Older D&D systems questions.

[Hopeless]

I would say that 4e and 3e are similar in that in actuality the splat books are often better balanced than the so called "core". For instance in both 3e (wizards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, etc) and 4e (wizard, fighter, ranger, warlord, etc) the best classes in the game are mostly found in core along with most of their best stuff. While powerful things are found outside of core and even some broken stuff the highest concentration in both editions rest in the original PHBs.

For me the Favoured Soul was the worst mistake in 3.5 whilst the Warlock made little sense but at least it did work as a class.
In 3.0 they took all but the kitchen sink from the sorceror and then for 3.5 removed the one clear advantage it had over the wizard once they released the new version of unearthed arcana.
At least in 4e the warlock coped well when matched against a wizard, which classes did you find broken in the core rules?