Yes, they could.
What am I talking about? One of the main problems people had with GW2 is that skills are basically static. In GW you spent most of your time acquiring skills rather than leveling. You tricked out your bar with your perfect combination of skills to play the way you wanted to play.
In GW2 you don’t have that. All the skills available to you were all the skills, period.
Specializations has the potential to change that. This is high speculation, and I don’t actually have a lot of hope that it will work out this way, BUT, here goes.
We know three things about specializations. 1) The bring a previously unavailable weapon with them. 2) They come with 6 skills (1 heal, 1 elite, and presumably 1 skill group which would mean a group of 4 thematically similar skills.) 3) They will replace a trait line with a new trait line relevant to the special.
What we don’t know, and that for the purposes of this speculation I am going to choose to say is true. 1) You lose the use of at least one weapon. 1) You lose the use of at least 4 skills. 3) You can choose which trait line to replace.
Why lose, you may ask. If the trait line is replacing another trait line you lose access to all the traits in that line. Since those traits focused primarily on at least one weapon and skill group it’s reasonable to lose those alone with the line since you can’t enhance them anymore anyway.
So now we have a situation where you have access to a special, you choose to drop a specific line to replace a skill/weapon combination for a new one. Now you have a group of specials and you can slot them into your character just like you used to slot skills from GW. You can choose which combination you want them in.
Now assume that stat position never changes, you can choose how you want to be statted by putting trait lines where they’re most effective for your particular build, rather than being forced to use certain types of weapons and skills because that’s the line that has the stat you want.
Balance be kitten ed! I’m not worried about that. This was just a concept piece I just through of while looking at other peoples speculations. Again, I don’t expect this to be how it works out, I just think it would be pretty cool.