I begin this post to collect your ideas about professions diversity and balance. The goal is to give for developpers reasonable idea about improving build diversity. In pvp, pve and mcm.
Actually the elite spe weapon are for a the majority well designed because they accomplish a certain (or two) roles.
1) devs have to rethink certain old weapon to give them a role! Give the list of actually poor weapons and how to improve them.
2) same thing for trait. Certain build exist because of mandatory lines. For example water for ele, inspi for mesmer. Why? Because of healing, support. Give to all tree more dispel, support or usefull thing to break mandatory line.
3) same for utility/elite/heals skill. Why is it possible to keep so bad utilities?
The most important is to respect the balance. Absurb prososition are not constructives.
For example:
1) a) mesmer focus : reflect baseline+ fantasm can moove during this skill
In general fantasm mesmer need a rework.
ele scepter: the previous changes are not enough
C) ranger shortbow: what a bad weapon, give it a more usefull condi role. Clearly the worst weapon in the game.
Ranger torch: not effective
D) war hammer: controle weapon? Hybrid damage? The guard hammer is a cc weapon but with a high dps, hammer has to be like this (but less dps than gs)
E) guard scepter: actually this weapon need a rework.
If you see other really bad weapon you can put your ideas.
2) traits lines: more various way to assist/dispel. For example:
Fire: when you gain fire aura you dispel 2 condi (5 ppl, radius 300)
All trait line has a “role” and we can support in this role.
Example: if we take a condi line, we can imagine that “when we apply x stacks of x condi, we dispel or transfer x condi”
If we take a tank line: “when you block you loose 1 condi”
Theses are just example.
I think it´s bad to have support trait line because it reduces the build diversity to force people taking it.
3) Guys, it´s not possible to give 25 utilities, 5 heals, 5 elites but for the majority of professions less than 30% of them are usable. I dont do the list of them there is so much…
Example? Ingi: turrets (just heal turret is fine), bomb kit, gadget (Just silk shooes is fine), some elixir are useless, healing are not equal, elite are not equal too. Conclusion, quasi all scrappers run turret or gyros for healing, bulwark gyros, elixir gun and sneak gyros.
And it´s quasi the same for all classes.
You choose to add content and work on the core game, as you said. You have a lot of work! Proove us that your decision to not work on legendaries is justified and give diversity!