Guild Wars 2

Yes the new weapons cannot work in such a plain manner like any other weapon we can use – 3 reasons.
1) they are the symbol of our new mechanic and since there will be new elite specs in the future they will be a waste of time as they are now. I assume there will be 5 in total (1 for each remaining dragon) so an engineer will have more weapons he cannot use without the right spec selected than he normally can. Thus if we are using an elite spec the new weapon should be the best one.
2) weapons give less skill selection unlike the other skill slots as they use up 2,3 or 5 so we have to be more certain that we want to use them.
3) hey they are weapons we need to acquire them right? Which might become a real problem if we want them to be ascended/legendary. So why would we want them if they suck?

So I say these weapons need more synergy with their elite specs. In other words they will give benefits to the new game mechanics and skills when they are equipped.
Like the Reaper would deal more damage if he/she enters RS while using a GS or something like that.
A Tempest could have reduced overload activation and increased aoe when using a warhorn – let’s be honest this is clearly based on the good old “storm caller” from GW.
And they would also have some effect on the new skills or vice versa. So for example a Tempest will have increased range and effect on his/her shouts by using the warhorn as a megaphone. While a Reaper instead would get some buff from the shouts if using a GS, like “nothing can save you” would grant the Reaper increased attack speed for like 5 sec.

In other words we need motivation to use our new weapon as our weapon of choice otherwise they wiII mostly be a waste. We can use them only while using the specific elite spec so we should be thinking “yeah I will definitely be using it” instead of “maybe” or “nah it sucks I’ll stay with my core weapons”.

Im afraid if Anet makes it the best weapons for the spec, the new specializations would be more cookie cutter than they already are.

New Weapons should be available for use outside of the Specialization.