Guild Wars 2 is about a year away from its next expansion reveal, judging by the pace ArenaNet has set, and the forums are already running the same thread on a loop: where are the elite specializations? For a large chunk of the player base, an expansion without new elite specs is an expansion that feels incomplete. I have been in this community since before the first elite spec hit the game and I want to make a case for the other side of that argument.
The Conversation Nobody Asked For
This is an opinion piece. I am not reporting news. I am making an argument. If you want to fire back in guild chat, go ahead. That is what this kind of piece is for.
The conversation in the GW2 community right now has a familiar shape. Secrets of the Obscure launched without new elite specializations, giving every profession access to three new weapons through the new weapon proficiency system instead. The reaction split roughly down the middle. Half the community said “finally, build freedom.” The other half said “this is less content than before.” Both reactions are understandable. I think one of them is more right.
Before I make the case, let me acknowledge the obvious: the players who miss elite specs are not wrong to miss them. Harbinger, Virtuoso, Willbender, Catalyst, Untamed, Specter, Mechanist, Bladesworn, Vindicator. End of Dragons gave us nine distinct identities, nine new ways to play your profession that felt genuinely different from the core class. That is a powerful creative offering and it is reasonable to feel something when that kind of addition disappears from the formula.
What Elite Specs Actually Cost
Here is what gets left out of the “we want elite specs back” argument: what elite specs cost the game over the long run.
Elite specializations are expansion-locked. If you did not own Heart of Thorns, you could not play Dragonhunter, Reaper, or Berserker. If you did not own Path of Fire, Firebrand, Scourge, and Mirage were unavailable to you. Every expansion introduced nine new build identities that were immediately inaccessible to anyone who had not purchased that specific expansion. In a game with a free-to-play base and a model designed to welcome returning players, that is a real friction point.
The fragmentation gets more obvious when you look at how endgame groups actually functioned. Once a new elite spec became the meta support or DPS option, players without the expansion were effectively locked out of high-level content by a paywall they may not have known existed until they tried to fill a role. The Firebrand meta that ran group content for years was particularly acute here. You wanted to support? You needed Path of Fire. Full stop.
Beyond the accessibility problem, there is a design ceiling issue. By End of Dragons, the development team was working in a design space that was increasingly crowded. Nine base professions, three expansions of elite specs each, and a need to make each new spec feel distinct from everything that came before it. That is a constraint that tightens with every iteration. The community noticed this in EoD: some of the elite specs felt genuinely novel, but others felt like lateral moves on existing concepts with a new aesthetic coat.
ArenaNet did not abandon elite specs because they ran out of ideas. They abandoned them because the model had structural costs that were getting harder to absorb.
What SotO Did Instead
The weapon proficiency system in Secrets of the Obscure gave every profession access to three new weapons: Rifle, Axe, and Greatsword became available across classes that had never wielded them before. A Necromancer with a rifle. A Guardian with an axe in both hands. A Ranger finally doing something useful with a greatsword.
The immediate benefit is horizontal expansion of build space without expansion gating. Every player who owns SotO gets the same set of new options regardless of which expansion they own. A returning player coming back after years away gets the same weapon unlocks as someone who has been logging in every day since launch. That matters for how healthy the population feels at the lower and middle tiers of content.
The build combinations multiply fast. If you have ever sat down with GW2 Efficiency and mapped out how many viable build combinations exist now versus before SotO, the numbers are striking. More viable weapon combinations means more player expression means more longevity in the build crafting that keeps a significant portion of the player base engaged.
The counterpoint is that weapon proficiencies do not deliver the fantasy of a new class identity. And that is true. Using a greatsword on your Guardian does not feel as distinct as becoming a Willbender. There is a real difference between adding tools to a class and transforming it.
The Real Argument for Build Freedom
The strongest case for the weapon proficiency model is not that it replaces elite specs. It is that it sustains the game for players who were never going to engage with the elite spec meta anyway.
GW2 has always had a population that plays the game in a mode the content creators and Reddit threads do not cover much: relaxed open world, seasonal events, casual fractals, social guild runs. These players are not chasing the optimal raid build. They are playing the build that feels fun to them, and “fun” is a parameter that benefits enormously from more weapon options.
The elite spec meta in endgame content narrowed build diversity even as it expanded it on paper. Yes, there were nine new specs per expansion. In practice, the T4 fractal and raid meta would crystallize around two or three of them within months of release. The rest existed on paper and in casual play. The weapon proficiency system spreads its benefit more evenly because it does not create a new meta summit that replaces the old one. It adds tools to a wider base.
The Counterargument Is Valid Too
I am not going to pretend the “bring back elite specs” crowd is arguing from bad faith. They are not.
Elite specializations created some of the best content this community has produced: theorycrafting that lasted months, meta evolutions that reshaped how game modes were played, and the specific joy of playing an entirely new version of a class you thought you knew perfectly. Reaper at launch felt like a genuine gift to Necromancer players. Weaver gave Elementalists something to chase that had not existed before. That creative energy has real value and the game feels its absence.
The honest answer is that ArenaNet is trying to serve a broader set of players than the endgame theorycraft community, and that means some things that specific community loved will change. Whether the trade is worth it depends heavily on which player you are. If you are playing elite spec builds at the top of the endgame, SotO’s model probably felt like a loss. If you are one of the millions of players who owns multiple expansions but mostly plays in open world and seasonal events, the weapon proficiency system probably gave you more than the previous model ever did.
What Comes Next
The next expansion reveal is coming. The community is already speculating about whether ArenaNet will bring elite specs back in some form, modify the proficiency system further, or introduce something else entirely. My read is that the weapon proficiency model is not going away, but I would not rule out ArenaNet finding a way to add class-specific identity systems that are not locked behind the expansion paywall in the traditional sense.
What I am hoping for is that both things can coexist: build freedom for the broad player base and class identity shifts for the endgame players who miss the narrative of becoming something new. GW2 has managed to serve both casual and hardcore players in the same framework before. The new expansion model is still young enough to iterate.
We will cover whatever gets announced with the same honesty we have brought to the SotO cycle. If the next expansion brings elite specs back and they are good, we will say they are good. If it extends the proficiency model and it delivers, we will say that too.
The meta is always changing. That is what keeps this game interesting after twelve years.
This is one take. Drop yours in the comments or find me in guild chat. The debate is the point.