Otoh in IE games you could dual/multi class, so in practice you had a ton of different options on how to build a character - unkitted single class melee fighters were all quite samey, sure, but you weren't that likely to make such characters anyway. A blade bard, inquisitor paladin, fighter/thief, berserker -> mage, ranger/cleric, all had very different things going for them.
Sure, but we know that PoE won't feature dual and multi class options (or kits for that matter) so when you can't mish-mash different classes it makes sense that they should make core classes differ more from one another in the way they play to make playthrough with each one provide a different experience.
Also, while I enjoyed playing with all those dual/multi-class and kit options I find that they made certain classes like fighter and thief (which are coincidentally my favourite classes in a CRPG) obsolete, not obsolete as in pure fighter and thief are weaker but provide a different kind of experience (which I would have no problem with, I'm not obsessed with balance in single player games) but as in you get the core class experience + spells and abilities on top of it. Pure fighters and thieves just don't level in satisfying ways that they remain attractive options (THAC0 going down stops being relevant at certain point and I get more thief skill points than I'll ever need) and thus I feel specialization is not rewarded, there are HLAs of course but multi and dual class chars get them too (multi-class chars can choose from more than one pool as well).
To give you an example, why would I play a straight thief in BG2 when I can dual class from fighter at a level 9 (thieves level fast so my main class becomes active very quickly) and still reach 39 level as a thief? I get all the abilities of a thief (hide in shadows, trap disarming, backstab etc.) but I'm also a beast in melee, I basically get two classes in one with very little effort.
But if you just wanted a straight up damage sponge / hard hitter, that didn't require constant micromanagement, that was very possible and it was a fine character too. And they could use all kinds of potions and items each round to make up for their lack of innate abilities in the tougher battles.
Yes, but I want to have the option of playing a character that is a pure melee beast (not thief or caster in any kind of way) but that isn't reduced to boring auto-attack. Not saying I want PoE to go all into ability spam fest like MMO games or MOBAs or whatever but I welcome having a few class specific per encounter and/or modal abilities to make playing such a character more entertaining (for me).
Also, it's possible you'll be able to build such a low maintenance char in PoE as well, we don't know yet how customizable chars will be with abilities, skills, items etc. and obviously stats will play a role as well (hopefully a bigger one eventually than how it seems right now).
And a fighting classes combat role heavily depended on the gear you gave it. What resists, armor class, damage type, etc etc your gear gave your fighter was what defined how he played in a fight - like the spell selection available did for a mage.
Itemization was one of the biggest strengths of BG and IW games, no argument there. Instead of weapons differentiating solely in damage output (DPS crap) they had a wide array of different effects/abilities in those games and had some great item description on top of it (was particulary awesome in IWD where nearly every magical item had an interesting backstory), I hope PoE goes in the same direction in that regard.
