Guild Wars 2

Am I the only one who’s annoyed with the fact that you don’t get access to a profession’s new skills and weapons unless you equip the right specialization? Is there any real reason for this? All specialization 1st minor traits give you an ability AND give you access to the weapons + skills, so why make using new stuff contingent on equipping the new trait?

It has to do with the expandability of the system (which was a key element in the development of both the elite spec system and the mastery system). If the weapons and skills would be usable without the spec itself then the amount of builds you can make would increase exponentially with each new wave of elite specs which in turn makes balance exponentially harder.