It's been 10-15 years, man. My memory is that every class was AEDU until pretty late in 4e's lifespan. My memory might certainly be wrong after all these years, but that doesn't mean I'm lying or arguing in bad faith.
Anyway, the rules of 4e aren't the point. I was just saying that certain balance issues are tricky unless, perhaps, you want fighters and wizards to have basically the same class setup, as was the case in original 4e. The claim has been made that it's unbalanced to have wizards get more spell slots but also more powerful spells, but that's been the case in virtually every iteration of D&D. If you dislike that setup, you don't have a bone to pick with 5e, you have a bone to pick with D&D generally. Which is fine! A lot of people don't like a lot of things about D&D. But perhaps it isn't fair to blame that on 5e in particular.
It was not stupendously successful compared to 5e. Again, the 5e Player's Handbook is the number one gaming book on Amazon today, roughly eight years after it came out. At the comparable point after 4e's release, the number one gaming book was...also the 5e Player's Handbook, correct? That's a staggering run of success that eclipses every version of D&D ever, not just 4e. Even the Stranger Things era of my youth is dwarfed by 5e's success. That doesn't happen unless 5e is doing a lot of things right for an awful lot of people.
And by the way, I'll say again: I loved 4e. I played it a lot, I DMed it a lot. It was fun, and in some ways I miss it. I'm have no interest at all in re-litigating the edition wars of that era, and even if I did, I'd be on your side. I'm just trying to give 5e, for all its flaws, its props. It deserves them.
