Guild Wars 2

I know in the original Guild Wars you could mix and match any skills you liked, and that one of GW2’s core changes was to consolidate the first five skills to be weapon dependent. I was thinking though, that for a Warrior elite spec, wouldn’t it be cool if you could mix and match any ten weapon skills you want? I’m thinking of it as a “Mist Weapon” elite spec, where each time you use a weapon, you would summon up a specific model of that weapon from the mists, use it, and then it vanishes again. Your actual equipped weapons would stay on your back at all times and act as focii for your abilities.

Outside of combat you could “open up” each 1-5 skill just like utilities, and select any ability from that slot on any weapon the Warrior can use. So just as a quick example (might not work well), you could have GS Arcing Slice, Ham Fierce Blow, LB Arcing Arrow, Rifle Brutal Shot, and Axe Whirling Axe, all on a single bar, and then “weapon swap” and get a completely different set.

Now this might be too effective, being able to chain all these abilities without limitation, and If that’s the case, then I think an easy way to help balance them out a bit would be to take potentially problematic moves and increase the pre-cast/after-cast delay on them, basically the deadliest attacks might take a bit longer to “pull” from the mists, again only if that’s necessary to balance them out.

But what do you think, would this be a cool core mechanic? Would it be too easy to abuse, even if some combinations had added cast-lag to them? Would such cast-lag even be necessary?