The second round of public playtest for D&D Next was released yesterday. As I have been very critical of D&D Next, I would like to at least remark that this second version is noticeably better than the first version. And I don't mean the degree of polish (which is only to be expected). The second version does fix some significant problems the first version had with tanks being unable to tank and not having a reasonable amount of options in combat. There are also lots of other minor rules improvements.

Having said that, class balance is still a sad joke in D&D Next. Among the pregenerated characters the pseudo-ranger human fighter appears completely gimped and useless, while the sun cleric appears extremely powerful at low levels. And the spellcasters still advance in a quadratic fashion (gaining both more spells and more powerful spells), compared to the linear power progression of non-spellcasters gaining combat stats.