the designers were 17 while completely ignoring the breakthroughs since then. There have been monumental breakthroughs, from computers that help make formatting a snap, to indepth study of balance from 40 years of gaming, to realizing that aesthetics count and making things easy to read and reference, to realizing it sucks having to swap back and forth between two books because of monsters that use spells.
Everything up to this point has felt like a desperate bid for nostalgia, and you’ve explicitly stated that (1) 5e was knowingly created a sub-optimal product because “that’s the way it’s always been”, and (2) when presented with the opportunity to rectify the known issues of past editions, the designers opted not to because “Gosh, math and balance is hard work!” and “It’s was broken and I still enjoyed (*cough* because I played a wizard or cleric *cough*).”
I know the playtests already presented sufficient evidence, but thank you Mr. Schwalb. This article has been eye opening."
Yuuuup.
My two biggest disappointments with 5e so far: needlessly fragile low levels (showing that they either learnt nothing from 4e or actively ignored what they did learn), and the Wizard (and, short ways behind, Cleric) not carved into several different classes, or hit with a severely restrained spell list.
The game actually does play pretty well if you ban Wizards, though.