Guild Wars 2

Why re-instauring the Dual-Class system would be beneficial for the game and how it could be done ?

This topic will focus on this concept that is the dual-class. The dual-class system was at the core of Guild Wars 1 experience and allowed any class to have any of the other class as secondary class. This gave access to all of its skills giving huge possibilites for builds (for example a Mesmer casting fireballs, a Monk (healer basically) draining health from enemies with Necromancer spells etc etc). It may sound silly and the best way to have a game ridiculous in terms of balancing but I consider (and I don’t think I’m the only one) that Guild Wars 1 was actually very balanced and even if we had Metas (both in PvE and PvP) shifting regularly it never felt like one build in particular was crushing everything else. There was obvious strong ones, obvious most obscure ones but a huge variety of very solid builds was possible.

Back to Guild Wars 2! You may start already with your “This is not Guild Wars 1” spam, I heard it many times. First of all the dual-class system was supposed to be a feature of Guild Wars 2 when it was first developed. (To make it short the game was giving the option to every player to choose between a secondary class or a permanent NPC following you around to help you; the idea was to allow you to tackle any type of content without being stuck because you can only heal, only deal damage etc). In a nutshell it was the “old” version of “how to break the convetions of DPS/Heal/Tank”. In my opinion it was a MUCH better idea than “Let’s have the funkiest system possible by having all classes healing, reviving each other and running all around in the biggest chaos possible!”.

Back to topic!

Why suggesting such a feature only now, isn’t it too late for such a massive core feature of a game ?
Well I don’t think so. I think this feature could be very similar to how elite specialization was introduced. The only difference is that this feature should be introduced at the core of the game, not attached to any expansion. It would be unthinkable to allow a world where some players have access to dual class while some others because they don’t have expansion number X. Just like the specializations have been reworked a while ago this could be done the same way and affect the entirety of the game “for free”.

So how would it work ?
First, this feature could be unlocked or halfway through the experience process (lvl 40 for example) or at lvl max similarly to how elite specializations work. Considering it adds a decent layer of complexity to the build creation I think that the lvl max option is the best. On top of that, a short quest-chain would introduce the player to the secondary class he is going for, just like Guild Wars 1 was doing. The idea is that the chain features 5 short quests with each quest focusing on one part of the class only. For example the first quest to become a Mesmer as secondary class could be focused around Chaos and forces you to use Staves only and a set of heal/utilites/elite fixed, to teach you how to use them properly. The chain of quest would end on a small boss fight against your master (Master Mesmer in this case) and would allow you to create your build the way you want it. (The chain-quest can be skipped entirely when it starts, basically the game ask you if you want to do it or if you consider already being comfortable with the class, to avoid obvious boring repetitions for each alt etc.)

Only one secondary class can be active at any given time. The player can switch between all his unlocked secondary classes at any time outside of battle (a saved build system would be appreciated, thanks!).

When it comes to specializations the player can (is not forced to!) use any of the 5 base specialization of his secondary class (so not any of the elite specialization, let’s be realistic guys). The player can choose to stay with his main specializations if he wants to, he still has access to the other “perks” of his secondary classes (see below).

The player can use all weapon abilities of the secondary class of all weapons that his two classes have in common. For example: a Mesmer/Necromancer can use all the Necromancer’s Scepter, Focus, Staff, Lance and Trident skills. Similarly, the same Mesmer can’t use the Necromancer Dagger, Axe and Warhorn skills as a Mesmer doesn’t normally has access to these. In the case of the Primary class gives access to a new weapon thanks to a specialization, the secondary class skills of that new weapon can be used. For example a Mesmer/Guardian being a Chronomancer can use Guardian shield skills.
All skills can be combined in any way, you can mix Mesmer and Necromancer staves spells on the same bar for example if you want.
tldr: If your class normally can use a weapon, it can use all the skills associated to that weapon of your secondary class.

All base (non elite specialization) healing, utility and elite spells from the secondary class are also available (elite could be subject to debate, as it may lead to many builds going pure something and having only a secondary class for a good elite such as time warp for example, but not so sure about that to be honest kitten many combinations can be so cool when you think of it).
As before, all spells from the two classes can be mixed and matched.

How to take care of class core mechanics and what about the oddities of some class spells ?
First of all, all core mechanics of each class is bound to the primary class. That means that only the Necromancer can use life force, only the Mesmer can shatter clones, only the Warrior can use rage etc.

