In MediaWiki theme, button height should be controlled only by 'padding' and label 'line-height'. This will greatly decreate the wtf/sec ratio of the CSS, make it easier to match height of other stuff (like MediaWiki UI things) and possibly let us have multi-line buttons (which we disallowed per T93552). The icon and indicator should both have position: absolute.
This means that we would have to always have a label text, otherwise we would have the same issue as T93290, but for buttons with only icons/indicators, too. T94749: Provide labels for label-less buttons would be one solution to this; if we don't end up doing that, or in the meantime, blahblah .oo-ui-labelElement-label:empty:before { content: '\a0'; } or something like this will probably also work.
Per a chat with @Nirzar today.