Basically, with a system like this, all level 80 characters would receive bonus skills when they raise any of their stats past a certain thresh-hold. These would be based on their profession. When your stat drops below that thresh-hold, you lose the skill in question. Furthermore, the system does not count temporary buffs (food, sigils, might stacks, etc.) towards this progression – only your baseline gear stats and trait stats.
The thresholds could be somewhere along these lines:
Pow, Pre, Tough, Vit
Unlock new skills at 1250, 1500, 1750, and 2000 points.
0 baseline stats (Healing Power, Con Damage, Crit Damage, Con duration, and Boon Duration)
Unlock new skills at 250, 500, 750, and 1000 points (Healing Power and Con Damage).
Unlock new skills at every 25% – max 4 skills (Crit Damage).
Unlock new skills at every 15% – max 4 skills (Boon Duration).
Unlock new skills at every 15% – max 4 skills (Con Duration).
This would effectively mean that you could unlock up to 4 bonus skills per profession per stat. This would add 288 new skills to the game (72 to each profession), though any given build would only get a portion of these.
Advantages
Allows for a more free-form role-based progression that gives each gear set a direct purpose.
Allows for both dedicated and custom gear combinations to achieve this progression.
Creative players will be able to unlock interesting combinations of skills.
Disadvantages
Large number of skills to create. May require slimming down through fewer + larger thresh-holds or through the exclusion of more arbitrary, trait-based lines (Boon Duration and Con Duration).
Your thoughts?