The Elementalist having access to 4 sets of weapon spells (and variations of most of his utility spells) creates one of several exceptions. I suggest that this exception is treated rather simply. The player can only choose one attunment that becomes a passive only (so keeps the passive effect of the said attunment) blocking all the elementalist secondary spells to that attunment.
The Revenant utility spells would work the same way and only one aspect utilies could be used by a secondary classed Revenant player.

The Thief and the Revenant both cause a big problem when it comes to their respective ressources. The Thief using initiative instead of cooldown would make the use of thief weapon skills impossible. A solution would be to transform all thief weapon skills when used as secondary class based on a cooldown instead of initiative. It would requires a bit of work but would be very feasible and avoid overpowered burst combos possible.
As for the Revenant, a similar solution could be suggested. All Revenant secondary classed characters would have their Revenant utility spells being cooldown based and never have upkeep associated to it.
Both of these solutions should also guarantee that a “main” Thief or Revenant stay better at doing their respective job than another class using their skills as secondary class.

I link below an image of an excel file I made as example of a Mesmer/Necromancer using this concept. The idea behind the build is to tap into some Necromancer conditions to help the Condi Mesmer to have some variety to it. It is not meant to be the build of the century but simply a way to one illustrate the idea with a concrete example and two shows what kind of build opportunity it could open.

Thank you all for reading my almost a book suggestion, I hope it will stimulate the community a lot and create a lot more interesting ideas and hopefully/maybe give inspirations to the devs. I really think this concept alone could make the game infinitely more exciting and give a huge refreshment without even adding content, just by allowing more content-crossing. On top of that this feature would match extremly well with elite specializations and give them even more uniqueness as only the primary class would be able to express them.

If you think ANet has problems with single profession balance just imagine dual profession.

I’m not sure what you mean by re-instauring. Reinstalling? Reinstating?

But the reason they scrapped the dual class system was due to a desire to throw out the balancing nightmare it created. It’s a core design choice on their part that is extremely unlikely to have changed. Elites are their version of it.

And frankly, after years of them reinventing the wheel on a constant basis and each time saying “this time, THIS time we’ve really laid down our foundation and will start adding content on top of it,” I really hope they meant it when they said the mechanics and systems introduced with HoT would be how the game fundamentally works from now on. I’d rather have a lot of elite choices than wait for them to rework things once again. (Though I’m rather sad that we seem to get one per profession per expansion, I really thought it would be something introduced in big patches now and then).

Well the fact is that GW1 was a lot more enjoyable in terms of balancing and it has a LOT more skills and possibilities. So the whole balancing difficulties in GW2 are just a big joke to me. We have very very very very possible combinations and most of the time it’s just about traits options. I don’t think it is about difficulty but rather about motivation to do it.

And yes reinstating would be best, sorry for the french word :p

Here are some facts from the FAQ:

From May 2010

Will there still be secondary professions?

Secondary professions were originally included, however due to the unique mechanics of each profession and the increased role of race in character customization, they are no longer a feature of the game.

From July 2014

Is it possible to have 2 professions on one character?

No. Unlike the original game, it will not be possible to have more than one profession. The reason was because of balancing issues.

And today

Is it possible to have 2 professions on one character?

No. Unlike the original game, it will not be possible to have more than one profession. The reason was because of balancing issues.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/

It is true that a very long time ago, quite some time before launch, the Devs considered Dual-Professions, but decided early on that it was not the way they envisioned Guild Wars 2 Professions to play out.

The devs opted to move away from the system for a reason and I’m with the devs on this one. Besides, unlike the original GW, each profession now has mechanics and skills that interact with those mechanics that’s basically impossible to solve for some combinations.

For some examples:

How would you resolve the issue of having a primary elementalist/engineer when every other class can weapon swap

If two professions share weapons, how do you pick which profession’s skills you get to use?

How would you resolve the issue of mesmer illusions and shatters if they’re a secondary profession

Would the devs need to create f1-f5 skills for every secondary profession utility skill that exists?

How would secondary elementalist weapon/glyph skills work when they depend on the elementalists attunement?

Ranger pets?

Basically everything revenant?

What about traitlines? how would you resolve traitline synergy/balance? How would you balance skills if you otherwise removed traitlines?

What about elite specs?

