I’m pretty disappointed with the changes Anet made with the specialization change. Not only is it going to hurt some build diversity in some classes, its also imbalanced favoring certain classes over others. I know this will be refined before launch so i hope some changes will be made.
Im only going to talk about classes i know a little about.
So first off Ele and Engie are two classes that are very good in pvp. Mainly because of the celestial amulet, but also they have utility skills and traits that give them great survivability while also doing a ton of damage. Both of these classes have other builds such kitten engie and S/F Ele which although powerful, are harder and dont work as well in the current meta. I was hoping that with new specializations celestial would be less worthwhile to take and s/f and sd would be buffed making those builds more viable while also balancing the celestial meta.
Instead Engineers got a major buff in pvp, getting more usable skills such as mortar and elixir x, getting some of their important skills as baseline abilities, making them stronger in pvp and a little nicer in pve. Elementalists now have to choose between two important stats elemental attunement and evasive arcana, and in Air Fresh air or bolt to the heart. The changes will give them survivability and make auras more viable, but will weaken the interesting play they have with attunements and will make fresh air buidls worse than they already are. This along with lightning hammer nerf will make d/f and s/x builds in pve worse and make staff the only go to option in the meta. This hurts build diversity and active play.
Thieves now have major buffs since they can go into 3 full lines, giving them more damage in pve and pvp. The main thing that they did wrong is give panic strike and executioner in the same line in different trait tiers. Basically now a d/p thief in pvp will be able to immob and also deal a ton of damage, whereas before thieves had to choose between more survivability and easier playstyle – panic strike vs.harder play with larger damage – crit strikes. This not only hurts build diversity in d/p builds since everyone will run panic executioner build in pvp but its also a huge buff. Why should one class, elementalist, be forced to choose between important traits while another class, thief, gets them handed to them.
Lastly Mesmer and Necro i won’t go into huge detail since this is already really long. Basically the “buffs” to these classes are not good enough. Mesmers in pvp will be slightly better but in pve both of these classes did not get the things they needed to increase their damage to be in line with others. Necro will remain out of the viable meta and mesmer will still fail at competing with guardian in most scenarios. Anet may be focussing on Necros elite spec making them more viable, but Mesmer for sure needed real changes to their traits in order to make them stronger i.e. moving traits so they can get all they need in 3 lines as well as making phantasms live longer increasing aa attack etc.
I may be wrong since im no expert but from what ive seen there is still a real imbalance in the specializations.