As far as newbies, I've started up a couple of groups now, the newbies don't have a problem with 5E.
I have found 5e works better for new players if you have a mix of experienced/returning & new players at the table, as well as an experienced DM. It's like an immersive language class (or fraternity hazing) at that point.
That's part of the brilliance of the 5e design & presentation, it's acceptable enough to us old-timers that we can get enthused about running it in the classic style, and new players, especially returning ones or those caught up in the come-back pick up on that enthusiasm, it can draw them in and get them past the unintuitive/frustrating/dissapointing bits, sometimes you get a genuinely-new player who isn't as interested in the game as returning fad who is put off by the attitude, but mostly it works very well.
That's in contrast to 4e, which an all-new-to-the-hobby group, either with an experienced DM or with just one of them DMing at random, could get into surprisingly easily, because it was less unintuitive, clearer & more consistat, and particularly because it did put so little burden on the DM.
I've had whole tables of new players at once - even using pregens, the ramp up with most RPGs is daunting. 4e is one of the less daunting ones, the least so for an ed of D&D, which isn't saying a lot - there could easily be much more new-player-friendly introductory RPGs, but the issue is that new players rarely come looking to try 'an RPG,' because the only one they'll've heard of is likely D&D...
While 4E had it's merits, every character had supernatural abilities that were spelled out in detail which seemed to limit thinking outside the box.
You are mistaken. All martial classes prior to essentials had no supernatural powers, at all. Even post-Essentials, only the Ranger, Berserker & Skald mixed martial and supernatural powers - but you'd stopped playing by then, so wouldn't have been exposed to them.
It's also odd that you'd point out supernatural powers spelled out in detail as an issue, when every edition of D&D has features spells that are presented in just that sort of way - and 5e has gone so far as to give every class at least some access to spells.
I understand you didn't play long and it's been a while, but thoses are some profound misaprehensions to be laboring under.
By trying to make everyone have similar power levels, everyone became generic.
I though you said you had played the game. The breadth & depth of 4e build choices was rivaled only by 3.x, and the fact they were better balanced only meant more of those choices were genuinely viable, and thus available in the practical sense. Nothing remotely generic going on, there. You could make a case for all characters of any given class back in 1e being 'generic,' of course, but since 2e started introducing options like Kits, the game has moved steadily away from that. Even 5e, as much as it consciously evokes the classic game, has not turned the clock back very far on that.
The mods I was referring to were living campaign specific. But I also had PC wizards shut down combats even after the errata, so not sure what you're talking about.
Can't say I ever played the living mods - I heard they got better, ironically, after WotC cut 'em off.
The lockdown builds of early 4e depended on several items & tricks that were eratta'd away that had allowed wizards (mostly, because they had to hardest control) to cheese up high save penalties that could last the whole (one-sided) encounter, those builds also exploited the odd item to re-use the same daily, such as Sleep. Updates shut them down, the save penalties were errata'd to apply only to the first save, the re-using dailies tricks were nerfed.
But, really, even at it's worst, the capacity of a 4e wizard to just 'shut down' a combat (they still needed their allies to step in and deliver the beat-down or deal with anything else that showed up), didn't compare to the 3.x Tier 1 class's ability to just push an "I win" button and take the whole encounter, by themselves.
