i personally never understood this.
Builds in RPGs are cool if you develop them as you go.
I like to try out wacky builds in RPGs, tanking with a dagger, two shields when the game lets me do it, a melee caster in FFT, a jumping build in morrowind.
BUt i never understood the fascination 3.PF players have with opitmization. Maybe its because im a DM in real life but it realy takes me out of it. Optimization is for pvP, for PvE it feels masturbatory, i dont think its a good thing to have a game where you start doing your build before you start playing the game.
Ideally you want lots of viable builds. For DnD 3.5, this is not the case. Hell, 3.5 bareley has any classes that are viable. It has a tier list of classes, that should never happen in an RPG, ever.
the problem with 5E in tabletop form is that you cannot realy gradually increase the challenge.
If youve got a simple system, what usually happens is that the group upgrades to a more complicated system once the players are familliar with it.
Which is not ideal since 5E characters dont translate well into any other system
