In all honesty, 2ed. was slightly more balanced, because spells didn't net you so many win buttons (And yes, some feats are TOO cheesy. A good example would be Power attack, which has been shown to be tremendously abusable, though that's actually feat selections as a whole, not a single feat), and full fighters were quite more useful when ToBless, specially if you allowed grandmaster specialization. But it was also a lot more boring, particularly since you REALLY had no choice but "I hit it again/I turn invisible and sneak it again/etc.", and some things, like racial level caps, were plain idiotic.