Therein lies the problem though. Because 'breaking 3E' consists of 'y'know, what if, rather than buff someone else, I buff myself?' Or 'what if, rather than be any other class.... I be a wizard and suddenly I can outdo literately everyone in the party?'
You complain about build but, frankly, the crazy build stuff is the only way you can compete with just stock wizards
And that's before we even get to 3E rangers being the mess they are.
No, this is just more internet forum metagame nonsense that I never saw at an actual table.
I never saw real, flesh and blood 3e players (besides the one guy who insisted on making everythign some optimal "build") think they needed to play some insanely specialized "build" to compete with wizards. I never saw people who thought that a stock wizard was that overshadowing.
3e wizards are glass cannons that can do a lot of damage, then run out of spells and are pretty squishy. They can dominate for a few fights, then are weak for the rest of the day, whereas fighters and rogues can fight all day long. If that wizard uses utility magic and buff spells, then their ability to do damage drops as well. In a long, grinding dungeon crawl, a Wizard can excel in a few fights, use utility magic to bypass or overcome some threats, use buffs to help the whole party overall, then they're the weakest member of the party.
People played what they wanted to play, people played their character concept, and it worked.
The ways that people broke 3e weren't "be a wizard" or "buff myself", they were more "this class feature just says it works based on your level, it didn't specify class level or character level, so I'm going to assume that means character level, so I can take 1 level in the class as a dip, and now at high levels I can use a key ability of a class I have 1 level in as if I am 20th level in that class in addition to everything else I have" (the Strength domain ability for the Cleric was a powergamer choice for a 1-level splash for this trick).
This idea that spellcasters somehow massively overshadowed EVERYTHING else to the point the entire game needed to be rewritten to accommodate that is the sort of thing I only heard on internet message boards, not at actual gaming tables.