There’s a LOT going on and the rebalancing of a system built from the ground up to not have dual classes may as well be for an entirely new game for all the efforts it would take to scrap the current system and implement the new one (both programming/design wise and implementation wise). And remember, people are now playing with elite specs, so they can’t be removed without severe backlash and harm to their income, so you have to work with/around that instead of tossing it away or ignoring it.

Simply put, there’s too many problems that you would have to resolve to currently place secondary professions within the game. The only possible solution would be using the elite specialisation slot, giving a single traitline (so not every traitline), a single set of utility skills (which limits what utility sets can be given on a profession by profession basis) and a single weapon (which STILL leaves unresolved issues like elementalist/mesmer weapons that were designed with specific mechanics in mind). Considering all that, the revenant was designed in such a way that it makes a secondary profession elite spec impossible for them and revenants are already upset about the lack of customisation compared to other classes, adding more fuel to the fire won’t help. So I don’t see a single possible method of implementation of a dual profession system that would work.

It’s possible that this is where Anet is going with Elite Specs. They’re doing it in a way that limits the possibility of unintended synergy, but if you think about it, they are doing it — at least with some of the specs. Taken loosely, consider the following:

Dragonhunter: dual class Guardian/Ranger
Druid: dual class Ranger/GW Monk
Tempest: dual class Elementalist/GW Paragon

Essentially, what a secondary class did in GW was add a way of playing the class that the class itself does not have access to. That is the essence of what Elite Specs are meant to provide.

castlemanic.3198:

The devs opted to move away from the system for a reason and I’m with the devs on this one. Besides, unlike the original GW, each profession now has mechanics and skills that interact with those mechanics that’s basically impossible to solve for some combinations.

For some examples:

How would you resolve the issue of having a primary elementalist/engineer when every other class can weapon swap

If two professions share weapons, how do you pick which profession’s skills you get to use?

How would you resolve the issue of mesmer illusions and shatters if they’re a secondary profession

Would the devs need to create f1-f5 skills for every secondary profession utility skill that exists?

How would secondary elementalist weapon/glyph skills work when they depend on the elementalists attunement?

Ranger pets?

Basically everything revenant?

What about traitlines? how would you resolve traitline synergy/balance? How would you balance skills if you otherwise removed traitlines?

What about elite specs?

There’s a LOT going on and the rebalancing of a system built from the ground up to not have dual classes may as well be for an entirely new game for all the efforts it would take to scrap the current system and implement the new one (both programming/design wise and implementation wise). And remember, people are now playing with elite specs, so they can’t be removed without severe backlash and harm to their income, so you have to work with/around that instead of tossing it away or ignoring it.

Simply put, there’s too many problems that you would have to resolve to currently place secondary professions within the game. The only possible solution would be using the elite specialisation slot, giving a single traitline (so not every traitline), a single set of utility skills (which limits what utility sets can be given on a profession by profession basis) and a single weapon (which STILL leaves unresolved issues like elementalist/mesmer weapons that were designed with specific mechanics in mind). Considering all that, the revenant was designed in such a way that it makes a secondary profession elite spec impossible for them and revenants are already upset about the lack of customisation compared to other classes, adding more fuel to the fire won’t help. So I don’t see a single possible method of implementation of a dual profession system that would work.

I’m sorry but you clearly didn’t read much of my “idea”. I adressed 99% of what you say is a problem. The only one I did not was the Elem/Engineer weapon swap and the Ranger pet. For the weapon swap it wouldn’t be a problem at all, Engineer can still get weapon skills from other classes, and get utilities etc. That would open Thief pistols spells, warrior rifles, many shield spells etc. As for elem they already have a huge amount of spells and share a lot of weapons with a lot of very diversed builds (I mean an Elem could end up using thief dagger 2 for example if wanted).

The ranger pet would be the only “problem” and I suggest it is the only core mechanic kept “almost as is”. The pet would automatically be available whenever ranger is picked as secondary class, but no pet swap allowed (so only one instead of two), no particular command either and reduced stats.

As for the others, well you can create mesmer clones as a warrior but can’t shatter them (they still automatically disappear anyway at the end of the fight/when they die). The idea isn’t to have all classes doing everything but rather opening new windows on build possibilities. A thief having access to clones could be an amazing idea for examples even if he can’t shatter them.

