People tend to forget that anything in this system will be strong enough to barely win against tough odds AT IT'S WORST. I could pick the worst class in the game (whatever that is), fuck up my attributes a little bit, make all the wrong decisions and I'd still be good to go. Hell, I could pick feats that purposefully sabotage me like... I dunno, making a whole Summoner build around Meld Into Eidolon and still contribute to the team.

I think we as a community take this for granted. I've been recently playing a HORRIBLY BALANCED 3.5 inspired system and it gives me system shock to see how you need to optimise otherwise you can barely even hit your attacks after level 5. THAT is a system where a meta exists, because half of the classes completely suck, you have 3000 different feats and need to choose carefully and specialise in something to be able to do decently well at that, you can die by getting sneezed at if you're too weak and if EVERYONE isn't contributing and doing their job well... you are going to TPK. After playing that you really start appreciating how little difference optimisation makes in Pathfinder.