I've been playing PoE for a couple of weeks now.
Very well done game. Some of the quests do require a lot of reading though, if you don't want to miss anything. The game is also pretty much impossible to win if you just want to take a character solo thru it. You HAVE to have a well balanced party, and have one early on.
One of the things I like is you don't have to wait to run into NPC's to join your party. The inn you come to early on in the game you can 'hire' NPC's with your copper coins, and those NPC's are created just like your character.
So don't worry about 'should I play this class or should I play that class'. Go to the inn and hire all the classes you want/need for your party, with the stats/spells you want, not the stats that the in-game NPC's will have.