Clerics and Druids, Why is everyone against them?

[Midnight_v]

Actually changing into monsters isn't too strong.

I don't think so either.

Cleric yes. Druid not so much. All you need to do to break the Druid is crack open the MM1 and look at the stats for the list of monsters provided in the PHB, then take Natural Spell. That's it.

This gentleman seems to think thats its a big part of the problem though.

As stated above I really think that a big part of people suddenly NOT liking druids, is the whole "Eye opening experience" thing in which they learn that banning all those books isn't going to help preserve balance you're just being unfair to you non caster players.
Honestly magic is ... Magic can get pretty wonky powerful in D&D. Thing is the monsters have it too. IN SPADES.

The suck part is the guy with the twin swords doesn't get to be the hero who lives through it all and defeats the Evlulz, and that challenges some peoples perspectives.
Likewise ... and this is what Engine was saying, when someone actually creates a fighter that can do ANYTHING well, it leads to complaints. Which likely stems from the fact that they have to do 1 thing well, the spam it till they can invest enough resources to do a second thing well... and they rarely get enough to do a third thing and not be somekind of science experiment race.

Its a multifaceted problem. It irks me though that how many people ONLY look at it from one narrow perspective.

EDIT
I wanted to take a sec and comment on the above poster.

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Flexibility is key yes, but spellcasters have to make choices, typically at the start of the day, on what to focus on and what not to.

Agree. When discussing theoreticals, I too have noted that any theoretical caster has everything he needs. They really won't they have to make choices. So at somepoint they could make the wrong choice. The thing is they have choices at all. So you're right, overall.
However...
The last paragrapch of your post went into somestrange land about banning armor spikes. Its was very LOL,WuT?. Cause that means someone in that group doesn't know what they're talking about mechanically and are banning things that are absolutely Unbroken. I started to do a line by line but its not even that crucial, banning archery focused builds ends with only casters being useful in ranged combat beyond 60ft on an open plain. Which is sad.

So long as you avoid the really cheesiest builds, a balanced party still works better than all spellcasters

This is totally contingent on how you define "cheesiest" it sounds like your definition includes any caster whose dedicated to doing anything but evocation.
An all caster party works better than a balanced party if the the All caster party is balanced. I could show you how they work better in every way if you like. Though if you're arguing that anycaster that is gishing, is cheesy, you've insulted gotten rid of many favored archtypes for many people and some our favorite chars of all time.

Frontliners is a very wierd term but you have to understand that the job is pretty easily replaced via Caster. Further well it should be, the option at least, cause there are monsters in D&D that NOBODY should engage in melee.