Guild Wars 2

Several threads have brought up the fact of wanting Elite Weapons from the specialization track to be unlocked for the base character. Many people have brought up the fact that the specialization track has traits that help fight with that specific weapon and without it, why would you want to have them.

What if a new line of soul-bound quests were created to allow for these weapons to be unlocked?
Before qualifying to begin the quest certain requirements would have to me met first:

1) mastery of the line they wish to open. (Dragonhunter, Reaper, Druid, etc)
2) craft a machined variant of the weapon.
3) craft a new ascended version of the weapon to be soul-bound to the character

I think it is over complicating the system. Either they open up or they leave as it is designed to be. I don;t see them being changed, but adding an extra layer just feels needless to me.

The issue isn’t that ANet wants to gate abilities, it’s that they want to (a) force us to make tradeoffs: these features (and deficits) or those ones and (b) they want the system to be straightforward for balancing across profs and across content. Restricting a single weapon to each elite accomplishes both goals.

These threads, I swear.

Here’s a fact for you: specs are balanced around these restrictions. If ANet ever budge to this ridiculous demand and unlock weapons for everyone (which is thankfully unlikely), THEY WILL NERF MOST OF THEM. You will never have a rifle/staff Daredevil keeping its precious three dodges without huge nerfs.

There’s another factor that makes this unlikely – there is a finite set of weapons types. By gating weapons behind an elite spec, it leaves open the possibility of re-using that weapon with a different set of skills for a different elite spec later on. Otherwise some classes (particularly warrior) will start to run out of potential new weapons after a few elite specs.