As for the “balance” issue again. I think it is a wrong reason. GW2 is probably if not the MMO with the less customization in terms of character. We have 0 stats repartition, very limited build customization and then only stuff remaining with fix combos and a quite limited pool of combinations. The game is already very poorly balanced and it’s not “because it’s an impossible task”. Let’s face it, it is simply because the devteam never took the time to make the game balanced, ever. It would be more than feasible to introduce secondary classes and still have a game balanced. On top of that there is absolutely no reason to say taht it would make the balancing more difficult. I think it would actually be the best way to identify balancing issues very quickly and adress them (i.e if all classes pick the same secondary class with the same spells/traits).

And lastly the elite specs are not at all the same idea. The elite spec are just ONE among several new specialization. The specialization system doesn’t give access to much more options. Each elite spec give you 5 “utility” a new weapon with its spells and that’s pretty much it (ok sometimes a new mechanic). In the end when you will have 4 elite to choose from you will simply pick the one you prefer. And everybody picking the same as you will be identical.

It’s a very very very reduced version of asian MMOs offering evolution of classes after X level (example mage becoming archmage or sorcerer etc). Here you just have a very very poor amount of new spells to play with and that’s it.

And seriously I am tired to use the same core weapons spells for 5 years, give me replayability just please.

So, are you saying the Devs are mistaken when they state it makes GW2 more difficult to balance (and Guild Wars [One] more difficult to balance)? That armchair developers are more knowledgeable about balancing the game?

No,just no………

Sombrero.9204:

I’m sorry but you clearly didn’t read much of my “idea”. I adressed 99% of what you say is a problem.

-snip because post length-

You actually didn’t resolve “99%” of the issues I brought up. In fact you sidestepped most of those issues and didn’t resolve the balancing nightmare and in fact, made it worse.

You never resolved the issue with a revenant main (which was my point, revenants don’t have utility swap so how would you account for that, how would you account for revenants using energy for all their non autoattack skills for anything provided by a secondary profession, on TOP of the ability to use two elite skills from another profession, how would the revenant mechanic of swapping legends interact with secondary profession utility skills?), you actually never addressed what happens when you pair an elementalist with an engineer (which wasn’t a point that I brought up before, but i’m bringing up now), which have no weapons common with each other (not even underwater or elite spec), you ignored the issue of engineer f1-f5 skills when using secondary profession utility skills (i specifically used f1-f5 for a reason which you seemed to ignore) (note, my bad for not specifying engineer on that point before). You completely ignored the point of “how would you balance trait synergy” (lemme bring up an example, what about traits that affect shared abilities like shouts which guardians, warriors and rangers share, and that’s not including elite specs along with weapon trait synergies and other stuff i’m probably not thinking about)? How do you work around upkeep skills for revenants (you only said that they wouldn’t be upkeep anymore, so what happens? this is a new point as well)

Basically, the only ones you DID address were the mesmer illusions one (simply no shatters, which means those skills would need to be rebalanced), primary professions can swap weapon skills with secondary profession weapons and the elementalist skills one (which you said you just picked a single attunement). Also, in this post, you never addressed actual weapon swapping, do engineers and elementalists get weapon swaps if they pick a secondary profession with weapon swaps? i’m not talking about them using other weapon skills from other professions, i’m talking about weapon swap itself.

What you created is actually more of a nightmare to balance than anything GW1 had. Guild Wars 1 had the balance (at a glance) about specialisation lines only affecting their profession specific skills (if i’m wrong, please forgive me). In GW2 as it is, each profession (with the exception of revenant) is balanced around having specific weapon/utility setscombinations and rebalancing anything that seems too powerful. You’ve now created an impossible to balance situation for a single class, because that’s 5 (maybe more if you do decide to include elite specs) trait lines per secondary profession, each trait line has a combination of a choice of one out of 3 adept, master and grandmaster traits, you can have three trait lines at a time. Not including elite specs, that’s 40 more traitlines they have to balance for each class, which includes two traitlines for the core profession, each with their choice of one out of three adept, master and grandmaster traits, some of those traits affect the character and are not specific to profession mechanics/utility skills (90% health traits, dodge traits, fall damage traits, downed/defeated traits, CC/CC break traits, healing traits and a bunch more). You ALSO have to deal with the fact that by choosing a secondary profession, some of those traits are now useless and thus need to be dealt with (such as necromancer traits that deal with shrouds or guardian traits that deal with virtues). And this isn’t an issue that can be sidestepped either, because if you remove traits, you reduce versatility (which seems to be the entire point of your idea).

