I see a lot of advice to new players about what is imperative. As an example, I have seen a 16 as an attack stat characterized as insufficient even at lower levels.
I have seen advice about the pointlessness of strength clerics because a 16 str is all that can be managed if you have a decent wisdom.
It got me thinking what about magic items? Are we telling people they must have a +1 sword or the character is doomed? Or what about people that roll slightly lower or fairly evenly distributed?
I think it’s a shame if people don’t try different things for the sake of a +1 or 2 no bonus early on. Similarly, I think the focus on SAD is overblown.
When I see people saying how bored they are with the same old EB warlock, I wonder “why do that?” There are lots of other ways to build one…if you can tolerate a slightly smaller bonus here or there.
There seems to me to be optimizing oneself to boredom in some cases.
Ironically it feels like the laser focused hyperoptimized must be best with perfect gear or it's doomed is somehow even worse now than in the old days. As much flak as 3.x charop sometimes still gets it was never so nakedly shameless.
One simple example might be choosing between two weapons (one used one newly found) with different crit range/multiplier & damage die/type maybe even differing +N that makes it tough. In the past players might think on & even have some discussion about the pros & cons of the two while now it's just an instant "meh guess we can sell $A tsince $Bis better so nobody would ever use it". That's made worse by the fact that instead of needing a regularly improving assortment of +skill +stat +weapon +armor gear each with its own item specific slot players really only feel like they need one thing& things never really conflict