First off, I’d like to say that I’m quite happy with the current state of the game. It could use a few tweaks but is, overall, quite solid.
That having been said, I have a number of suggestions:
1) “Dual Professions”
This is something that I feel is still achievable, especially with the current system, but with some minor tweaks to it. The goal of implementing such a system would be increasing build versatility without providing minimal amounts, if any, of power creep.
However, unlike the traditional system in GW1 where dual professions had access to all of the skills of both professions, my suggestion is a bit simpler, and easier to balance: Gaining two professions should only grant you access to the weapons, and weapon skills, of the secondary profession, with a couple of exceptions and alterations to how those skills work.
For example: Let’s say I main a Warrior. I decide I’d like more condition variety and application, and consequently decide to take Necromancer as a secondary profession. Now, if I equip a weapon that is NOT a Warrior weapon, I automatically lose my burst skill as a part of the price for versatility. If I selected scepter, for example, as a ranged condition applier, I would trade to make up for it, and of course couldn’t gain Life Force.
On the other hand, let’s say I went for a more synchronized approach and selected an Axe as my main hand weapon. Both weapons fit the classes, and I get to keep my burst skill, but I’d like to pack a little more OOMPH with the weapon set. I would have the option of changing out skills, much like utility skills are swapped, between the two classes’ available skills, and I would have to learn these new skills just like I learned them back at level 1 (after which point they stay learned). Armed with this, I keep my Axe 1 as a decent melee option, and then switch axe 2 and 3 over to the necromancer abilities for a bit of range and AoE, plus granting me pretty solid Retaliation uptime, too.
There are, however, some oddities in this system. Elementalist, for example, would be VERY difficult to fit into this system, and a good bit of testing would be needed to figure out what worked and what didn’t. If this suggestion were to be feasible, Elementalist as a primary class would likely lose out on the swapped skill for all attunements (losing 4 skills for the price of one), and as a secondary class would likely be limited to one set of attunement skills at a time (so a thief with a dagger can’t take fire, water, earth, AND air spells at the same time). There’s also the matter of thief weapon skills being initiative based rather than cooldown based, but this issue could likely be solved with minimal investment into determining good cooldown times for other classes.
Overall, as I said, it’d be a complex system to implement but would, overall, be good for the game. You would drastically increase build variety, but very much encourage creativity, all on a smaller, more reasonable scale. Remember, secondary weapon skills likely won’t benefit from specific traits, with a few reasonable exceptions, and so will have their usefulness cut in that way as well. At any rate, these changes would serve, I believe, to create a more adventurous, and customizable, experience to GW2, and encourage players in PvE and PvP alike to experiment with different variations on builds to find new ones which work to their advantage.
Pulsing damage to enemies near the target, maybe even both if the damage is small enough, but I’d prefer either/or.