Guild Wars 2

Let me tell you guys how an old game, Asheron’s Call (1), dealed with this.

The best gear of the game was available from random drops and then upgrading with crafting. Every play style could get that best gear without ever doing something they don’t want to do. And then that’s it – you were geared.
Now the quests/dungeons still rewarded unique items you could not get through another method – but those items were meant for specific uses. E.g. you could have a staff which does additional damage against specific mobs, but which is overall (stats, armor, etc..) not as good as the staves from the best gear.
I played AC1 for 5+ years, it works. And guess what, people still grouped a lot for those special quests/dungeons to get the special items, AC1 was actually way more “social” than any modern EQ/WoW clone. The important thing is that even if you didn’t own those special usage items, you were not “inferior” to those who owned them. And you definitely were not “inferior” in PvP.

The problem I see with the GW2 implementation compared to the AC1 one is that in GW2, the items seem to be made for a specific use through those infusions, but they also have better stats than any exotic item available. That should not be. If anything, those infusions should give an advantage for specific content, but be worse than exotics for general usage. This way, it would not screw up PvP, it would not screw up people not wanting to farm dungeons, and also important, it would not screw up crafters.

What they are trying to do CAN work. But in its actual implementation, it’s just a new gear tier, and it also makes all crafted, dungeon and WvW gear obsolete.

So my suggestion is to use the AC1 model. Make those new items have same or worse stats than exotics, but make them better for a specific usage, aka that new dungeon and those new enemies. This way, the overall gear balance of the game is not broken, PvP balance is not broken between the haves and have nots, and yet there’s till intensive to get that new different gear.