For In Pale Mountain's Shadow my wife created a 4th-level human Mountain-Lore nomad Superstition-Totem barbarian focused on climbing: Raging Athlete from the barbarian class feats, and Defensive Climber and One-Handed Climber from the skill/general feats. Her main weapon is a spear and she uses thrown light hammers for ranged attacks. The hammers are also useful for hammering in pitons, which explains her weapon choice.
The barbarian is a great climber. Raging Athlete gives her a climb speed while raging. We worked out homebrew ways for her to help the other characters climb, Expert Climber Aiding Trained Climbers, but the Aid action works under the standard rules. She has to use regular climb rules while fatigued, but she can hold on perfectly well.
In Tuesday's session, she was in a climbing rage when she spotted a foe approaching. She wanted to try to Demoralize, but it requires concentration and she had neither Raging Intimidation nor Moment of Clarity. In other words, she can't be scary while raging. This is the opposite of Pathfinder 1st Edition, where Intimidation is specifically allowed during a rage despite being a Charisma-based skill.
She also can't Recall Knowledge while raging to figure out her foe's attacks in advance.
Apparently, at 4th level rage is great for climbing and mediocre for combat.
The lack of thrown weapons working with rage really hurts them, not having ranged options is just flat out an issue in most cases and your unlikely to have enough wealth to pick up 2 magic weapons and keep them up to date with the latest tier even if that was adressed, and with the tight math being behind will just result in more wiffing.
I ruled that ranged Strikes with thrown melee weapons gain the conditional bonus to damage rolls. The rage action says "damage rolls with melee weapons and unarmed Strikes" rather than melee attacks. But she throws only cheap hammers, not expert-quality ones. A bow and arrows would not suit her, since she has only one hand free while climbing.
I don't like the way rage works atm but otherwise I've not noticed any other problems.
I don't get this whole "fighters can only hit things" argument. I was under the impression that fighters had skills and non-class feats like everyone else.
In PF1, I can recall my fighters doing plenty of stuff outside combat. Granted, most of them were intelligent humans, but I usually prefer playing intelligent humans.