Do caster out of combat options matter?

[Rukelnikov]

Yeah, arguably one of the biggest flaws with how 5e handles skills is that there isn't even really advice on how to have them interact with the parts of the system that deal with very specific hard numbers (HP, movement speed, ranges, weight, etc). If I cast the Jump spell I know that I triple my jumping distance for the duration. If I roll a Strength (Athletics) check I... well, the only thing the system says to the DM is that it should let me jump further, so there's not much there to work with. Or you have stuff like the Medicine skill, which has nothing to do with your character having useful first aid skills unless your DM is willing to do a bunch of homebrewing more-or-less from scratch.

...

Another flaw? People hate ability checks because they're hilariously unreliable thanks to the d20 being so dang swingy. If your DM asks for a bunch of Medium checks ("because that doesn't sound that bad, right?"), you need a +6 bonus to the relevant skill (or a stack of buffs) for your chances of success to be better than a coinflip. If you want to be as reliable at hitting Medium checks as you are with attack rolls, you're looking at skill bonuses that are locked behind a ton of character building prereqs. And that's Medium checks.

And, yes, the players do get tools to manipulate probability in their favor... but if my max-skill-bonus-in-Tier-1 (+9, from having a +5 stat and Expertise) character who is getting Help *and* divine Guidance still has a ~15% chance of failing a Hard check, maybe the DC table's a little broken...

I agree with this, but even if that was changed in favor of more reliability for skills (before T3), that still wouldn't help much closing the gap by T3, unless WotC is willing to bring back something akin to 3e epic/divine skills, where at a certain point skills go beyond mundane and into broader "concept of the skill" level stuff, your insight is so good, you realize what someone says is a lie even when they believe it to be true, and stuff like that.