Guild Wars 2

As it is in Guild Wars 2, you pretty much unlock all your weapon skills within the first few levels and then you’re suck with them all the way until you’re level 80. Well, how about when you reach say… level 40 you unlock a profession advancement? This will giving you 2 options that will specialize your profession. The best example I can give is probably Maple Story; at level 30 you can do a quest that allows you to choose one of two/three job paths. Once you advance, you unlock a whole new skill tree.

These skills don’t necessarily have to be stronger then what you currently have, just something new/different to freshen things up. These new skills will just replace what the normal professions have. For example: If you were a greatsword wielding warrior, the 5 weapon skills you had will be different from if you were a profession advanced greatsword warrior. Maybe include the option to switch back and forth between the two jobs so you don’t lose the original skills.

The advanced professions can also specialize certain weapon types. This shouldn’t feel too forced; by level 40, surely you would’ve found a set of weapons that your comfortable using.

Some of my ideas:
Warrior

• Dual Wielding specialist
• Two-handed specialist

Ranger

• Profession inclined towards using your pet.
• Bow specialist

Add anymore that you guys can think of!

I just realise after writing all of this that this suggestion can potentially bring back the trinity system… That was not my intention, hopefully we can steer clear from it.

Anet does a nice job of gradually unlocking things like utility slots & skills & elites over the first 30 levels. Wouldn’t change that.
But weapon skills are all unlocked by the time you hit 10 (I’m thinking of ele’s here with so many attunements). This means we get nothing new from weapons from 10-80, so I def agree with the OP. Something added around 40-50 would be nice. Like you, I want to stay away from talent trees or trinity systems too. But I think a specialization would be cool. Something you can change for a fee perhaps (like re-traiting) that unlocks new skills for particular weapons. Maybe Rangers get bow or melee specialization, Warriors get 1h or 2h spec, Engineers get kit or turret spec, etc. This would let us explore new ways to play each profession, giving us variety in PvE & unpredictability in PvP.