I think I'm still confused by what, specifically, you're going after here. Is it specifically wizardly and clerical at-wills that are the problem? What kinds of character archetypes and design innovations would be encouraged by removing at-wills, adding another encounter power, and making everyone basic attack all the time? How would the elimination of at-wills enhance character archetypes more than making new at-wills?
He wants spellcasters to be able to
nomagically use weapons, and to fight in a sort of dual-style, sometimes with nonmagical (martial) ability, and sometimes with spells. More at wills, at least, more at wills designed under the same design paradigm as the present ones, won't do this. They will instead add ways to for spellcasters to
magically use weapons. Additionally, he wants the thematic feel of that nonmagical use being lesser than the spellcaster's magical abilities, in order to make the magical abilities feel more powerful by contrast.
4e doesn't do this well. It offers a host of ways for, for example, a wizard to learn to use a sword. But all of them involve magically using the sword, except for multiclassing, which fails to give him the thematic feel he wants of martial combat being the basic stuff.
His theory is that by eliminating at wills you will
force characters to use basic, nonmagical attacks. Because players won't want to do this, and because basic attacks are weak, this will give the feel that he wants. And since 4e forces you to use a certain amount of at wills per fight, it will make it worthwhile to invest a bit in improving them even if you are a spellcaster archetype.
You know the basic feel of a character who can always attack with scorching burst, but sometimes attacks with burning hands or a flaming sphere? He wants the same feel, except that the character can always attack with his muscles, and occasionally uses scorching burst, burning hands, or flaming sphere. A hypothetical new wizard at will that allows you to attack with your sword using your Intelligence to hit and dealing flame damage would totally fail to satisfy him.
I don't think that 4e does what he wants very well, at least, not without destroying things that I like. So when he talks about this sort of stuff I won't tell him that there's ways he can accomplish it.
But on the other matters, like whether basic melee attacks would somehow be less boring than reaping strike, I think he's way out in left field. Ditto with whether you can or can't create certain archetypes in 4e- you almost always can, or, a way to do it is almost always easily available. Ditto whether its viable in 4e to go dual attack stat. It is. An elf cleric archer, the example he gave, is trivially easy to create, and the dual stat issue isn't remotely close to a problem.