The idea as you presented it is simply not feasible for the amount of work they’d have to put in to get any benefit from it, especially since, as you said, it would be free and not tied to any expansion, meaning those resources could better be spent in other actually useful places. Just because you like an idea doesn’t mean it’s feasible or doable. In a perfect world, i’d doubt that this would be possible, in the real world, you’re better off building your own version of GW2 than hoping the devs would implement this.

Sombrero.9204:

Why re-instauring the Dual-Class system would be beneficial for the game and how it could be done ?

Long story short – it can’t. GW1 doesn’t have the different class mechanics GW2 has. Trying to mix them up can only end in unmitigated disaster. The possible interactions are way too many. You have to decide how to handle every interaction individually because there isn’t any sensible rule you can make for it. Making so many individual solutions will be literally impossible to balance, not to mention cause huge amounts of bugs and exploits.

Sombrero.9204:

And lastly the elite specs are not at all the same idea. The elite spec are just ONE among several new specialization. The specialization system doesn’t give access to much more options. Each elite spec give you 5 “utility” a new weapon with its spells and that’s pretty much it (ok sometimes a new mechanic). In the end when you will have 4 elite to choose from you will simply pick the one you prefer. And everybody picking the same as you will be identical.

It’s a very very very reduced version of asian MMOs offering evolution of classes after X level (example mage becoming archmage or sorcerer etc). Here you just have a very very poor amount of new spells to play with and that’s it.

They do if you consider the product rather than the means to get there. Druid healers remind me more than a little of a Ranger/Rit Healer spec used by a friend in Random Arenas. If your goal is to get a huge list of skills to choose from, well, that’s unlikely to happen unless ANet changes their minds dramatically. If your goal is to have one profession play like a different profession, that’s available now, at least to some degree.

I find dual class something worth looking at but on the other hand try to look at this from the AN point of view. You must realise that they would have to make 9×8 different combinations (or 9×9 I didnt play gw1 so I dont know if there is a posibility to make pure warrior or smth). They would make and release it one by one or all at once so people would complain about “Why did you make Necro – Mesmer and I didnt get my Ele – Thief” since people think they are the most important person in the world and only their ideas are good and the rest are garbage or there would be complains “why does it take so long” lets face it, it would take a lot more work than elite spec system we have now. Design is not the only issue, balance is. Unfortunately even if it sounds great, AN won`t make dual class a gw2 feature.

No instead the Devs made up meta and screwed the game ,but Anet does not care one iota about what we think or say ,soon all forums will be locked so they can carry on obliviously doing whatever it is they do which I’m sure is what they are doing now making stuff for Gem Store to make money (what Game? what concerns?)

cobbah.3102:

No instead the Devs made up meta and screwed the game ,but Anet does not care one iota about what we think or say ,soon all forums will be locked so they can carry on obliviously doing whatever it is they do which I’m sure is what they are doing now making stuff for Gem Store to make money (what Game? what concerns?)

“Made up meta” do you even understand what meta means?

M-most E-effective T-tactic A-aviable

META is something that community creates not devs so please next time if you want to show us your frustration at least use real arguments instead of “Devs are bad, they don`t want us to play tank engi and I want to play tank engi and I can`t because bad devs made up meta >:(”

And remember that there always have been META in game, I can remember when farming cof p1 was a thing. Guess what, there was a META (Mesmer + 4 warriors) no other class allowed. Then Dungeon farming where we had 1PS/2Ele/1Thief/1Guardian no other class aviable and now we have current meta which is pretty good imo because now at least you can bring any dps instead of ELE only.

It was also the duel class PLUS an ungodly amount of skills PLUS+ like others have said the nightmare it was for Anet to balance all those skills that helped create those ultra powerful builds that made you basically invincible if you played it right that helped crash and burn GW1 economy.

Also it was those ultra powerful builds that were being used on bots that in turn help crash GW1 economy.

When Anet first talked about Guild Wars 2 and how it was going to be set up they clearly said the reason why they chose to go with a single class profession and limited skills was because IT WAS a complete nightmare when it came to balancing all the skills in GW1.

It was also because of this balancing nightmare entire classes where nerfed to the point of being utterly useless, Rangers in GW1 comes to mind as an example, while other classes were basically ignored. Elementalist from day one in GW1 was handicapped do to every enemy more so in Hard Mode having protection from fire, air, earth and water, add in how Anet only really seemed to care about the fire skills and never really touch the air, water and earth skills, that in turn made those skills basically worthless to use since they were all overwhelmingly under powered.. Mesmer’s didn’t become PvE friendly until VERY late into the game’s life and was only seen before that as a PvP only class and Paragons were the poster child of a profession being completely ignored. Then again I don’t think Anet even knew how to begin fixing Paragons.

