Congratulations, you proved that a dedicated ranged build beats a completely vanilla Wizard at damage per turn with cantrips only at level 11.
It doesn't account for the fact the Wizard didn't need any kind of specialization to get those 3d10 at level 11, or the 16 spell slots the Wizard gets per long rest, or all the damage/utility effects of at least four other cantrips they get to use at-will. And the Wizard can still deal all that magical damage while disarmed, and never runs out of ammo.
Absolutely. Martials need to be able to do more than just roll for attack, miss, and then stand there sucking their thumb for the rest of the turn. 3.5e at least gave you a few more options in terms of maneuvers, and Attacks of Opportunity were easier to trigger.
Battlemaster was a step in the right direction, but with Power Attack and Cleave (now costing a Bonus Action) being limited to Great Weapon Master, and with the "interesting" melee options being heavily limited by resources (superiority dice, ki, etc), and with how 5e combat drags on, it's still very easy to just spend multiple turns doing the "swing, miss, wait" dance. I help with demo games a lot, and a ton of newbies we've introduced to the game talked about how frustrating it was to be limited to just saying "I attack", getting a string of bad luck on the d20, and spending three combat encounters being used as a punching bag with zero kills to their name.
Anyway, I'm actually quite happy with casters in 5e as far as their actual level 1 to 9 spells go. They're pretty balanced. My problems with cantrips are that 1 - they're as powerful as ranged weapons up to level 5, and still competitive past that; and 2 - they're completely free and require nothing but their voice and their fingertips. A fighter can be disarmed, a rogue can be caught by surprise without her daggers, a ranger can run out of arrows, but as long as they're above 0HP a spellcaster can keep chucking cantrips around without any kind of limit or requirement. And it's all magical damage, which is rarely if ever resisted and automatically grows with level (while non-cantrip spells require you to upcast), and many of them don't need attack rolls so they don't even care about being Restrained.
I get they were trying to give spellcasters something to do when they're not casting something that costs a spell slot, but they've gone too far with it. I'd much rather spellcasters got more weapon proficiencies (as I said, my 3.5e Sorcerer could still contribute with his crossbow), or simply focused more on wands as a source of damage for them. A Wand of Fire Bolt with 10-20 charges (regaining them after a long rest) is a perfectly fine source of ranged damage for a spellcaster. You can even do the +1/+2/+3 thing with them by having each improvement add 1d10 damage, just like cantrips currently do with levels.
Simply solving the problem of spellcasters not having anything to do while not casting magic with "more magic" was just really fucking lazy.
