Would love for melee characters to be more like seasoned warriors who carry 3-4 weapons and have the option to pick the best tool for the job. It would also make loot for those characters more interesting more often and might make picking skills a bit more challenging in terms of deciding how specialised or versatile you want to be. Also, enemies could be made a bit more tricky without simply making them have higher HP and damage.
This is how I set up and play my melee characters and party members in the Pathfinder games. D&D 3.5e made this possible. It's yet another way in which 5e sucks.
5e doesn't suck.
It wasn't any fun to play a 3.5 caster. You could could only do a handful of things in day and you chances of succeeding were slim. Any spell could be interrupted by an attack of opportunity or by counter spell. Like you I'm having a blast fighting demons in WOTR but that's only because the devs didn't include the 3.5 let's make casters miserable rules.
But for Martials do you dislike the battlemaster? I think the 5e battle master is probably the strongest archetype in the game.
I've been taking a look at the world of Aetaltis - which has modified the 5e rules to include some of the elements we both like. Notably it's a world of heroes battling against the forces of darkness. Which I like and I think WOTC is wrong to be de-emphasize.
