Guild Wars 2

ANet stated in the previews for HoT that elite specs were to be equal in power to the base classes, intended to solely provide variety of play, and not to invalidate any base game content by making it significantly easier to complete than it was with the base classes.

This was not only patently false, but was false to such an extreme degree that no argument could be made that it was done by accident, there is no way anyone could screw up that bad, especially a bunch of paid professionals.

And now almost two years later, the elite specs are STILL sizable increases in power compared to the base specs, only having been reigned in compared to each other, never to the base classes or the base game content. They still dominate PvP, raids, and nullify a massive amount of the base games PvE encounters.

So why exactly should players believe the developers claim that the PoF elite specs won’t result in powercreep? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Yeah, I have to agree with you on that front. I barely ever see anyone running their base class, endless they are not level 80 or don’t own HoT. I main warrior and have recently switched to burnzerker to clear fractals. However, a lot of these new elites seem to be geared to support roles.

The real problem is that the elite specs add new class mechanics with no trade offs… Even if the spec is arguably a bad choice for your intended play style, it’s a blatant power increase to take it.

In HoT we had 3 classes that had trade offs… all three of them were NOT equivalent trade offs, they were all power gains.

Necromancers: Death Shroud traded for the superior Reaper Shroud
Warriors: Bursts traded for the power boost of Berserk mode AND stronger Primal Bursts
Guardians: Virtues traded for Upgraded Virtues

in PoF it looks like we might have 2 classes with a proper trade off…

Necromancers: Death Shroud traded for a support natured Sand Shroud (possibly of equivalent value, possibly of lower value, unlikely to be of higher value)
Rangers: Pets traded for Soulbeast mode (questionable, as pets are kept while Soulbeast is disabled, and the level of power gained from Soulbeast is unknown)

If Sand Shroud is of equivilant value to Death Shroud then Scourge will be a proper elite spec that fulfills their promise. Likewise, if Soulbeast mode is of equivilant power to a Pet, then Soulbeast will also be a proper elite spec that fulfills their promise. The rest however, are still clearly powercreep over the base class just from the fact that they gain new mechanics at no cost to the base class.