Not a Fallacy: Just Plain Wrong

In response to "minor action attack powers have changed the balance of the game:"

"Changed it, despite having been there from the start."

Though it's technically true that Dragon Breath existed in the good old PHB1, this was not a crowd pleaser at the time. With low damage, low area of effect, and a moderate attack bonus, it was by no means the level of gamebreaking you see with rogues who take Low Slash up through 30th level (and Snap Shot, and Tumbling Strike, and you get the idea).

And all those other minor action attack powers? All of them, with only one exception (unless the compendium is lying to me, which is possible) are daily powers. The one exception? Daggermaster's 11th level encounter power. Paragon Paths have often been the source of some of the best (and worst) encounter attack powers, but when coupled with paragon paths with bad to moderate features, this tends to even out-they don't crowd out options in the same way general class powers do. Moreover, Daggermaster's attack power A.) Requires a dagger (low damage dice) and B.) Requires that you have critically hit that round. It is altogether still inferior to Low Slash.

As for the dailies, well, certainly a lot of those are as overpowered as anything, I'll grant you that. There have been a number of options even from the PHB1 that have dominated the charts. But hey, they got around to nerfing Rain of Blows pretty quickly. We can go back to "It's Only a Daily" for why daily powers shouldn't have nigh infinite power, but it's clear that the ability to access multiple minor action powers, and to easily access immediate action powers, was initially very restricted (rangers were the only ones to have Immediate Action attacks back then, excluding a single 27th level Paladin attack).

Now, I'm not saying the Player's Handbook was somehow gold in terms of game balance and everything else is power creep. But saying that minor action attack powers "can't have changed the game because they've always been there" is just plain wrong.

Of course, even if they were, that doesn't change whether they're a good idea or not.