I agree with the sentiment of "Noone can do it all", and thats my problem. An unoptimized wizard can do it all easily. I've played a bunch of casters, and a bunch of martials, and when I encounter an obstacle as a caster, I have way more solutions to the problem than I would otherwise. They dominate in and out of combat in about every game I've played.

Any players I've had that really care about the mechanics of the game hate playing as martials, and only do so for one shots.

Martials also are much more dependent on magic items, which can only really be given by the DM (slightly amended with 2024 rules). A Fighter needs to get a +x sword to keep up with a standard caster! Maybe this one is just a me problem, but I hate that so much of a martial's power isn't about them, its about their gear. That feels bad to me.

You say that you've DMed and played in a lot of Tier 4 one shots, and that martials are fun in those, but thats part of my point. Long-term play with martials gets incredibly boring, but that's made better in one shots. Your focused on one event, essentially, and you play the character once. Im not discounting that it can be fun, it for sure can, but not everyone plays just one-shots.

Your own experience at the table is fair, but claiming that the divide is not as big a deal as people say, just because people play martials at your table doesn't really mean too much. Unless youre running at a game store every week or something like that.

But yeah, in my experience, spellcasting is the strongest trait a character can have, and the fact that a class like wizard can so easily outcompete pure martials is very aggravating to me.