I put up a quick post today with our revised version of Witch Bolt we've been using in my 5E games (and why I revised it). I think it is fair to say the spell kinda stinks as written.
Today on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com it is DRAGON MAG MONDAY and that means I cover Dragon Magazine #112 (August 1986). There are a couple of interesting tidbits in this otherwise dud of an issue, including a little bit on the article I quoted in this contentious thread - "D&D Assumptions Ain't What They Used To Be" - including excepts from the two Forum letters I mention in that first post of that same thread where issues often attributed to the current era come up nearly 40 years ago.
I started a separate thread for this topic, but in case it gets buried or you are following this thread and miss the other, I posted about my Vanity Frankenstein 5E Project over on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com