Dandu, I want to tell you a few things which I think you should hear and which I would like other people to observe me telling you. First, you haven't said anything in this thread that made, "My God, why didn't I think of that?" or "My God, I didn't know that!"
Questions were not for your benefit, but so I could understand statements such as "the fighter has more flavor than other classes" better.
Second, asking people to parade out their ideas for you to pick them apart and ask them to "prove" something is not a sophisticated debate. It's called shooting fish in a barrel, fighting the straw man, tilting at windmills, etc. No one is interested in spending three pages explaining minor, well-known ideas, like, "Having lots of feats is useful."
I ask because I do not share that opinion. To go with your example, I would like an explanation of why a taken-for-granted idea such as "having a lot of feats" is useful, since I view the fighter as getting a lot of low-quality feats. (With some good ones thrown in, though.)
Third, I don't even know why I'm supposed to be weeping, but that's probably because you don't understand where I'm coming from well enough to find a jab. Fourth, that's not an invitation.
I assumed you would weep because Giacomo wrote a rather poor guide.
This thread is about what's good about the 3.5 fighter. In the course of discussing this topic, we may digress occasionally into comparing the fighter to other classes, such as the cleric, and even non-core classes, such as the warblade, but that is not the point of this thread. If that is what you are interesting in, you're in the wrong thread. We may also, necessarily, discuss some of the weaknesses of the fighter. But that, again, is not the focus.
Forgive me for accentuating the negative, but it doesn't seem as if anyone else is pointing out the problems.
I have noticed you have a tendency to shift goalposts frequently, to change the topic, and to resort to "argument-winning" declarations, often accompanied by a link and a laconic quip. That is not helpful. If you can move out of your competitive, tire-deflating, snarky, and unhelpful posture, I am sure you will find that others respond to you in a more positive fashion.
Look, if you had PM'd me with this complaint, I'd have been happy to settle it privately. Doing so publically isn't really helpful either. It's one of the reasons why, say, The O'Reilly Factor doesn't really help solve problems.
I just want you to know that. I don't think you were doing it maliciously.
As for why I'm generally somewhat unpleasant, I tend to get irritated at certain kinds of attitudes or comments. That's basically it.
Perhaps, instead of simply posting, "Why?" or "Look here," you could post at least one sentence explaining your thought process, as a guidepost to the rest of us in following your logic. That is a thought I had that may be helpful to you.
I think people are confusing the class mechanics of the fighter with their character roleplaying. Take the previous post about how flavorful a fighter is. Flavor is something that the player creates and assigns to his character. Class does not factor into it as much; some classes are tied tightly to flavor (druid, monk), and some less so (sorcerer, fighter), but I do not believe that makes the class itself more flavorful, and certainly not more flavorful than other classes.
Take the example just above this post about how fighters are "friggin' awesome" because they can do things such as:
Because you can bull-rush a giant spider the size of a school bus out of the way so your allies can escape.
Because you can do such insane amounts of damage that your enemies will be rolling to survive massive damage three times a round before long.
Because you are tough enough that you can pick food from between your teeth with poisoned crossbow darts you stole off some dead Drow without so much as a sore throat.
Because barmaids dig scars.
Because Barbarians lack dedication.
Because Bards don't write 400 stanza epics about Wizards.
Because from level 1 to level 20, so long as someone has a dirt-cheap wand of cure light wounds, you'll be in top fighting form and capable of doing EVERYTHING in your repertoire from sun-up to sun-down day after day after day and on a moment's notice.
I don't really agree that those are good reasons to play a fighter over other classes (excluding ToB), as those actions can be taken by other characters and probably done so more effectively.
Heck, two of them (Barbarians lack dedication, bards don't write epics about wizards) aren't actual reasons, and the thing about being in top fighting form from levels 1 to 20 all the time as long as someone has a wand of CLW about can't be true since poisons, level drain, curses, etc exist and fighters do need to sleep to avoid fatigue/exhaustion.
Bottom line: People can have fun playing fighters. There is no dispute about this. What the OP asked was why you'd play a fighter over another class for melee. I think this means someone should talk about what is unique to the fighter and how that makes the fighter worth playing.
Ie, "Fighters get a lot of feats. This makes them worth playing over other classes, such as a melee cleric or ranger because their feats are powerful and allow lots of versatility on the battlefield. You can trip, disarm, bull rush, charge, and lock enemies down through your feats."