Yeah, dual professions were fun, but they were also a big part of what killed GW1. The “meta” always revolved around finding and exploiting OP combinations of skills and attributes – most often one single skill, with all 7 other skills devoted to making the one even more OP.

Some builds I remember running: ZB monk; the completely degenerate and unintended PS 55 monk with which I farmed hydras to finance a suit of Vabbian armor; the even more degenerate PS/SB 600 monk with which I (and an entire hero’s worth of maintained enchantments) soloed CoF with paying passengers. SY para, because warrior shouts were better on a paragon than paragon shouts, and better on a paragon than on a warrior. Discord necro hero x3, or x6 with a friend, because Discord was just that good and the heroes’ AI made it even better. Jagged Nova ritualist hero. Splinter Barrage A/R that made a better ranger than my ranger, critical scythe A/D that made a better dervish than my dervish.

I’m actually getting a little nostalgic. But my point is that each of these builds revolved around one or two skills that were broken in some way, allowing for more damage or more support than intended when approached with a specific combination. And dual prof made the number of possible combinations nigh-infinite. I wouldn’t want to balance that. Nobody would. And it only got worse with each expansion. It wasn’t sustainable.

Word was they opted for a single class system as it was easy to balance. Dual classes made for too many over powered builds, i.e. 55 monk etc..

Well GW2 has just the same issue with way less building options. Just look at basically all part of the game. PvE, PvP, raid etc every aspect of the game there is builds much stronger than others and they are spammed over and over. GW1 in the end had 10 classes allowing for all of them to cross in any possible way (even if many combinations were a dead-end, I mean a Warrior was never able to pull of good magic abilities with so terrible energy upkeep).

I don’t see why GW1 “died” because of “OP” build. I think that was the whole charm of GW1, going with whacky ideas to find a solution to every problem. The 55hp was mostly due to one spell in the end, not at all because of dual class (that and the fact that HP and damage weren’t very high in the end).

As for the things I haven’t adressed:

- I insisted in the posts that each primary class stays as it is. Having any secondary class “simply” gives access to one specialization max, weapon spells that can be used (i.e that are of the same weapons as the primary class), utility spells, elite spells.

So if we have an Ele/Engi well you don’t have a lot of interactions possible at first glance. You can use all Engi utility if you think they are worth, some traits could help for some builds. Just like you never had a total synergy of both classes in GW1 you don’t need here to have a perfect symbiosis of the two classes in GW2. There is plenty of example from GW1 such as Warrior/Assassin shadow step (or Dervish), the Ranger/Warrior hammer using Ranger mechanics with Warrior spells etc.

The idea is to allow for more diversity and more creativity from the players. There is no logical reason for having such a poor amount of customization. I mean even hack and slash have more build options it is a bit ridiculous at this point and nothing seem to point that the second expansion of the game will change anything. At the end of the day we simply “replace” a bundle of spells to choose from (Elite spec X) with a new bundle (Elite spec Y).

And that’s the best way to have a very boring meta being simply about which Spec is the most broken at a given time in a given situation.

I wouldn’t suggest a dual class system if we had any possibility to choose weapon spells from a pool of spells to begin with and not having such absurd choices of “utility”, healing and elite spells. (A huge amount of utility and elite spells are underwhelming. I’d love to see % of use of each utility and elite spells just for fun)

I just don’t get why people are ok with spamming the same 1-2-3-4-5 for years now while there is no logical reason for being so limited in customization. And the balance excuse is really a fake excuse to me. You can say that I’m no developer and everything you want, go ahead. But many games with a lot more customization have a far better balancing than GW2 with an absolutely ridiculous lack of customization has.

In the meantime the game expands on legendary equipment, pretend to break the dps/tank/healer trinity but then introduce it back but only halfway with elite specs and raids and now soon the other core feature that GW franchise always said would never go to will be a thing.

I’d be ok if the game was going in a set direction that makes sense. But to me it is just going into way too much pew pew pew it’s flashy so players will like it. Yeah the gameplay is dynamic and it feels good, that doesn’t mean that the players can’t use their brain and make builds by themselves. It’s not marketed as a hack and slash, and still it is just a multiplayer persisten world hack and slash.