D&D 5E What's one thing that pleasantly surprised you, and one thing that disappointed you about the PHB?

Title says it all. If you have to pick one thing that picked you up, and one thing that let you down, what would they be? I'm sure most of us have many on both sides. But pick one; and try to keep it balanced.

My pleasant surprise: I finally got around to reading through the Wizard class last night, and they did something I never imagined they could do: They made me want to play a Diviner! Diviners are coool! I'm not one who sits down and calculates DPR and stuff, so maybe diviner's aren't the "best" Wizard school. But they're really neat and would be a ton of fun to play. Of all the "roll control" kinds of powers/rules there are in 5e, Portent is the coolest in my book:

After each long rest, roll two 2d20. Record the results. Then throughout the day, you can expend each result to make that be the outcome of any one attack roll, saving throw, or ability check for you or any creature you can see.

That's really neat. The mechanic just fits the flavor so elegantly. I love how many "roll control" features 5e has, between adv/disadv, lucky feat, halfling luck, savage attack, portent... am I missing any?

In fact, all the Wizard schools are pretty cool... (ignoring what seems to be the really iffyness of potent cantrip for evokers). School specialization has never had it so good. Maybe this kind of stuff has appeared in 3.PF or 4e, but I never played those, so I don't know.

My disappointment: Well. I still haven't delved enough, but it seems everyone and her brother is disappointed with how Ranger has shaped up. Oh, that's not really my big disappointment: mine is the halfling art. Is there any halfling drawn in the book who's tiny fragile foot bones and spindly legs shouldn't be crushed under the weight of their massive head? Is there any any that wouldn't generally have the shape of an ice-cream cone if it were standing still.... I count one who isn't grinning as widely as possible and one who isn't dancing. They're so universally ice-cream cone silhouetted that I'm assuming this must have been part of the art direction.

Anyway, I love this book. There's so much to love in this book. There are a few hiccups.

Bonus question: How many owls appear in the art?

Pleasant Surprise: Multiclassing. I like it.
Disappointment: Halfling images. Don't like 'em. I was hoping for something closer to the Jeff Dee halfling pics from the old Basic set.

I will third the halfling art thing. Ugh. It isn't even that the art is terrible (it isn't), it's the decision to make them proportioned like... I dunno, characters from Charlie Brown.

Pleasant surprise? I'm going to go with the spell list. There are a lot of new spells there (particularly for the warlock) that are dripping with flavor and just sound like fun to cast.

Pleasant Surprise: Most of the art in the PHB was better than I thought it would be after seeing the previews.
Disappointment: Some of the art was just as bad as the preview art, and some of it was worse.

Ha, lots of owls, noticed that last night.

For me, the pleasant surprise was the sheer number of options that look fun to play. The number of permutations available through choices of class and sub-class alone is great, more than any other PHB. I was concerned that many options would be weak or otherwise undesirable, but for the most part it seems like they created a large number of viable choices that should please lots of players. Almost all the subclasses looked appealing to me, or at least I know they will be to some of my players. They may or may not have missed the mark with the ranger and sorcerer (those were my least favorite), but IMO at worst they are average or maybe just not how I would have done them, and not outright bad, so that's pretty good for 12 classes and so many subclasses.

Backgrounds look solid too, adding a lot of needed flavor to new characters, and background is kept relevant throughout the campaign with mechanics like inspiration, skills and proficiencies, and features. Feats and multiclass rules look great, further adding to the number of choices, but I'm glad they've kept these optional. Races are well executed too; even though I'm not a personal fan of dragonborn and tieflings in the PHB, I appreciate that they included them for players who do like them, and I feel they were well done.

I don't really have any big disappointments, but there were some small things here and there I felt could be better or I would have preferred to be different. If I have to pick one thing, it would be the art. Illustrations in the equipment section especially seem like they could have been better, and more descriptive of what was actually listed. While not a huge disappointment to me, the art did not wow me like it did for some. I felt the quality to be overwhelmingly average. Though I did appreciate their efforts to illustrate some diversity in the types of characters, the execution left a little to be desired IMO. Many of the illustrations look like they just didn't have a lot of detail and maybe should have been smaller in scale, and I felt like there was too much quantity, not enough quality. That said, I found some of the art very enjoyable, and I appreciated the diversity of artists as well as subject matter.

pleasant surprise: Like this iteration of the warlock class a lot.

disappointment: Complete nerfing of the fighter ability indomitable. I really liked the early playtest version of gets advantage on saves vs. magic. The new version is a pale shadow of that!

Edit: not easily house ruled disapointment: I hate the layout of the spells section. Adding to that, the fact that each spell entry does not have the associated class(es). The constant flipping back and forth is really annoying!

Pleasant Surprise: The setting polygnostic approach seems to have come together as well as I'd hoped. Love the gods appendix, could probably do without Drizzt as the iconic elf image. That's just wrong on a bunch of levels.

Disappointment: Halflings. If I have the opportunity to shake Mike Mearls' hand at Gen Con I'm absolutely going to make an impassioned plea on the behalf of the halfling race.

Pleasant surprise: Wizard schools. Lots of interesting mechanics imbedded in them. Abjuration has the damage ward, divination has foretelling and the enhanced spellcasting for divination spells, transmutation has the transmuter's stone.

Disappointment: The relative blandness of the sorcerer, especially compared to the playtest sorcerer.

Wow, i have not see the PHB but i'm already scared of these bobble headed halfling monstrosities that everyone hates! what the hell, i wonder how that slipped by...

Pleasant Surprise: I actually want to play a paladin now.

Disappointment: The bard. I mean, when a 1st level cleric spell (Bless) is arguably BETTER than the defining class feature (performing to buff one's allies)... um, yeah. Why not just play a cleric/sorc multiclass instead & take that 'motivational speaker' feat?