You missed Delver of Secrets and Wild Nacatl while you were away. Death's Shadow is only very loosely a 1-drop creature, being more of a combo card, but perhaps still counts. In Standard right now the level is still above Savannah Lions.

Creatures were deliberately pushed to make them more central to competitive play, which is why you got absurd stuff like the Titans in M11. At the same time, Wizards never want a return to the degeneracy of Urza block and so spells are less powerful. They still mess up regularly (Splinter Twin/Deceiver Exarch was an oversight giving a reliably turn 4 combo kill, for example), but it's true that some stuff will probably never reach that peak power level again outside of combat.