>>96782588
>game is designed to be played in a highly specific way
>theoretically all of the mechanics, powers, and spells are balanced to shine in this highly specific and carefully constructed, borderline competitive playstyle
>specifically balanced encounters, so many times per adventuring day, with a limited number of rests, with resource management and bookkeeping required to make this all truly shine
>but actually WotC fucked up the math for CR calculation, chose purposeful HP bloat, and did nothing to teach or properly incentivize this highly specific style of play and in fact most of their modules and adventures actively ignore the way things are supposed to be done because they want players to feel powerful and never real face genuine danger or feel that the game is unfair or boring
This has actually been a problem for a long, long time. That nagging feeling that you are playing wrong or that you need to make some minmaxed gish build with homebrew feats and other shit comes from the stupid way that D&D presupposes that it will be run like some kind of impartial tournament play competitive game, but at the same time being officially dictated that the game should be safe and fun and prioritize the players' enjoyment over anything else, which means actively ignoring and removing rules and mechanics and restrictions. So you end up with the shit other people have already said: Long rest between every fight, so instead of working the way it was designed, the wizard gets to fireball his way through every problem with zero concern for resource management, because he's just gonna take a long rest after the fight anyways.