As the trait system is pretty much being revamped, this could be an opportunity to look at what I call ‘quality of life’ traits. Of course, this is just my humble opinion, but I would be interested in some discussion and hopefully some thoughts from GW2 developers.
The traits I am talking about are ones that give a certain advantage outside of combat and make the gameplay (appear) easier or more convenient. Here are things like flat movement speed increases, perm-swiftness (aka. Speedy Kits), fall damage traits etc. Of course, these traits are all very useful in combat — but my main point is that they provide an advantage outside of combat as well. For instance, the ability to move quicker during a gaming session is psychologically very rewarding and makes classes that generally move slower appear less convenient or practical.
Thereofore, my suggestion would be to rethink this type of traits altogether. As a radical solution, one could remove them from the game entirely, giving all classes the same baseline moving speed. For instance, the movement speed should apply either in-combat or/and as an opener. The fall damage traits should be probably removed, because they offer a situational functionality which can be perceived as too advantageous in certain scenarios and force players to take a specialisation they wouldn’t take otherwise. Or as an alternative, these type of skills should be present in more then one specialisation, so that one could get that situational ability without having their playstyle penalised.
Overall, I feel that the new system (what we’ve seen so far) brings some very positive changes and I hope that the devs will continue to remove the boring “no-contest” traits in favour of more interesting, fun traits and abilities that promote skilful and strategic play. Especially looking forward to more subtle synergies and multi-functional traits (that could be utilised for offence/defence by making a judgement call — of course, with a significant cost!).