Honestly OP, do you hear yourself when you write down something like the title of this thread?
I have over 1000 hours in this game, and it NEVER. EVER. felt grindy. What do you want to accomplish? Play through a fun story that lasts pretty long and can be either enjoyed as a singleplayer or coop experience? Check, no need to grind. Sure, there are level requirements for each story step, but you know, we have a huge world that rewards for exploration and is full of fantastic content and lore. That’s your own (very sad) problem if you only see red names to hit from all this.
But let’s see it from a different perspective, what else you want to achieve, beyond spending 100 and 100 hours with world completition and story. PvP? Everybody equally buffed to max level, has ZERO cost or “possible to screw up” decisions, and just as powerful as anyone else having access to the same high level item sets. What else? WvW? Buffed to max level, uses PvE gear. Unless you want to roam alone or in a small group, your gear doesn’t even matter in zergs. I had fun an got 20 WvW ranks with leveling up a guardian there from lv20 to 80.
But let’s go even futher, what else you want to do? Get the desired armor set of your choice? Well, you have dungeons for that. It is indeed sad that people see them only as a “skip everything, even videos I’ve never seen, stack up in a corner and nuke everything to hell”, but you can get your complete armor set pretty fast. Fast? Compared to what? It is endgame gear. Something you can also buy with a different skin from the trading post. With the money you make with playing PvP or PvE. Did I mentioned you can now also get that armor set by playing PvP? You know, that PvP I mentioned ^above? Is that grind, like red names you hit and that’s it? Poor you.
Oh, I misunderstood you, my apologies. You want ascended armors? Something, that was introduced to the game because ANet did admit they made endgame gear too easy to get for everyone? Something that is more like a prestige thing, barely (max 5%) better than the just mentioned exotic sets? Even their skins are ugly as hell. Well, prestige is called prestige for a good reason, because it’s not meant to be for everyone. Because it means something, and if you want shortcuts and easy to get backdoors, you don’t deserve it. Same goes for legendary items, that are called legendary for a very good reason – something I’ll never manage to get even close to, but you know what? I respect the time and effort, work and wealth invested to those weapons. And that my friend, is something you earn, not something you cry for on forums and be happy for a day or two if you get it for almost free (thanks god this isn’t that kind of place), while not even realizing you just destroyed something much bigger than you. But who cares, you have your shiny sword, right?