These builds have nothing to do with real games, these builds are purely for a restricted PvP sandbox, this is more like playing Monopoly than it is D&D. Making a 20th level character under perfect conditions is very different from playing a character from 1st to 20th. I don't know about anyone else, but what I end up with at 20th level very rarely matches what I envisioned for the character when he was 1st. As the character progresses, he adapts to his environment, maybe I intended him to take only ASI's, no feats and he started with a greatsword, but found a flaming longsword along the way. So he ended up going sword and board, with Shield Master. Of course, he may have gotten tired of dropping to 0 HP every other fight and decided to dip 3 levels into Barbarian. Characters are supposed to change and grow in unexpected ways, not follow stringent cookie cutter paths from 1st to 20th, that is how you end up with characters afflicted with Agoraphobia.
Between often being the DM and having some groups fall apart (particularly in the face of COVID), there are only four 5e Characters I've gotten to play through five or more levels:
1. A Sword Bard whom I had planned to make dual rapier wielder with the appropriate dual wielder feat. She ended up wielding daggers most of the time, having found several magic ones, skipped the feat at level 4 in favor of upping Charisma because nothing she did with any blade was on par with what she could do with a well-timed Suggestion spell, and, when the campaign wound down at level 7, had still never once touched a rapier, and was actually leaning more towards taking the Crossbow Expert feat at level 8. At level 3 she became a wererat.
2. A Ranger who eventually became Gloomstalker Ranger 5/War Wizard 3. This guy had the best overall stats I've ever rolled, so in addition to all the normal Ranger priorities I was able to put a 16 in Intelligence, with my eye on a 2 level War Wizard dip at some far flung point, probably after a Rogue, Fighter, and/or Bard dip. But then we found a couple of awesome Spellbooks and the party had lost all its other casters. Should the campaign ever resume he's likely going to keep on Wizarding.
3. A Battlemaster Figther 5/Barbarian 2, currently still being played. He has a 15 in Charisma so that he could maybe multiclass into Paladin someday, but that was a plan from before the party gained a healer, and now pretty unlikely. He was meant to be a Great Weapon Master with a Greatsword (basically because of movie Conan), but became a Polearm Master so that delaying extra attack until level 6 wouldn't hurt so much. Then he found a really good spear which is now his signature weapon, and might respec at the next ASI, as per Tasha's rules, to swap out Great Weapon Fighting for Dueling and be a Shield and Board fighter. At level 5 he became a werebear.
4. A Conjuration Wizard 5/Storm Sorcerer 1. She started with the Sorcerer level for RP reasons and was supposed to eventually do the full Sorcerer 3 dip to get Metamagic, but now if the campaign should ever resume I'll probably just do Sorcerer 2 for spells to Sorcery point conversion and then the Tasha's metamagic feat. This is the only character that actually ended up roughly according to plan. Notably it is also the character played with an oversized group of 7+ players who has gotten comparatively less in the way of both spotlight time and magic items than any of the other three.
Now I don't know how typical my experiences are, and certainly had I been more inclined to rigidly adhere to a planned character build, even in the face of magic items, character development, and shifting group needs I could have stayed mostly on plan with any of them, my habit of catching lycanthropy notwithstanding. But honestly, if you find yourself getting through whole tiers of play without anything going off-plan in your character build then I feel sorry for you. It probably means your character isn't getting as much development as they should and that you aren't getting any interesting magic bling.
I will note that the characters I've had who developed in unexpected ways (both the above and another who I didn't play for so long, but who became cursed by the campaign MacGuffin and has been largely defined by that ever since), have all been the ones I played in small groups, each of which spent substantial numbers of sessions with only three players. I think with smaller groups you both get more spotlight time and are more likely to have play focus on giving individual characters extended spotlight time. You also get a larger share of magical items and have more magical items that don't really fit anyone's planned build.
