OK, so choosing your specialization takes up one of your three specialization talent slots and has a double edge sword quality of changing your profession mechanic. Good. Nice and clear.
What about the costs of the skills and weapon we gain? Are they along for the ride, or do we lose skills and weapons in exchange for gaining new toys?
Personally, I’m more pro exchange than against. If they are just plain additions, then only the most hardcore metagamers will probably ever consider not running a specialization, particular once the system expands to more than one per profession. It would also resolve some of the “off hand only” complaints. If mesmers gain shields at the loss pistols while rangers gain staffs at the cost of greatswords… it might keep things in perspective.
Also, let us be blunt… Arena Net has a history making things under powered to make the alternative seem better; racial skills and the universal skill are the main examples from Guild Wars 2, but there plenty of examples from Guild Wars 1 like… one sec. Yep. Smiter’s Boon is STILL nerfed into Abaddon’s shoe locker in PvP. Just needed to check to see if that was ever corrected sometimes between when I stopped paying attention to the game and when they stopped working on it.
I doubt we’ll never see a mistake as large as Smiter’s Boon ever again, but more recent history has a no less pretty trend. If in the trend I predicted starts manifesting itself in reality, one of two things are going to happen. One, they will nerf various aspects of the specializations until the trend ‘corrects’ itself. Two, they’ll work silently on a multi tier solution that will admittedly be a perfect and ideal solution to all concerns the problem raised… and then look around like confused puppies when we don’t hail the patch as the new messiah.
…there’s a lot of metaphors on gestation periods and expectant mothers bouncing around in my head and I have NO idea why. So, before I poor brain bleach down my ears, the summary is that I would prefer to have less toys to play with in the specialization rather than risk having any of those toys made weaker than our existing toys in the name of balance.