Guild Wars 2

You’ll find that the 1H sword has greater damage potential than the GS, but with an enormously larger risk. In this sense there’s some argument to call the GS a FOOS.

I think it may be more accurate to say that so many Mesmers use GS because it is a well-designed, very synergistic weapon in a setting where so many of our other choices don’t make any sense.

Consider:
-GS scales entirely off of Power/Crit, allowing you to focus your stats in a way that helps each of its abilities
-GS is designed to be a range weapon, and has two ways of helping you keep that range in the form of crippling phantasms and a knockback
-In being a ranged weapon, GS allows you to focus the stats it builds upon
-It had our most effective form of AoE attack outside of shatter in a class that sorely needs AoE
-The #1 attack, while ranged, is not a projectile; this allows it to bypass feedback and other defenses against ranged attacks

Compare that to that staff which cannot decide if it wants to be ranged (#1) of close combat (#4,#5), which scales off of Condition (#1) but also Power (#3). The staff is an awesome weapon with great defensive utility and a phantasm which has the greatest theoretical DPS, but few of its abilities really synergize.

Compare that to the Scepter which not only suffers from antagonistic skills (melee #2, range #3; power #1, condition #3) but which has skills that are also significantly less powerful than other weapons and it’s no wonder that so many Mesmers rely on their Greatswords.

To call the Greatsword a FOOS implies that there are alternatives which would be better if we crossed a certain skill threshold, it implies that our weapons were designed in a manner which rewards skill with greater effectiveness, albeit at a magnitude too low to push players to advance. This may be true if you choose to enter melee but for range combat the Greatsword isn’t just optimal for low skill, it’s the best weapon all around.