Clerics and Druids, Why is everyone against them?

[Amphetryon]

1st: Do you run the other skills based on player skill too, or is it just the social skills, out of curiosity? I've seen a few games run to undervalue the character's social skills in favor of the player's - mostly by what I'd consider "old-school" DMs - and it always strikes me as curious that a DM would require the socially adept character to be played by the socially adept player, while not making similar demands on the strength-oriented character's player or the dexterity-oriented character's player.

2nd: Without a certain level of system mastery and/or optimization, you end up either running away, dying, or otherwise not meeting level-appropriate challenges adequately in every campaign I've ever seen. This runs both ways; a DM with good system mastery can arrange matters so that encounters don't curb-stomp the PCs who don't yet have a good grasp on what makes for an effective character in 3.X, just as a player with good system mastery/optimization skills can play a support character in such a way as to make the Half-Elf Monk feel consistently useful in combat. . . provided the DM has a modicum of system mastery, common sense and enough decency not to exploit the myriad weaknesses of a Half-Elf Monk relative to a stronger hit-and-run combat type.